by Pamela Morsi
That was not exactly good news.
“Could you go play quietly in your room for a few minutes?” Erica suggested. “And I’ll clean up this mess.”
The little boy sighed and then complained to his aunt. “She said the bad word, but I’m the one who has to go to my room.”
“Just go, Quint, before you hear me say something else.”
Letty ruffled his hair as he passed, then grinned at her sister.
“What happened?”
“Stupid…fudging washer,” Erica faux cursed as a reply.
“I thought Tom fixed it weeks ago.”
“He did fix it weeks ago and a week after that and last week, too,” Erica told her. “The cranky old machine springs more leaks than an old man on the incontinence ward.”
Letty shook her head sympathetically. “Do you have another mop?”
Erica handed her the one she was using and then waded into the laundry room to get a second one from the broom closet. Together the two sisters worked to sop up the water and wring it into a bucket.
“You may just have to bite the bullet and buy a new washer,” Letty told her. “This one continues to cause more problems than it solves.”
“I keep trying to make it last another month and another month,” Erica explained. “I keep hoping Tom will have one good month with especially good receipts. You know how I hate to buy things on credit.”
“Maybe you should get over that,” Letty said. “You are not at all like Mom. You are never going to run up a bunch of credit card bills.”
Erica shook her head. “It’s a bad habit to get into.”
“Don’t you have a savings account?”
She shook her head. “If we get a dime we don’t put back into the business, we put it in Quint’s college fund.”
“Well, maybe you should think about putting something aside for household emergencies.”
Erica glanced up at her sister suspiciously. “Have you been talking to Mom?”
“Mom, no. I’ll try to call her on Sunday maybe.”
“I talked to her yesterday after work,” Erica said. “I made the mistake of telling her that the hospital miscalculated my pay rate and I’m going to get more money than I thought.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Letty said.
“Yeah,” Erica agreed. “Mom suggested that I not tell Tom. That I just put the money aside to buy stuff for the house.”
Letty laughed. “I bet Tom loved hearing that.”
“I forgot to tell him,” Erica said. “I forgot to even tell him about the pay-rate thing.”
“How could you forget to tell him?”
Erica paused to squeeze more water from the mop to the bucket. “Last night just got really weird and complicated.”
“Oh?”
“Oh,” Erica mimicked.
“Come on, tell me,” Letty said. “If not me, who else are you going to tell?”
Erica glanced toward the living room, making sure that Quint was still out of earshot.
“We went down to his shop and he has this old Buick that somebody wants him to get ready for sale.”
“Yeah.”
“He wanted to have sex in the backseat.”
Letty hooted with laughter.
“It wasn’t that funny.”
Letty’s laughter continued and evolved into snorts of hilarity. “It sounds as if Tom came up with a great plan to mix the two things he really likes.”
“Oh, shut up!”
Erica attempted to focus her attention back on the soaked floor.
“So how was it?” Letty asked, too amused to let it drop.
“How was what?”
“Sex in the stranger’s car.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“You didn’t?”
“Of course not.”
“When did you get to be such a prude?”
“I am not a prude,” Erica insisted. “I just…I mean, who would have sex in somebody else’s car? I don’t think that would be…it wouldn’t be good business. If I were to leave my car in a shop, I wouldn’t want people using it for a romantic rendezvous.”
“Hey, if Ford Motor Company didn’t want people screwing in cars, why did they call it an Escort?”
Erica rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot,” she told her sister.
“Better that than a prude.”
“I am not a prude. And it wasn’t a Ford—it was a Buick.”
“Oh well, a Buick then, that makes it all different,” Letty said with exaggerated sarcasm.
Erica ignored her.
“Poor Tom,” Letty said with a sigh. “I hope you gave him an ‘I’m sorry’ blow job when you got home.”
Erica dropped her gaze. Deliberately she kept her eyes on her mopping.
“Oh gosh, you did!” Letty said, snorting with laughter.
“Shut up!” Erica said, more embarrassed than annoyed.
“It’s true. It’s true. I can see it in your face.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“No, it’s not,” Letty agreed. “But I’m glad to hear it. I really like my brother-in-law a lot. Mostly because he makes my sister very happy.”
After the mopping was done, the sisters tried wringing the water out of the clothes in the washer and then loaded all of the week’s dirty laundry in Erica’s car.
Letty needed to get back to her own life. The apartment she shared with two roommates was always overflowing with friends and fellow students on the weekend. But she liked the camaraderie of it all.
“Don’t forget to give Mom a call,” Erica reminded her. “If you don’t, she’ll blame me for not telling you.”
“One Mom phone call coming up,” Letty promised.
Quint whined considerably about spending Saturday afternoon at the Laundromat. Erica felt like whining herself, but she forced a smile to her face.
“It’s just an hour and a half, two at the most and you’ll get to play video games the whole time.”
Unfortunately, it was a very crowded place of business. All the washers were in use and Erica had to wait her turn. When it was her turn, however, another woman, who had come in after she did, grabbed the one Erica had been intent on using.
“That’s my washer,” Erica told her.
The woman eyed her unpleasantly.
“I don’t see your name on it,” she answered.
“We don’t see your name on it,” her son, who looked about ten, echoed more loudly.
Erica decided that getting into a public argument with the woman was more trouble than it was worth. But as she sat on a dirty plastic chair waiting for another machine to open up, she thought longingly of the comfort of her own little laundry room. She really did need a new washer. And if she held back the extra money in her paycheck, she could buy one in a couple of months. But she wouldn’t keep it a secret. She would tell Tom. He would understand. He’d been patching the old machine back together time and time again. He knew how much she needed a new one. He’d be fine with using the extra money she made for the purchase.
Blushing, she remembered the information Letty had wheedled out of her. Her sister had called her a prude. Okay, she could plead guilty to a bit of that. But falling for Tom had never really been very prudent of her. And she might very likely have allowed the relationship to die a natural death. She supposed that she had Ann Marie to thank. If her mother hadn’t stuck her nose in it, the love of her life and her wonderful child might never happened.
She and Tom had been dating for a couple of months when he’d finally confessed his personal history. Erica had already sensed that something was off. Ordinary questions like “where did you go to school?” or “which did you like better, soccer or little league?” provoked nonanswers and conversation shifters. But she had never, in her wildest dreams, suspected the facts. Revelations about a life of homelessness among addicts and drug traffickers had shocked her, frightened her. She’d managed to keep the horror out of her expression and the pity out of
her voice. But when he kissed her good-night, she imagined it to be the last time. She had her own demons about growing up different. She wanted a normal guy from a regular family who’d be interested in an ordinary life. Erica didn’t believe that Tom could be that. She stopped taking his calls.
Ann Marie noticed.
“You’re not seeing the big grease-monkey fellow anymore?”
Erica shrugged a noncommittal reply.
“Well, it’s good news, if you want my opinion.”
Erica didn’t.
“He’s a nice guy.”
Ann Marie had shuddered and shook her head. “He’s so…so big, so brutish,” she said. “I understand how that type can inspire a certain amount of animal magnetism, but he is definitely not the kind of man you should ever get serious about.”
In an act of pure defiance, Erica had called Tom. And that very night, under the stars, they’d made love for the first time.
With a sweet sense of nostalgia she remembered that cool, crisp evening. They had been out for dinner and music at The Cove. She’d been nervous with him, anxious. Never much of a drinker, she had downed two glasses of red wine before Tom suggested that they get some air. They drove through the darkened streets to Woodlawn Lake, the west-side’s jewel of an urban park. In the center of the quiet water, a small, striped lighthouse was a decorative addition that skipped a bright, shimmery gleam along the dark water.
Tom parked his truck in the smallest, most distant lot from the shore. The clubhouse and docks were deserted in the evening chill. He urged her into the truck bed, with a view of the lake and the stars in the night sky. If it seemed a bit purposefully convenient that the truck carried an array of cozy blankets and a camping mattress, Erica pretended not to notice.
“Let me just hold you in my arms while I gaze at heaven,” he said to her.
She snuggled against him before pointing out the obvious. “You’re not looking at the sky, you’re looking at me.”
“Exactly,” he answered before he kissed her.
There was tenderness on his lips, his mouth. There was tenderness in his hands as he caressed her. But there was demand as well. Tom went after what he wanted and he wanted her. Her secret places were no secret to him. He claimed them, exploited them, until she begged him to rip her clothes off. He didn’t so much as snag her sweater as his big, masculine hands worked every button, hook and zipper with the precision of a man who knew his way around a carburetor, was an expert in stoking a spark and could rev her engine until it squealed in high gear.
Erica recrossed her legs on the plastic laundry-room chair as she recalled that passion. She’d had sex with guys before and she’d enjoyed it in a thrilling, titillating kind of way. But her previous experience bore no resemblance to the wanton, world-rocking intimacy of having sex with Tom. He completely satisfied her and, at the same time, kept her craving his touch.
There was no going back from a night of passion and a declaration of commitment in the back of a pickup truck under the stars. Erica realized that no matter who Tom had been, he was now the man she loved.
Saturdays were busy days at the shop. All the guys who worked nine-to-five all week needed to bring their cars in on the weekend. And those that didn’t need work, just wanted to hang out and talk with the guys who did. It was almost a party atmosphere and Tom didn’t like it much. Unlike many in his business, Tom had never preferred the company of men. He’d had no father, not even so much as a hint of who that person might be. And he’d grown up in a situation where the males were especially untrustworthy and often quite dangerous. The shoulder-punching camaraderie was a foreign language that he’d mastered but never felt quite comfortable with.
Still these loud braggarts, practical jokesters and tobacco spitters were some of his most loyal customers. And it was their word of mouth that he counted on to bring in new people and more work.
So he tolerated the Saturday hangout.
He had, however, put his foot down when Bugg Auflander wanted to furnish a cooler of beer. Tom had trouble keeping them out of the work area as it was. He didn’t want to spend his Saturdays as a bouncer for the overinbibed.
Even without the added incentive of alcohol, the mere presence of the gang really stuck a wrench in the shop’s productivity. Gus pretty much gave in to the distraction and did no work at all. And Hector was little better.
Tom’s only consolation was their sociability freed him up for doing actual repair.
Except this Saturday, that wasn’t quite working. All the guys wanted to look over and talk about the Buick. And Tom couldn’t quite keep himself from joining in.
“Is this like a ’54?” Kyle Gibbons asked.
“No, no,” Dave Lofts said. “The ’54 was the one with the sad eyes.”
“Sad eyes?”
“Yeah, the headlamp piece was long and droopy to include the parking light,” Dave said.
“Oh yeah,” Nick Vallarta agreed. “From the front view it kind of had the face of a basset hound.”
Dave nodded. “This is a much rounder headlamp. It’s got to be a ’55 at least.”
“No, it’s not a ’55. That year they had the headlight and the parking light separate,” Manny Felde said. “It’s either a ’56 or ’57.”
“It’s a ’56,” Tom called out to them. He had his head stuck under the hood of a 1975 Gremlin.
“I’d love to customize her,” Perry Pickets declared. “Can’t you see her rolling down the street with a four-forty and some glass packs?”
“Are you out of your mind?” Dave Lofts’s question was rhetorical. “You could search a lifetime for a better original condition vehicle and you want to turn it into some lowrider. That’s just crazy.”
Immediately sides were drawn up and opinions shot across the bow.
Tom heartily agreed with Lofts. He would really hate to see Mrs. Gilfred’s “Clara” turned into some jacked-up or bagged whammy tank. Even customizing her would be like forcing a beautiful actress into plastic surgery. The result might look new and flawless, but those things are a poor substitute for natural beauty.
Eventually he couldn’t resist straightening up and walking into the discussion.
“I think the owner wants her to be restored, not redone,” he said.
“But she’s selling it, right?” Pickets said with a chuckle. “So what she don’t know won’t hurt her.”
That might be true for Mrs. Gilfred, but the motives of the buyer would probably be obvious to Tom. He would not allow this Buick to end up in the wrong hands.
“We’ve got to get some work done around here, guys,” Tom announced.
The statement forced him to move away from the Buick and he hoped that it would be a hint to his employees to get busy.
Gus was actually sitting on a lawnchair in the driveway, in the middle of some long tale. Hector, at least, was under a Chevy pickup, lubing the joints.
“Gus, are you going to get to the wiring on this Gremlin?” Tom called out.
He nodded and waved without even pausing in mid-sentence.
Tom glanced around for Cliff, but he didn’t seem to be anywhere. Mentally shrugging, he figured Cliff must be in the john. However, when he walked around the back, he noticed that the restroom door was open and the tiny room was empty. He surveyed the interior of the shop again. Clearly Cliff wasn’t anywhere inside.
Tom walked into the office, but it was all old men focusing on their never-ending Saturday morning discussion of “cars I once owned.”
“Have you seen Cliff?” he asked generally.
The discussion paused only long enough for negative responses all around, then commenced once more just where it left off.
It was very strange. Cliff was on the clock and he wasn’t supposed to just disappear. Tom walked out the back to see if his shiny, vintage Cutlass was still in the employee parking.
It was there, parked near the end. Tom’s brow furrowed. There was an unfamiliar blue Mazda minivan parked right next to him, and i
t seemed to be swaying slightly. A sure sign that Cliff was working on it, though why he hadn’t pulled it around to the front was puzzling. Maybe because the minivan was new, but Tom’s policy had always been to fix whatever showed up. And he didn’t care if people knew that.
“When we’re struggling to keep a business in the black,” he’d told his staff many times. “You can expand the definition of ‘classic car’ to include everything north of a riding lawnmower.”
Tom walked toward the vehicle to see what was going on and to suggest to Cliff that he move it into the driveway.
When he reached the space between it and Cliff’s Cutlass, he stopped in his tracks. The side door to the minivan was wide open. As were the legs of some feminine person who had them wrapped around Cliff’s naked butt.
“What the hell!”
Tom spoke before he thought. His words had the expected result. Cliff jumped to his feet as if he’d been shot. His trousers dropped all the way to his ankles and he bent forward frantically, grabbing at them. The woman, too, pulled at her discarded clothes attempting to cover herself. But not quickly enough that Tom hadn’t had a very good look at a slim body with visible tan lines. He recognized her face, of course. She was Stacy from the Auto Parts Store. He’d seen her, spoken to her a thousand times in the past few years. Now he knew for a fact that she wasn’t a natural blonde. It was not a piece of information that he’d ever wanted to acquire.
“I can explain,” Cliff said, belatedly remembering to stand in front of the doorway, partially shielding Stacy from view.
“You can?”
Tom’s tone was incredulous as he turned his back and walked to the front of the vehicle. Cliff followed him while he zipped up.
“It’s not what you think,” Cliff told him.
“What I think is that you’re having sex with some woman in my parking lot.”
Cliff ran a hand through his typically perfect gelled hair, smoothing it into order. He was tall and lean with the kind of congenial personality that made all the men want to be his buddy and all the girls want to be his squeeze.
“Usually we sneak off somewhere, but the shop’s so busy today that I thought I should stay close,” Cliff said.