The Mechanic
The taxi is parked right where Kate left it, outside the hospital emergency room door. She figured that the cops would have impounded it or something, but no.
Maybe she should leave it there, jack another car, but something collapses inside her. Buffeted by jet lag and hunger, she can't bother. Maybe she could catch a bus. Then she remembers that the pregnant girl, Claire, had been sitting at the bus stop for over an hour before Kate returned to pick her up. So forget the buses.
Worse, it's a hot Southern California day. White sun hammers the dusty palm trees and sidewalks, and it wants to pound Kate into submission too.
Kate squints at the glare like it's an enemy. She has de-tassled corn during Iowa summers, and if this sun thinks it's going to beat her, it's got another thing coming.
Even so, the cab's dark interior is cool and inviting. What the hell, Kate says to herself as she slides behind the wheel. She tosses the driver's chauffeur license into the glove box, because his fat, honest face in the photo fills her with guilt.
From deep in her jeans pocket, Claire's credit card pokes her. Ironically, it's the one thing she didn't steal. It touches Kate, that friendless and stranded as Claire was, she still freely handed it over. Guilt flogs her again.
Kate has no idea where she's headed. Even though the cab's gas tank is three-quarters full, the Quik-Stop down the road is a destination, if nothing else. She fills her own tank with a plastic-tasting chicken sandwich, in between slurps of coffee that go down like battery acid.
Her wrists still bear the raw marks of tight handcuffs. She had offered that mechanic two hundred dollars to remove them, but he never asked for the money. She studies the ATM machine by the convenience store door.
Won't work, she tells herself. You don't have the pin number.
She turns the card over in her fingers as if doing a magic trick. There, written on the back in magic marker, is a four-digit code: 5123. What kind of naif writes their pin on their credit card?
As the twenties form a neat stack in the ATM tray, Kate doesn't care anymore. At least she has someplace else to go.
*:*:*:*
Gravel crunches as Kate pulls into the wide driveway of City of Angels Machining Services. The same mechanic is there, busy winding up a towing chain big enough to use on a truck (or to pull a collapsed gantry out of a hole so you can get to the person underneath—)
Where the hell did that come from? The thought stabs her with fear, and she's still trembling when he ambles up to the driver's-side window.
She practically collides with him as she gets out of the cab. "I came to pay you your money."
He gives a small chuckle and thrusts out a meaty, grease-stained hand. "We never got properly introduced. Name's Jeff."
"Kate."
"Pull that jalopy round the back, into the shed there." He points to a narrow asphalt pathway through rusted barrels, cars up on blocks, wire cages full of scrap metal.
The cab secured, she pulls the crisp twenties from her jeans pocket, but he ignores them. "That money ain't even yours."
How would he know? Embarrassed, she tucks the bills away. "What do you want, then? I don't like to leave debts unpaid." It's as if she speaks the right words, ones which unlock a door.
"Here's the deal, Kate. Work for me for a week."
Now would be the time to feel wary, but strangely enough, she's calm as a summer lake. "Are you sure? I told you I was wanted for murder."
"So you said."
"Don't you want to know if I did it?"
"You know what you done, Kate. Or didn't, as the case may be."
It takes the wind out of her sails. "Besides, what makes you think I can do the work?"
"Well, given you knew what a tire hammer was, I got a sneaking suspicion you've fixed a few cars in your time."
She aches a little inside, because she always disappoints the ones who trust her. Maybe this time will be different. "Sure, why not?"
Jeff grins. "You can bunk behind the machine shop. Got a shower out back, too. Just give me some time to rig a curtain."
Her eyebrows shoot up at the word "shower," and he reads the look at once. "You ain't my type. And even if you was, I don't mess with no one under my roof."
To her surprise, the shed is well-swept, with clean bed linens and a wooden locker. Before she turns in, Kate places Claire's credit card and the roll of money on the top shelf.
Last of all, she gazes at the broken half of a ball-point pen, the one she stole from that tall, good-looking stranger on the plane. As she rolls it around in her fingers, it brings to mind her hand on his lean chest, strong muscle under a crisp linen shirt. How his warm brown eyes traveled over her as she apologized; how good he smelled even after the long flight, his natural scent blended with aftershave.
The pen is an expensive one, with a monogram on the clip, "J.S." John Sterling? Jeremy Sloane? She falls asleep clutching it, as one combination of names after another leaps like sheep over her thoughts' gate.
*:*:*:*
Jeff's tasks are easy, if sometimes tedious, and Kate begins to relax into the routine. Sometimes he plunks down a bucket full of unsorted nuts and bolts for her to organize. Other times he asks her to hand him tools, or clean and lubricate the drill presses.
Above a messy desk buried under receipts and smudged parts catalogs, something hangs on the wall: a bright pink cross-stitch embellished with crocheted lace. Its garish purple letters read, "We wear the chains we forged in life."
"Dickens," she murmurs.
"A good man, one of the best."
"You sound like you know him."
He doesn't answer. The stillness is as odd and out of place as that sampler.
On the third day he hands her the keys to a blue Honda Civic, so she can deliver some parts to a body shop off of Ventura. "Pick us up a couple sub sandwiches on the way back."
"I thought I was supposed to keep out of sight." She hasn't left the machine shop since she arrived, and the prospect fills her with anxiety. It's safe in here, and calm.
"Keep to the rules of the road and you'll be fine. Get into trouble, and it'll take somebody way above my pay grade to bust you out."
Clearly he must be joking, but his face is solemn. That night, when he doesn't ask for the keys back, she stores them in her locker.
*:*:*:*
Jeff, it turns out, is also the neighborhood "fixer." At least once a day people bring him trunks that they've lost the keys to, or suitcases whose clasps are jammed. Someone even lugs in a Halliburton case. He never asks if they're the owners, if they have a right to what's inside.
As they leave, their eyes shine. They clasp whatever it is tightly to their chests, as if they've recovered the most important thing in the world.
On the day when everything explodes, a soft sound rouses Kate from her bolt-sorting task. Outside, a girl of about ten knocks lightly on the door.
"Come in, kiddo," Jeff calls out, without even glancing up to see who it is.
Curly brown hair tumbles out of the girl's scrunchie, and the wisps which frame her face give her the look of a Renaissance angel. In her arms she clutches a shiny new lunch box. "Mr. Jeff? It's stuck."
Jeff sweeps clear a spot on his own work bench. "Set 'er up here, and I'll have a look."
"I couldn't get it open at lunch. Mom's gonna be really mad." The girl doesn't seem to know Kate's there.
Jeff lays out what looks like a lock-picking kit. "Bet you're hungry, huh?"
The girl nods, and only now does Kate realize she's near tears. Anger wells up in her. Who would make a child anxious over something so trivial?
As Jeff turns the lunchbox around, Kate sees the image on its top: New Kids on the Block. Are you kidding? she thinks. Who listens to New Kids on the Block anymore?
The girl glances over, and Kate stares into the glass-green eyes of a spitting image of herself at ten. Everything around her goes white, then gold at the edges, gold laced with fire. For an instant Kate sees herself in a country store, as the boy with her keeps watch so that she can stuff a stolen lunchbox into her backpack.
That's crazy, she tells herself. That never happened.
Sudden panic seizes her. If she doesn't get out of there now, right now, she's going to break into shards which will cut her to pieces.
"Looky here," Jeff says to the girl. "Everything's good as new."
Kate sidles out the back door and leaps into the Honda. She speeds down random surface streets, heedless of traffic signs as she barrels through one intersection after another. Sirens wail behind her, but she ignores them.
Nothing matters now except motion: the constant racing of her heart, the wheels spinning beneath her at way over the speed limit. If she stops, she'll remember.
She'll remember. That's the last thing she wants right now.
When the Honda hits an oil slick, Kate slams on the brakes, but it's too late. Out of control, she sideswipes a parked car with two men in it, and one yells something angry. As the Honda slides to a stop, she has no rational mind left. There's only one thing to do.
Kate flings open the car door, and begins to run.
(A/N: In the bardo, one can encounter "peaceful deities" who help with the journey.
A list of all the "Tales from the Bardo" stories appears on my profile. Thank you to everyone reading and commenting, including my guest reviewers.)