Pickup Notes

by Jane Lebak

  And the music! Holy cow, the things I needed to learn about classical music, string quartets, violins…I can’t even begin. Well, I’ll try. Thank you to Jane Eady Gitter of Festivo Strings, musician Sue Holcomb, and musician Marnie Hall. I may be forgetting others. I’m sorry. (Let me know and I’ll add you to the acknowledgments.)

  Thank you to Heather Turner for an amazing proofread, as always.

  If you have a couple of minutes, please leave a review over at Amazon or Goodreads. It doesn’t have to be a five-part essay like the ones you learned to write in fourth grade. Just a star rating and a couple of sentences works fine, and it helps the writer and other readers a lot more than you realize.

  Go ahead and sign up for my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/bcnCNX, and you’ll get a free copy of the Seven Angels Short Story Bundle, and I’ll tell you whenever I publish something new.

  Honest And For True

  29-year-old Lee has a Park Slope apartment with easy access to Manhattan, loves her job as an auto mechanic, and can see her guardian angel (a wisecracker with a fascination for the Rumours album.) That's kind of a full life for a kid in the world's biggest playground. Despite what everyone thinks, she doesn't need, or want, a romantic relationship.

  Far more comfortable in blue jeans and flannel than in heels and satin, Lee finds herself lying to every man she dates. To the physical trainer, she's a preschool teacher; to the guy at the bowling alley, she's a secretary. The lies keep romance at arm's length even as they drive the angel to distraction until the day she realizes she's fallen for a straight-laced accountant who's exploring his dark side through bizarre foods (please note: sea cucumber is not a vegetable). But now he thinks she's someone she's not.

  Now she's got to turn those mechanic skills on herself to diagnose and repair the most important relationships in her life. And just think, she used to find it tough repairing a transmission!

  Long-time comedy writer and novelist Jane Lebak serves up a hilarious comedy with angels and spare tires and a recipe for the best omelets you've ever tasted. Also what may be the most romantic toilet-fixing scene in the English language. But there really isn't an award for that, so we'll never know.

  Chapter One:

  A strange fascination for the Rumours album

  If the customer was any more in my face, I'd be tasting her mouthwash. "You were supposed to give me an estimate!"

  We don't have bullet-proof glass at the garage, so I raise both hands. "But we didn't—"

  "I was waiting right here for the car." The woman's angular cheeks go purple, and she's got a white-knuckled grip on her purse. "If you think I'm paying for that, you can forget it."

  I thrust her the keys and the paperwork. "You don't have to. You're free to go."

  For a moment she huffs in the otherwise-still waiting room. Passing cars hum outside the windows, and a whiff of exhaust hangs in the air. Finally she says, "What?"

  Poised to dart back from the counter, I circle the total on the invoice. $0.00. "The car is fixed. You're all set. Have a nice day."

  Two regular customers are pretending not to watch. I'd like to think both men would save me if she attacked, but this is Brooklyn—they'd have bolted outside before their abandoned Daily News pages finished fluttering to the floor.

  The keys crunch together as the woman slips them into her coat pocket. "It's fixed?"

  Breathe, Lee, breathe. Crisis averted.

  This late in the day, the vinyl floor bears a salt and dirty-snow grime, and I’m as tired as last month’s Christmas decorations. My last cup of coffee happened four hours ago. At least, I assume that was coffee. I found it in the coffee pot, so that should count for something.

  I grin at the customer. "Our test drive confirmed the gasoline odor in the car, but that wasn't the smell of a bad fuel pump. Your gas cap had a cracked gasket which was letting fumes get sucked back through the trunk whenever you accelerated." I slip onto the stool beside the computer, bringing myself up to eye-level with the woman. "Since a locking gas cap isn't standard on the Taurus, we popped the trunk and found the original cap rolling around the spare tire bed. New test drive, no odor, no charge." Leaning forward, I rest my elbows on the counter. "If you aren't satisfied, we'll provide a full refund."

  Silence for five seconds.

  She bites her lip. "The first mechanic swore it was the fuel pump."

  "And agreed to change it for $300," I venture, "while throwing in a new gas cap for free?"

  She bursts out laughing. That's less than a week's rent, but hey, money's money. "Tell the mechanic I want to marry him."

  I make my eyes big. "That would be me." When she steps backward, I add, "But I'm happily single, so I'll decline your proposal."

  Now I've shocked her twice. "But you're a girl."

  I stare down at myself. Yep, still the same me: grease-stained pants, work boots, and a denim shirt with our logo.

  Although they pretend not to be watching, the other customers snicker.

  The woman shifts her weight. “I ought to pay something.”

  I shake my head. “At some point you’ll need to get your car fixed for real, and you’ll come to the honest mechanic. Here, tell your friends, too.” I hand her five business cards that proclaim Mack’s Auto: We Repair Anything!

  The woman takes the cards. “Thanks. Lee, huh?” She prints my name on the reverse of one. “You’re right—I’ll be back.”

  No kidding. She’s got a 2006 Ford Taurus. Of course she’ll be back.

  Five minutes later, I’m on the next repair. Ladies and gentlemen, in the center ring—I mean, repair bay: a hundred-ten pound mechanic versus a factory-driven nut rusted in place since the second Bush administration. Who will prevail?

  “Hey, Bucky,” I whisper. “You there?”

  No response.

  “Bucky, you’d have stepped in if she attacked me, right?”

  Again, silence. I wonder what’s going on.

  I’m going to be a bad girl. On the metal shelf behind me, I keep a twenty-year-old boom-box that has only ever played one tape, and now I turn it on.

  The other three mechanics look up. Carlos says, “Rumours again?”

  “It’s the only thing everyone agrees on,” is all I ever say. You’d better believe I won’t ever tell them the real reason.

  “Secondhand News” starts up, and I enjoy the echo of my voice against the undercarriage. It’s a good thing I work in a garage: when it comes to singing, I’m a great mechanic.

  By the time the second baum-baums have started, I can see Bucky, leaning against the lift riser.

  It’s convenient to have a guardian angel with a strange fascination for the Rumours album.

  He’s awesome. I’ve been able to see him since forever, and sometimes it still knocks the breath out of me. He’s got a squarish face with short brown hair that curls at the edges like an afterthought, and his smiles carve a dimple on his right cheek. There’s no dimple now; no smile either.

  “Why are you so scarce today?” Teeth clenched, I have another go at the bolt. The other mechanics won’t hear me over the music as they work on their own assignments. If they do, well, all of us talk to the cars we’re fixing. They won’t care that I’m apparently holding a conversation with mine.

  He still doesn’t answer.

  “Wasn’t that the neatest thing about the gas cap? I just knew that woman was being fleeced by another mechanic. She was so cagey describing the problem.” I touch the air where his arm appears, but my fingers pass through. Today he’s wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt that says HEAVEN. “Where were you before?”

  He shifts away from me so his wings flare, showing his brown feathers with white speckles, even the yellow bars across the shorter ones. “I’m not all that happy with you right now.”

  I look away from the engine to meet his brown eyes.

  His mouth tightens. “Would you care to guess why?”

  I’m in for it. But you can always delay the inevitable: I drown the
bolt in WD-40 and slip some PVC piping over the edge of my wrench to make a longer tool for more torque. As I get it ready, I venture, “Does it have to do with last night’s date?”

  Bucky has the most arresting eyes I’ve ever seen, but at times it’s hard to appreciate how they shine. Like now, when he’s staring into me as if someone has shouted “Fire!” while I’m holding a wadded-up newspaper, a gas can, and a flame thrower.

  “I couldn’t help it.” He’s still glaring: he must think I could have. “It was great until he wanted to know what I do for a living, and he wouldn’t let me joke it off.” I glance sideways. “Why didn’t you distract him?”

  “You can’t distract me,” he says, “and I’m asking why you did what you did.”

  I should know by now. “What’s the big deal? So I told him I’m a secretary for a political action committee.”

  “The big deal is that you aren’t a secretary for a political action committee.” Bucky’s wings close as he leans back on the riser. “There’s nothing wrong with fixing cars.”

  The song has changed to “Dreams” as I finally get the bolt to loosen. “I know that.”

  “Then why lie about a job you love?” Bucky’s still got a tightness around his mouth, and one hand clenches. Uh-oh. “It’s not like the man was pining for a delicate flower. You met him at a bowling alley, for Pete’s sake. You can’t even claim he thought you were just watching the other mechanics because he saw you paying for your games, which were pretty good by the way.”

  “Thanks!”

  “And…?”

  I let off a long sigh, then set about removing the heat shield. Something’s still blocking it.

  “The guy didn’t ask you to teach him needlepoint. You two talked hockey while feeding quarters to a game of Duck Hunt.” Bucky makes that figure it out circular motion with one hand. “Where in all that did you get the idea he’d climb out the men’s room window if you told him you inflate radial tires rather than collate radical flyers?”

  “I didn’t want to ruin the fun.” I sigh. “I’m never going to see him again, so why does it matter?”

  Bucky says, “Why care what he thinks if you’re not going to see him again?”

  “We have this discussion every time,” I say, and Bucky shoots back with, “Then maybe you need to listen to what I’m saying every time. What kind of person would roll his eyes at the mere mention of your job?”

  I lower my wrench and regard him patiently.

  He flinches. “Well, other than her.”

  We’re silent for a moment. Bucky says, “You might want to remove that heat shield if you don’t intend to become a secretary.”

  “You’re done lambasting me?”

  “I can see I’ve had a great effect on you.” He looks up into the engine as if he can see a salt-encrusted flange preventing the heat shield from sliding loose. “Maybe I should start scanning the Heavenly Times classifieds. Or place one. Wanted: Guardian who stands a chance of turning someone into an honest woman.”

  “No fair! I don’t want a different guardian!” I try again to slide the shield loose. “I’m up-front about everything else.” I pause. “Is there a Heavenly Times?”

  Bucky opens his hands to create filmy image of a broadsheet that does indeed say Heavenly Times, with a banner headline about the music of the spheres being in concert.

  Bucky’s dimple tells me he’s fighting a laugh.

  I say, “Honest and for true?” Then we both crack up, and the image disperses.

  “You’re the best guardian.” I throw my weight against the metal, and it slides only a bit before it catches again. “I may have a teensie problem with the truth, but I’m not totally dishonest. Have I ever ripped off anyone here? You know how easy that would be. ‘Yeah, your thermostat needed a new torque sensor, and then I laced up your CV boots.’”

  When he concedes the point, I add, “It’s not as if I’d lie to you.”

  “Do that and you won’t see me again.”

  I pivot toward him. “You wouldn’t leave!”

  “I want you to quit lying.” He draws up to his full height, staring into the heart of me. “You’ve got me at the end of my rope.”

  I turn my back so he can’t see the tears in my eyes or the way I’m biting my lip. Ironically, it’s by turning the wrong way that I finally slide the heat shield free. I set it on the ground and pick up my wrench to start dismantling the exhaust system.

  When I think my voice will be steady, I chirp in a kid-voice, “I love you, Bucky!”

  He says into the air, “Here’s a note to all guardians everywhere on Earth: It may be cute when they give you a nickname at age three, but consider whether it will sound cute when they’re fifty-six.”

  “I’m not even thirty.” I glare at him. “Unless you’re implying it feels like you’ve been stuck with me fifty-six years.”

  Bucky sheds sparkles at me like the crackling of a fire.

  I smirk. “Hey, shine a little this way so I can see the exhaust system better, will you?”

  “Oh, is my new name Maglight?”

  I’m about to retort that there are worse names when my boss shouts so loud I drop my wrench. “Lee! Get in here!”

  Well, that doesn’t sound good, does it now?

  The other mechanics smirk as I head for the narrow office behind the waiting room to talk to Max, the non-eponymous owner of this garage ever since he realized that “Max’s” would immediately make people think “he maxes out your credit card.”

  Over sixty, graying but with a full head of hair, Max is visible from the chest up behind the towers of paper walling his desk. “Listen, I know I don’t pay you near enough, but I can’t accept your resignation.”

  I roll my eyes.

  He snaps a paper with a thick shortened finger, the victim of a distracted moment under an engine twenty years ago. “And you ought to learn to spell my name.”

  I choke down a laugh.

  In addition to the tightest fists on earth, he also has the most concrete deadpan. “You’re in the shop today. Why’d you waste a stamp mailing it?”

  I run a hand through my hair. “Are you also mad at me for not signing in my own handwriting?”

  He studies it. “You’re right. This isn’t even close.”

  I need the laugh. “If I may ask, where did I say I was going to work instead?”

  He crumples the letter. “The Post Office.”

  My eyes widen. “My mother’s getting desperate.”

  Max lays it up into the trash can. Two points. “At least this time you’re not quitting to work in the back room at Target.” He swivels toward his computer, dislodging a stack of junk mail with the chair’s arm. “Give your mother a free oil change and get her off my back, will you? Maybe change her wiper blades too. Oh, and nice catch with the gas cap, but you should have charged her for labor.”

  Yeah, that wrist motion of turning the gas cap? Nearly did me in.

  Max adds, “Take the rest of the day off, on me.”

  I glance at the clock. Fifteen minutes early. Impressive. “Thanks.”

  Max tells Ari to finish my repair, and I’m free.

  In the four-by-four bathroom, I stand practically on top of the toilet to replace my work gear with jeans and a fresh flannel shirt. My hands turn pink from scrubbing, but eventually they’re clean.

  This is the life. I can’t imagine going back to being a legal secretary or schlepping on the subway every day.

  As I leave through a parking lot surrounded by a razor-wired chain link fence, I pause: where is my bike? Oh, great—am I about to make another friend on the NYPD?

  Then I remember, I drove to work today because it’s my niece’s birthday. In less than an hour I have to enter Battlefield Mom.

 

 

 
book with friends