Free The Marrying Kind by Monique Miller Page A

the satellite radio. As he cleaned while looking for nonexistent smudges and dirt, Travis imagined himself driving in the car, with the sunroof open, while listening to some smooth jazz.
    His hand accidentally hit the glove compartment and opened the dashboard as he cleaned around it. The inside held a mini flashlight, a pair of gloves, and the car registration. Instead of quickly closing the glove compartment, Travis looked around to see if anyone was watching him. When he saw that no one was paying him any attention, he examined the car registration more closely. The name on the registration was Jade Morris. She lived at 61 Lafayette Street in Silvermont.
    He didn’t remember seeing a Lafayette Street on any of the bus maps or the city map he had used before. He figured that with the way the woman was dressed and the car she drove, she might not live in an area that had public bus transportation.
    He placed the registration back in the glove compartment and closed it back up. “Jade Morris, huh?” Travis whispered to himself, thinking it was a pretty name for a very attractive woman. Then he imagined driving down the highway with Jade in the passenger seat.
    When he heard a tap on the window, Travis figured he must have been daydreaming for too long, because there was a frown on Andre’s face. “Travis, are you done yet?”
    Travis opened the door. “Yeah, I was just finishing up.” He took a cloth and wiped the window where Andre had just knocked with his knuckles.
    â€œOkay, little Miss Barbie is getting impatient over there,” Andre said.
    Travis smiled over toward the woman, who hardly paid him any attention as she looked down at her watch with impatience. He handed Andre the keys back.
    The rest of the afternoon, Travis worked helping with gold, silver, and platinum package jobs. Andre had told him that as he got better with those jobs, he would be able to move up to be one of the purple crew: the guys who did the Wash and Dash basic package speed clean. Throughout the afternoon, Travis thought about Miss Jade Morris. He figured she was indeed a Miss because she wasn’t sporting a wedding ring or even an engagement ring.
    The Wash and Dash was open seven days a week. For six days straight Travis worked and learned how to properly detail cars to the specifications of the Wash and Dash corporate office. He was given a day off, on a Friday; then, the next day, when he came back, Andre moved him up to the purple crew. He was given the task of cleaning and washing the back right side passenger area of the car.
    When the first car rolled in, he was ready and raring to go. He pulled the door open, pulled out the mats just as he had seen the other guys do, then he commenced vacuuming the back seat, the floor, and under the front passenger seat, then started vacuuming the mat that he’d previously pulled out.
    As he glanced at the other guys who were bound and determined to be the first ones finished with their sections, Travis pushed himself to go even faster. He loved a challenge. He placed the mat he was cleaning back into the car just as his counterpart on the other side of the car put his mat back in.
    Within thirty seconds, the two guys covering the front sections put their mats back in and all closed the doors. Next, each guy was responsible for washing his section of the car. They sudsed the car down and then stepped back as a fifth guy then hosed the car down.
    Once all the suds were off, Travis’s team stepped back over to the car and toweled it down until it was dry. Their last step in the process was to take window cleaner and clean the windows to a sparkling shine.
    The head of the blue team inspected the inside and outside of the car. With a clipboard the guy checked boxes off to ensure that it was cleaned to Wash and Dash’s satisfaction. The guy then held up two thumbs to the crew; then he drove it to the customer service area for the customer to retrieve the