New flash fiction: "They Say He's Sentimental"

You always loved the classic Ford Mustangs. Not so much the muscle-car image of the 70s, but the somewhat chunkier models from around 1965, with their glowing red taillights and crackly factory radios that had once blared the Kinks, the Stones, the Association. Some golden flat-topped son of the Midwest trying to sneak a hand around a chaste, angora-clad shoulder to the chimes of “Cherish”. California blondes with eyes like the Pacific, dressed in white and breezing down the Ventura freeway like Brian Wilson's lyrics come to life. The baby boomers who stored their red ragtop beauty and only took it out for Sunday drives, lovingly polishing and tuning their lost youth. When you saw one once, abandoned and stripped next to the rusting hulks in the junkyard, you cried.
The man in DeKalb was selling his '65 convertible because, he said over tinny country phone lines, his wife wanted to turn the extra garage into a scrapbooking studio.
You agree that it's not exactly a fair trade-off, and drive all the way down from Wisconsin, past Chicago and then corn and soybeans and windmills, to see a slice of 1965.
Dan lets you in the kitchen door of the big yellow farmhouse, and his wife offers you lemonade, which you notice is actually sickly-sweet yellow Kool-Aid when it hits your tongue. She flits around like a hummingbird, and you are grateful when Dan finally takes you out to look at his “baby”, which he says with a sheepish grin, and he holds the screen door open with one work-browned arm.
Dan's farm has maybe seen better days. The driveway is crunchy with gravel and the outbuildings are all peeling with red paint. He has chickens but no other livestock; the fat white birds spill out onto the lawn.
The car is in a converted pole barn. Sunlight streams in, gently, dusty, through cracks in the walls and sparrows flutter up to the roof beams.
Dan has the Mustang carefully covered, and he removes the canvas cover as if it were swaddling on an infant. The car is ice blue, all silver chrome and white vinyl and it makes you catch your breath in the hot air.
“I bought it in Florida in 1970 and drove it all the way back to Chicago.” Dan is watching you watch the car, and his eyes are kind when he looks at you.
You run your hands along the side of the car, taking everything in and savoring that first moment, like meeting someone for the first time, someone you might have known in some other life. You notice that the passenger door seems a bit off-center, and ask if it needs repair or was left ajar.
At the same time, you offer the envelope of cash in your outstretched hand, as if afraid that he'll change his mind.
“No, it ain't ajar - it's a door.” Dan grins at his own wit, and tucks the envelope in the pocket of his jeans.
From the corner of your eye, you see his face change from playful to serious. His eyes get a little red, then a little watery, and then you have your arms around him in a hug; you just can't help it. When you drive away, he doesn't wave, but he stays there, watching, until all you see is a speck in the distance.