5. Lila
Chapter Five
LILA
By lunchtime the next day, the whole town knows Wrench is fixing up my car, because he towed it through Main Street behind the shop flatbed in broad daylight.
They also know he’s been accompanying Rosie and I on the walk to school, Waffles trotting along beside us like a personal bodyguard.
The knitting circle discussed it with great excitement over a round of iced tea.
“Unusual for Wrench…” is all Marvin says, waggling his bushy gray eyebrows, and goes back to his griddle.
My shift drags. Every time the bell chimes, my head turns. He doesn't walk in.
So when my shift ends, I walk to the shop, because a woman has a right to check on her own car. That's my story. I also have a speech prepared to justify why I’m there.
The shop sits two streets off Main, all cinder block and roll-up doors, HIGH VALE AUTO AND CYCLE painted over the biggest one. My poor old car is already up on the lift with its underside showing. Waffles comes trotting out to meet me with his whole back half wagging.
Wrench rolls out from under a truck, big grease-marked forearms and black beard, and stands up, and I instantly forget my pre-prepared speech.
“About yesterday…” I start.
“Okay.”
“I mean the kiss. It was a mistake. It's too fast, and I've got Rosie, and my life is... you don't want my life, trust me. So it can't happen again.”
He nods. “Okay.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
“No.” He wipes his hands on a rag, calm as Sunday, and tips his chin at my car. “The starter's dead. Alternator's on its way out. Front brakes are a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
I grimace. “How much for just the starter?”
“Estimate's been finalized.”
He pulls a folded piece of paper from the chest pocket of his coveralls like it's an official document. It's diner placemat paper. In purple crayon, in my daughter's careful hand, it says: ESTIMATE. ONE (1) BACON.
The laugh comes up out of me before I can stop it, a little hysterical, and it keeps going until I have to press my hand to my mouth. He watches me laugh with that shine in his dark eyes, smiling back at me.
“That's extortion,” I manage.
“It’s our best price.” He leans over the engine bay, and I lean in too. He walks me through the ruin of my car, worn belts and the alternator on borrowed time, and his voice stays level while our shoulders touch. I hear maybe one word in four.
There's a streak of grease on his cheekbone, above the beard. I reach up and wipe it with my thumb before I can stop myself.
Wrench raises an eyebrow. “A mistake?” He’s daring me.
“A terrible one,” I say, and let him kiss me anyway. His lips move on mine and I gasp, electricity sparking from my core and spreading out all over my body.
His hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, careful and huge, the engine block is at my hip and heat is rolling through me from every point of contact when a voice fills the shop.
“Well, well…”
“Sweet merciful heavens!” I jump back a foot. Wrench doesn't move at all, just closes his eyes, a man gathering strength.
A biker fills the side door, big and grinning, tattoos to the knuckles and up his neck, and a toothpick at the corner of his mouth.
I vaguely recognize him as one of the Outlaws, the intimidating one with the scar across his cheek and icy blue eyes who only orders milkshakes at the diner, not coffee.
He looks at me, then at Wrench, then back at me, with the delight of a kid on the last day of school.
“Savage,” Wrench says, “get the fuck out.”
“I work here.”
“You're fired, cabrón.”
“You don't pay me enough.” He saunters in, wipes a hand on his jeans, and offers it to me with a courtly little bow. “Ma'am. Savage. It's an honor. He's never once mentioned you.”
“Oh.” I shake his hand, my face on fire. “Well.”
“No, that's how I knew it was serious.” He beams at Wrench, who mutters in Spanish, low and long, something with the unmistakable structure of a threat. Savage ignores him. “I had money on the summer picnic. You couldn't have waited three weeks to kiss him?”
“Wait, you’re taking bets…already?”
“Ma'am, there's been a pool since spring. Haven’t you noticed this big lug crowding up your diner every day? Lucky's holding the cash.” He digs out his phone. “Shit, I’ve lost seventy dollars. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.”
“Savage.” Wrench's voice is icy. “The Carlton.”
“Quiet as a mouse. Doc's old room key still works on the vending machine, by the way.” He tips me a wink on the way out. “Ma'am. Come by the Saloon. Meet the fam in person. We’re nicer than we look…”
“Bets? About us? Is it that obvious?”
“Lila, there is no us,” he says, straight-faced, “you told me so five minutes ago,” and I open my mouth and close it again, outmaneuvered by a man who says maybe thirty words an hour.
He checks the clock over the workbench and whistles for Waffles. “School's out soon.”
He says it like this is all normal; us walking to pick up my child together, and I should correct him.
Instead I fall into step beside him. The town gets a good look: Lila from the diner and the club's mechanic, walking to the elementary school with the dog between them.
I can practically hear the phone lines heating up.
Rosie comes out of the gate and her eyes light up like the fair came to town.
"Did Mama get my estimate?"
“Paid in full,” Wrench says, and produces a strip of bacon from a paper napkin in his pocket. Rosie hands it to Waffles with ceremony. I look away and study the school fence, trying not to grin.
He walks us home. One hand light on the small of my back crossing streets, while Rosie tells him about long division and Waffles carries her backpack like sacred cargo.
At my house he takes a canvas bag from the truck he's left parked out front, and inside the bag is a new deadbolt, solid and serious-looking.
“Landlord won't mind,” he says, in a voice which means there won’t be any discussion about it.
He fits it in twenty minutes while Rosie has her bath, and then he stands behind me and puts my hand on the thumb turn, his palm warm over mine, and works the bolt with me.
“You throw it every night,” he says, close to my ear.
At the door he pauses, and for a second I think he'll kiss me again, and my traitorous body sways toward him in open invitation.
“Goodnight, beautiful.” That's all.
Through the front window, the shop truck stays put at the curb.
It's still there when I turn off the kitchen light. Temporary, I tell myself, climbing into bed. Just until the car's fixed.
I fall asleep without waking up with a jump for the first time in months.