FOUR

Father gave it to me. Edwina.

I like the way she wants to watch, to see what's going on, even if she doesn't get it. I mean, when she came in to the garage, she tells me, the car makes a strange sound when I shift the gears. What kind of sound. This is usually where people make asses of themselves. They try to sound like a sick motor. But she says, you know that noise you hear when your alarm goes off in the morning, only you're not awake yet so you don't exactly hear it, you sense it, something between a buzz and a ring, and for a moment you don't know if it's a hangover or a dream or the phone or the alarm or an insect or a snore? I had to admit I knew what she meant. I overslept a lot. Didn't help me worth a shit to guess what was wrong with the car, but it did make me curious. She knew what she was talking about even if she didn't.

So when she came over to where I was under the hood, I said, could you hand me that Allen. She picked the tool up and looked at it a long time before she handed it to me. She got some oil on her hand, and she looked at that too.

I worked on her car. She stayed very near. So, she says, how long did it take you to learn to be a mechanic? Now she is making circles with her ring finger in a blob of oil near the battery. She's leaning right under the hood with me. Better watch all that hair. I picked it up real fast, I say. Think I had a knack for it. I've been around a garage all my life, it seemed natural. The oil, the smell of gasoline, the chrome, the black innards of an engine. I was helping with repair work by the time I was twelve. Now she is fingering the tools. She's asking me their names, what they are used for. It is the kind of conversation that makes you feel good about what you know.

I kind of start enjoying the company. I mean, I still think she is a little weird, like when she starts asking me about the engine parts, like when she says that tube over there that curls underneath that other thing looks like a penis, and that thick curved thing like an arm with a flexed muscle, that big thing in the middle with all the compartments could be the lungs, it even looks like it's meant for air, and all of it together here under the hood, and us inside it tightening and screwing and greasing. Now all this not only sounds weird, but it starts sounding sexy.

So now we're both oily and curious, I guess. When you were little, did your dad teach you things? You know, like how to throw a baseball?

Not really. Just mechanics. He was real busy. What about you? You look athletic. Big!

I was very good at sports. Better than the boys.

Good for you.

I guess I was a tomboy. I didn't have many girl friends. Except for two. One was a cheerleader. The other was one that nobody else talked to. She had red hair and glasses. She used to sit in those cement tunnels all through recess. One time I went in there, just to see if she really was a spastic like everyone said. I sat in there with her. I said, is your mamma spastic too like everyone says? And she lifted up her skirt and I thought I saw a peach between her legs. She pet herself and I could see the little hairs were reddish. And she said, see this? This is very rare. I was scared, but I believed her, because when I got home I couldn't find any hairs. I didn't think she was spastic anymore and I went in the tunnel more after that.

Pretty weird stuff. I just keep working even though by now I'm getting horny, I don't know, I guess it's the weirdness. Everybody gets excited by things that scare them a little. Not that she scared me, not really, except that now I notice that she is holding the biggest tool of all and swinging it a bit. I've read stories, you know? Women are doing strange things these days. I think, don't be silly, don't be so paranoid. She's weird, not crazy.

Then she says the weirdest thing of all, what do you think about pain, just out of the blue.

I play it real cool. Don't like it, I say. Not even a little? Like when you get a back rub and they hit a muscle that is very sore and it hurts how they rub but you just can't get enough -- what about that?

Well, I guess everybody likes that.

And what about fear?

Now the tools are a little slippery in my hands and I start sizing her up, thinking if that arm raises even a little I'll swing this Allen around into her stomach, just hurt her enough to scare her, because after all I really am bigger than her and could pin her to the garage floor easily. But the second I imagine her really trying to hit me I realize that I am wet and throbbing and she is just setting the tool back down like the most normal person in the entire universe.

You little tease, I think, but what I come up with after all this is that I want to take her home, I want her on the floor, and it makes me feel like somebody besides myself. And I think, is this how it feels? I bet she busts a lot of balls.