And they kept coming back today, but nothing and no one could please them. Rob began to prepare himself to enter the discussion. The woman was shaking her head at Jeremy. He'd learned, after 'Nam, when even longtime friends had hairtrigger reactions to some small slight. Initially this mystified Rob, but as an army boxer, he had had no frontline duty to whittle his nervebed or curdle his vitality.
People are touchy, sensitive.
Like the guy with her. But it's more, this thing he does. When the kids try too bluntly to move him toward a sale he stiffens like a rake's gone up his spine and a particular exchange happens. Rob remembered, suddenly, the things he'd learned when he had custom built a bicycle for the man. This was his market rap, his conditioned reaction to a sales situation.