What He Wants

by Jessie Gussman

  “That’s not what you came here to talk to me about.”

  “No. It’s not.” The door clicked closed behind him.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, Torque was at Tough’s garage before the sun was up. He had struggled all night, trying to figure out how he could help Cassidy. After spending the evening with her, it was obvious she loved those precious children who needed a mom. Since he’d grown up without a dad, it tore at his heart to see those kids not have one either.

  But the adoption board would never consider an ex-con who hadn’t been on the outside for even a month as a suitable father. Plus, he didn’t have a real job, and he’d never mentioned the money to Cassidy yesterday. He knew she had money. She’d mentioned her trust fund and the monthly stipend she received from the family business, even though she wasn’t involved. It was time she spent it on herself and her kids. His pride wouldn’t let him even ask about a loan. Not after seeing how she’d lived for the last ten years.

  His pride also wouldn’t let him tell her the only thing he wanted from her. It wasn’t in payment for what he’d done, anyway.

  A man’s pride could sure be a pain in the butt sometimes.

  There was a way he could kick some of his pride under the bus.

  So, he’d walked to Tough’s early.

  Lights were on in the shop and the main door was unlocked, although the overhead garage doors were still closed.

  Torque walked in to the smell of coffee and the sound of two old men arguing. Something about an article in the morning paper, apparently, since one of the old men by the checkerboard in the corner slapped the paper for emphasis while he insisted that the woman in the article was indeed the former mayor’s daughter.

  “Mr. Sigel, that is not the former mayor’s daughter. He only had sons. Three sons. One of them married that Prichard girl. She wasn’t much of a looker, but she always won the chocolate cake contest at the Ribbon Valley Farm Show. Quite a cook she was.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Al. First of all, the Prichard girl couldn’t cook worth a fiddle-fart. She couldn’t tell salt from sugar, and anyone who ever ate one of her sweet rolls can back me up on that.”

  Torque moved over to the coffeepot, figuring he might as well pour himself a cup while he was here. If this was what the old men did all morning, it wasn’t any wonder that Tough was hiding somewhere, since the rest of the shop was deserted.

  “Hey, now that must be the oldest brother.” The men came up for air in their argument and realized Torque was there.

  Black coffee in one hand, Torque strode over to the table and held out his other. “That’s right. Torque, Tough’s brother.”

  The one with the bushy eyebrows stood slowly to his feet and grabbed his hand first. “Name’s Al. This here’s Mr. Sigel.”

  The other man leaned heavily on his cane as he got to his feet, but Torque didn’t insult him by offering to help. Once he stood, they shook. “Good to meet ya. You just came down from the state pen in Shartlesville, huh?”

  Torque nodded.

  “See Bobby Hamer there? He went up about fifteen years ago. Still there, far as I know.”

  Torque shook his head.

  “Yeah. Probably don’t do much socializing there.”

  A hand clamped on his back. Tough.

  “Hey, man,” Torque said. Tough had a brain that could put things together like nobody’s business, but because he didn’t talk much, especially at the beginning of a conversation—he didn’t do much small talk—people often thought he was slow. The opposite was true. He also knew even though Tough looked like a ruffian, with his slightly shaggy hair sticking out from under his old ball cap, grease-stained t-shirt, old work jeans, and scuffed boots, Tough was probably about the most sensitive guy he knew and generous to a fault. Who else could put up with these old men all day every day?

  Still, if anyone could help him with Cassidy, it’d be Tough.

  Tough jerked his head in greeting. He was the only one of the four of them that didn’t have a coffee in hand.

  “’Morning,” the old men greeted, and Tough nodded at them.

  Torque eyed the old men. He hadn’t wanted to make this a public discussion, and he was pretty sure the old-timers gossiped worse than a henhouse full of pullets, but that could work to his advantage.

  He figured he might as well spit it out. Tough didn’t do small talk anyway. “I have a unique favor, I thought you guys might be able to help me out.”

  “Shoot, boy,” Mr. Sigel said.

  Tough rested a hip on the side of the checker table and leveled the brown eyes they’d all inherited from their father at Torque.

  “I know a lady. Classy woman. Works hard. Honest.” He took a breath. How else to describe Cassidy? He could say she read his mind and spoke to his soul, but he wasn’t doing this for himself. He hooked a hand around the back of his neck. “She’s intelligent, strong, and independent. But she needs a husband. Fast.”

  “She fat?”

  Mr. Sigel slapped his hand down on the paper. “Shut up, Al. That’s not politically correct.” He cracked his neck. “You say, ‘is she pleasantly plump’?”

  “That sounds like I’m describing a Thanksgiving turkey.”

  “It’s better than what you said.”

  “Don’t see why I can’t just say what I mean.”

  “You don’t want to be offensive.” Al paused. “Not any more than you already are.”

  “Fine.” He turned back to Torque. “Is she built like a linebacker or like the punter?”

  “Ya can’t say that either. That’s discrimination against linebackers.”

  “I’m not discriminatin’ against anyone. I’m just trying to find out what size the dad-blasted woman is.”

  “Then you say,” Mr. Sigel said slowly like it was perfectly obvious, “‘Is the enormity of her extensiveness on the weighing machine in proportion with the extensive magnitude of the magnificence of her cognitive vast immensity.’”

  Torque blinked, trying to figure out what in the frig Mr. Sigel had just said.

  A Jake brake filled the silence that descended.

  “Turbo’s here,” Al announced.

  Torque almost rolled his eyes. “Doesn’t he realize people are still sleeping?”

  “Ain’t too many people around here that care,” Mr. Sigel said.

  Probably true. It was a bad area. Most folks had just gone to bed, and even a noise as loud as Turbo’s Jake wouldn’t wake them. Still.

  The door opened. Turbo always blew in like a hurricane. “Man, Tough. You’re letting ex-cons hang out here now?”

  “Shut up, Turd,” Torque said, using the old nickname from their childhood.

  “Oh, that hurts.” Turbo strode right over to the coffee maker and poured cream into a cup. He topped it off with a bit—a tiny bit—of coffee. “It’s not my fault the old man saddled me with a name like Turbo. You don’t have to make fun of it. My own brother. I took enough crap in school.” He downed the cup of cream and poured another.

  “That your breakfast?” Torque asked.

  Turbo finished off the second cup and poured a third. “I think I forgot to eat yesterday.”

  Torque snorted. The big brother in him gauged Turbo’s thin waist, although his shoulders, as well as Tough’s, had filled out too, while he’d been in prison.

  “Turbo, care to tell Al here that you can’t say ‘fat’ and ‘woman’ in the same sentence?” Mr. Sigel asked, somewhat self-righteously.

  “I didn’t say that!” Al declared. “I said ‘is she fat’.” His bushy brows lowered. “That’s okay, isn’t it, Turbo?”

  Turbo lifted a shoulder. “If you’re talking about a motorcycle.”

  “That’s Fat Boy,” Torque felt compelled to point out.

  “Whatever.” Turbo drained the third cup. “My opinion is: don’t say the ‘F’ word.”

  “That meant something else when I was your age,” Al muttered.

  “That word’s oka
y. But I wouldn’t say ‘fat’ and ‘woman’ in the same decade. ’Less you’re looking to get clobbered with someone’s walker.” Turbo smashed his Styrofoam cup and threw it in the trash. “Who ya calling fat, anyway?”

  Mr. Sigel set the paper aside and started setting up the checkers. “Don’t know. Torque’s here looking for a husband for some chick, but he won’t tell us what she looks like.”

  “I told you the important stuff.”

  “Like how much money she has?” Turbo hooked a hand around the lift hanging from the ceiling. “Repeat that info, please. I might be looking to get married.”

  Torque did roll his eyes at that. “She wouldn’t put up with you for two seconds.”

  “You mean she couldn’t catch me. Tell me how much money she has. I might slow down a little.”

  “You touch her, and you’ll need a chair lift to get in and out of your truck.”

  “Okay. So, Turbo’s out for a husband. If your own brother ain’t good enough, who is?” Mr. Sigel scratched his mostly bald head.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here asking you.”

  “You want a man for Cassidy?” Tough finally spoke.

  All eyes turned to him.

  “Yeah,” Torque said.

  Turbo’s mouth formed an “O” then snapped shut.

  “Cassidy, the pickle heiress?” Al asked.

  “No, you idiot,” Mr. Sigel said, like he even knew.

  “Oh. Must be Cassidy, the naked woman on all the billboards.”

  “You can’t say ‘naked.’” Mr. Sigel shook his finger at Al.

  “What? That ain’t politically correct either?”

  “No. She ain’t technically naked. You’re being judgmental.”

  “Hain’t judgmental. When I was your age, that was naked.”

  “I’m thinking not.” Turbo smirked. “She’s got the important bits covered, and you guys figured out how to make babies somehow.”

  “My wife wore a heck of a lot more than that when we ‘made babies.’ Long white nighty, and I only lifted it up to...”

  “Stop right there.” Holy frig. Torque didn’t want to live with the image of Al in bed with his wife in his head for the rest of his life.

  Mr. Sigel stroked his long nose. “This is Cassidy, the public defender who drives an old beater, lives in that rundown old apartment, and has the little boy with dark skin?”

  “Yeah.” And Cassidy, the pickle heiress.

  “Whoo-hoo. Good luck with that. She’s a sharp one. Gonna take three men and an elephant to tie her down.” Al slapped the paper with a sharp crack, almost knocking his coffee cup over.

  “You,” Tough said.

  Torque shook his head and put his hand up in a “stop” gesture. “Won’t work. The adoption agency won’t let her adopt the twins if she’s not married or close to it, and the stink of prison is all over my sorry butt. No way they’re going to accept me.”

  Tough slapped his arm. “Ain’t no man for her but you.”

  Chapter 11

  Tough turned and walked toward the four-door sedan parked in the far bay with the bumper and headlight torn off it.

  Torque shoved his hands in his pockets and watched him go, not really seeing him but thinking about what he said. How had Tough come to that conclusion? No one, not even his brothers, knew what actually happened that night. He hadn’t thought anyone knew about Cassidy and him that summer, either. She hadn’t gone to his school. She graduated from an exclusive private girls’ school a half an hour away. So they’d never even walked the halls together.

  They’d not dated. They never even went out in public together. Her parents’ mansion just happened to be over the low mountain from his gram’s trailer park. Twenty minutes by car, going on the road. One mile as the crow flies. Fifteen minutes if a lonely boy were walking in the woods, wishing he had enough money to buy himself a gun and go hunting. Half that if a smart, independent, lonely girl were walking toward him from the opposite side.

  They never planned to meet, and they only met in the woods a few times before she graduated high school. That was two years before him. She went to California to school. He didn’t see her at all the first year she left. That year he started working at the garage full-time after being approved for the work-study program at school.

  The end of that April, Cassidy’s face showed up on insurance billboards across the state. At the same time, someone ripped a page out of a major brand sporting goods magazine with Cassidy modeling long underwear and tacked it to the post office bulletin board.

  The next summer, she was back, rumored to have a big modeling contract. It wasn’t hard to believe she was headed for the big time.

  It was a restless summer for him. Probably typical teenaged boy hormones, fueled by being half in love with a girl who’d rocketed out of his orbit, as if she’d ever really been in it to begin with, considering where she came from and that he came from somewhere almost directly opposite of the pampered richness that defined her life.

  He did some truck pulling for the garage he worked for. It was something he loved and kept him distracted.

  He’d worked almost day and night on his pickup truck and finished it mid-June. Sometimes he’d slip out of the trailer at night, not really sneaking around because all he did was drive. But he’d spend hours with the windows down and the radio on, riding up and down the back roads. Dreaming, he supposed, but not really, since it wasn’t even a good dream to think of Cassidy and him together. Too impossible.

  First and only thing he’d ever stolen was the picture from the post office. It lay in his glove box as he wound around the back roads.

  The Fourth of July was always a huge event in their town—carnival, games, contests, and, of course, fireworks at ten. It was a chance to see all the kids from school and see how everyone’s summer was going. Typically, he loved it, but even though he’d heard about the fashion show they’d instigated in honor of the town’s own fashion model, he didn’t go.

  He worked alone at the trailer on his pickup. His gram and brothers spent most of the day in town. Figured he’d at least go in for the fireworks, but he didn’t feel like socializing. Although he considered taking his truck and parking somewhere along the road, that was an idea lots of other people always had, so he grabbed a flashlight and headed up the mountain to watch them from there.

  He wasn’t expecting Cassidy to be there, not with the fashion show. He wasn’t under the pine tree where they’d met before anyway, since the view of the sky was blocked there. He was about a hundred yards away on a rocky outcropping. After deciding it would provide a great view of the fireworks, his other main thought had been that he hoped there were no snakes sharing his perch.

  Too restless to sit, he’d stood for a while, one boot propped on a rock, his arm braced on his leg, watching the stars appear. Couldn’t see the town, but it was down there. So was she. The thought made his heart hurt.

  He heard her footsteps first, and he pulled his pocketknife out, thinking it was some kind of wild animal.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked, and his heart bowed down in homage.

  They hadn’t talked much, hadn’t touched at all. But that was when she commented on his truck. He’d been proud as all get-out that she’d even noticed it and didn’t hesitate to say yes when she asked about a ride. Which is when his slipping out at night became sneaking out.

  Maybe Tough had heard him leave the house at night. But he couldn’t have known he was meeting Cassidy. He’d only done it four Saturdays, sleeping through the Sunday sermons the next day, before she’d left town for a modeling gig she had before her semester started in mid-August.

  The next time he’d seen her was the October Saturday after Homecoming. He didn’t sleep through that Sunday’s sermon.

  He’d been in jail.

  Chapter 12

  Cassidy collapsed into the chair behind her desk. It had taken longer than she expected to meet with her newest assignment, but she still had fifteen m
inutes of her lunch break left, and she was going to do her part for Torque in the sponsorship program if she could.

  Punching up the websites that she’d found on her phone late last night, she initiated the call to the first one: Pete’s Towing and Recovery.

  “Hello, Pete’s,” a rough male voice answered.

  Cassidy cleared her throat. “Hello. This is Cassidy Kimball. I’m an attorney in Brickly Springs. I have a diesel mechanic who’s been in a bit of a rough spot and needs work. I will vouch for him completely. Do you think you could help me out?”

  “He needs a job?”

  “Either that, or he could do any work that you might be too busy to squeeze in.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Torque Baxter.”

  There was silence on the end of the phone. “Torque Baxter. Heck yeah. Give me his number. I didn’t know he was back in town.”

  “Just a couple of days ago,” Cassidy said, tapping her pen on her desk. “I actually don’t know his number, but I’ll get it to you as soon as I can. In the meantime, I know his brothers can get ahold of him.” She rattled off the numbers she’d written down earlier that she’d gotten when she’d called Torque’s gram on the way in to the office that morning.

  “Thanks a lot, Miss Kimball.”

  Cassidy thanked him and hung up. She’d initiated the call, but that guy was thrilled to hear about Torque. She kind of figured it would be that way.

  Smiling to herself, she pulled up the next website and dialed the number.

  TOUGH GAVE TORQUE A ride from his garage to the other side of town and Mrs. Ford’s place. He had a week. Coming up with the money was pretty much out of the question, but he could still hang out at the garage for a while. Maybe something would work out.

  He’d gone through all the tools, handling them, remembering, taking stock of where they were kept. It was well-organized, and there was very little he would change.

  By noon, he was in the office, looking through the account books.

  A tap on the open office door startled him. “You Torque Baxter?”