Page 37 of Twelve
The man blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. And then he leaned forward. “Honey, you can access my brake lines any time you want.”
If you know what I mean,I added silently.In three…two…
“If you know what I mean.”
“It’s times like this,” I said meditatively, “that you have to ask yourself: Is it wise to offer to bare your man-parts for someone who is both patently uninterested and holding wire cutters?”
“Sawyer!” Big Jim intervened before I could so much as give a snip of the wire cutters in a southward direction. “I’ve got this one.”
I’d started badgering Big Jim to let me get my hands greasy when I was twelve. He almost certainly knew that I’dalreadyfixed the Ram and that if he left me to my own devices, this wouldn’t end well.
For the customer.
“Aw hell, Big Jim,” the man complained. “We were just having fun.”
I’d spent most of my childhood going from one obsessive interest to another. Car engines had been one of them. Before that, it had been telenovelas, and afterward, I’d spent a year reading everything I could find about medieval weapons.
“You don’t mind a little fun, do you, sweetheart?” Mr. Souped-Up Dodge Ram clapped a hand onto my shoulder and compounded his sins by squeezing my neck.
Big Jim groaned as I turned my full attention to the real charmer beside me.
“Allow me to quote for you,” I said in an absolute deadpan, “fromSayforth’s Encyclopedia of Archaic Torture.”
One of the finer points of chivalry south of the Mason-Dixon Line was that men like Big Jim Thompson didn’t fire girls like me no matter how explicitly we described alligator shears to customers in want of castration.
Fairly certain I’d ensured the Ram’s owner wouldn’t make the same mistake athirdtime, I stopped by The Holler on the way home to pick up my mom’s tips from the night before.
“How’s trouble?” My mom’s boss was named Trick. He had five children, eighteen grandchildren, and at least three visible scars from breaking up bar fights. He’d greeted me the exact same way every time he’d seen me since I was four.
“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I said.
“Here for your mom’s tips?” That question came from Trick’s oldest grandson, who was restocking the liquor behind the bar. This was a family business in a family town. The entire population was just over eight thousand. You couldn’t throw a rock without it bouncing off three people who were related to each other.
And then there was my mom—and me.
“Here for tips,” I confirmed. My mom wasn’t exactly known for her financial acumen or the steadfastness with which she made it home after a late shift. I’d been balancing our household budget since I was nine—around the same time that I’d developed sequential interests in lock-picking, the Westminster Dog Show, and fixing the perfect martini.
“Here you go, sweetheart.” Trick handed me an envelope that was thicker than I’d expected. “Don’t blow it all in one place.”
I snorted. The money would go to rent and food. I wasn’t exactly the type to party. I might, in fact, have had a bit of a reputation for being antisocial.
See also: my willingness to threaten castration.
Before Trick could issue an invitation for me to join the whole family at his daughter-in-law’s house for dinner, I made my excuses and ducked out of the bar. Home sweet home was only two blocks over and one block up. Technically, our house was a one-bedroom, but we’d walled off two-thirds of the living room with dollar-store shower curtains when I was nine.
“Mom?” I called out as I stepped over the threshold. There was an element of ritual to calling her name, even when she wasn’t home. Even if she was on a bender—or if she’d fallen for a new man, experienced another religious conversion, or developed a deep-seated need to commune with her better angels under the watchful eyes of a roadside psychic.
I’d come by my habit of hopping from one interest to the next honestly, even if her restlessness was less focused and a little more self-destructive than my own.
Almost on cue, my cell phone rang. I answered.
“Baby, you will not believe what happened last night.” My mom never bothered with salutations.
“Are you still in the continental United States, are you in need of bail money, and do I have a new daddy?”
My mom laughed. “You’re my everything. You know that, right?”
“I know that we’re almost out of milk,” I replied, removing the carton from the fridge and taking a swig. “And I know that someone was anexcellenttipper last night.”
