A Fleet with My Name on It

By 2018 the company had a proper name, River Yard, and customers who recommended us because the right parts arrived with somebody ready to answer a question. We bought our first service vehicle after calculating the work it could actually earn. The day it arrived, I stood beside it longer than necessary. In the first life I had spent ten years stepping out of vehicles carrying somebody else’s logo. Ajak threw me the keys, then took them back because she had booked the first journey herself. Ownership, she explained, did not entitle me to make us late while admiring the paint.

Joan joined as finance lead. At thirty-two she could make an ambitious projection look slightly ashamed of itself without raising her voice. She found money we were wasting, obligations I had underestimated and a sensible route to buying a second vehicle. After work she invited me to a film. Joan rested her shoulder against mine during a scene neither of us found convincing and whispered that at least the hero had learned to answer a telephone. I asked whether that qualified him as romantic. She said I might investigate the possibility over dinner afterward.

Mina photographed the new workshop. She was twenty-eight, curious and delighted by the story of a man whose first fleet consisted of one vehicle he was not allowed to drive for pleasure. She made the staff look like people instead of a collection of solemn uniforms. After the shoot she showed me a picture of myself beside Ajak and asked why I looked less guarded in that frame. I did not know. Mina said she enjoyed difficult questions, then invited me on a walk where I would be forbidden to answer them as though speaking to a customer.

Nyak designed a small display area that let customers see the difference between suitable stock and a shelf full of impressive boxes. She was twenty-six and became impatient when I called her work decoration. At the end of the project she led me through the finished room, asking me to stand where a customer would stand rather than where a founder wanted to pose. Her hand remained on my arm after the demonstration. Nyak said I was easier to like when I stopped explaining what everyone should notice. I asked her what she had noticed. She smiled and said I could ask again over supper.

Nora managed events for local businesses. At twenty-four she had enough energy to make three people feel late merely by entering a room. She arranged our workshop opening and refused to let me announce the same thank-you six different ways. After the guests left, she sat on a cleared table, swung one foot and asked whether I had a celebration planned that contained no microphones. We went dancing. Nora kissed me outside afterward and said it was nice to discover that the man beneath the speech could occasionally enjoy himself.

Vera reviewed a difficult commercial agreement and saved us from a promise we could not deliver. She was twenty-nine, direct and amused when I thanked her as though she had pulled me from a river. She accepted a separate personal dinner and arrived in a dark dress that made my rehearsed opening remark completely useless. Vera watched me recover, then said she preferred an honest pause to a clever line. We talked late. When she took my hand at the end, the gesture felt more intimate than the most polished invitation I could have invented.

The expansion required real capital. At the end of 2018 our agreed ownership was sixty percent mine, twenty-five Ajak’s, ten an outside investor’s and five reserved for staff. The figures reflected cash, work and responsibility rather than an assumption that people who liked me should fund my ambition for nothing. We served private workshops and ordinary commercial customers, working regionally when a single market became uncertain. Revenue grew into the millions of dollars. I paid my mother’s housing costs, bought a home rather than another temporary room and learned what it felt like to enter a building without waiting for permission to remain.

Adut came to see it before the furniture arrived. She walked through the empty rooms, stopped at the kitchen and said I had chosen well if I could learn to keep food in it. Rose arrived later with a practical gift and enough amusement to prevent the visit becoming a ceremony. They knew about the other dates. Nobody had agreed to compete in a contest I kept postponing. Over supper we spoke honestly about what each wanted now. I enjoyed their company, their teasing and the startling luxury of having time to listen. Wealth was becoming visible. The responsibility for using it well remained inconveniently personal.