Envy the Night

3

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Jerry was staring at Nora’s ass again, in that way he had where his eyes seemed to bug right out of his head, nothing subtle about it, but she wondered if she was allowed to care today—she’d done the same thing that morning as she got dressed, looking her butt over in the mirror like some sort of sorority girl instead of a woman with wrench calluses on her palms. You did something like that, could you get upset when a guy allowed himself a stare? Maybe she’d earned the leer. Karma.

The glance in the mirror was important, though, a morning reminder that Nora was still very much a woman. This before putting on the jeans and the heavy work shirt, tucking her hair into a baseball cap so it wouldn’t hang free and invite a painful accident. She’d learned that lesson one afternoon when she’d used the creeper to check up on Jerry’s work and rolled right over her own hair. Stafford Collision and Custom was open by seven thirty, and from then until six or six thirty when she shut the doors and turned the locks, Nora would interact with few females. It was a man’s business, always had been, but she liked the touch she brought to it and thought the customers did, too. Granted, they were her father’s customers and probably kept returning more out of loyalty—and pity—for Bud Stafford than for his daughter, but the shop still did good work. On those rare afternoons when a particularly difficult job was done and the car driven out of the shop, Nora might even let herself believe they did a better job now. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, of course, but she did have an eye for detail that her father couldn’t touch. Too bad an eye for detail wasn’t enough to keep the bills paid.

The phone rang out in the office, and Nora straightened up and looked back at Jerry, who promptly flushed and averted his eyes. Even when you didn’t catch Jerry, he thought you had. Jerry would’ve made a piss-poor criminal.

“I’d like you to take another pass over that front quarter panel,” Nora said.

“Huh?”

“Nice orange-peel finish in the paint, Jerry. I know you can see that, and you know how I feel about it. Doesn’t matter if it disappears in the shadows, you can see it in the sun, and that’s when people care about their cars looking the best. They go home and the first sunny Saturday morning they wash the car and wax it and see that orange peel. And then you know what happens? They don’t come back.”

She walked away from him, got into the office just in time to grab the phone before it rang over to voice mail. She was always forgetting to take the cordless handset out into the shop with her, and she knew they’d lost business because of it. When a body shop doesn’t answer, people just call the next one in the phone book; they don’t wait and try again. She’d been one ring away from losing this call.

“Stafford Collision and Custom, this is Nora Stafford.”

She sat on the edge of the desk and took notes on one of the old pads that still had Bud Stafford’s name across the top. The caller wanted a tow truck for two cars that had wrecked up on County Y. Her last tow driver, who’d also been a prep man and part-time painter, had picked up a drunk driving charge three months back and to keep him would have required bearing an insurance rate spike that she simply couldn’t handle. In reality it was a welcome break—the shop’s financial situation was going to dictate firing somebody anyhow, and the drunk driving charge gave her an excuse. She’d let him go and couldn’t afford to hire a replacement. But two cars—including a Lexus—that was business she couldn’t turn down, either. Jerry could drive the tow truck, but he wasn’t covered by the insurance policy, and she needed him to finish repainting that Mazda this morning. She’d have to handle this one herself.

She got the details of the wreck’s position and promised to be out within twenty minutes, then went back into the shop and told Jerry where she was going. He just grunted in response, not looking at her.

“What’s the problem, Jerry?”

“Problem?” He dropped the rag that was in his hands. “Problem should be pretty obvious. You got me wasting all my time repainting work I shouldn’t have had to paint in the first place.”

She waved a hand at him, tired already, the argument by now just like the dying water heater in her house—too familiar, too annoying, too expensive to fix.

Jerry was a body man, a fine body man, none better in town. Didn’t have the eyes for a top-quality paint job, but that wasn’t the problem so much as the way he felt disrespected when asked to paint. If she could afford to bring someone else on board, she would, but that explanation hadn’t appeased him.

“Jerry, this is not a big deal. If you’d done it right the first time, I wouldn’t have asked you to repaint it. Instead, you half-assed the job and then tried to make up for it with the buffer, like usual.”

“Damn it, Nora, last time I painted cars it was with—”

“Single-stage lacquer, spray it on, buff it pretty, don’t have to mess with no damn clear coat . . .”

Nora mocked his voice perfectly, capturing the drawl so dead-on that Jerry pulled back in anger and grabbed his rag again, tightened his fist around it. He was a small man, only a few inches taller than she was, but strong in the wiry way that comes from years of physical labor. What was left of his hair was thin and brown and damp with sweat.

“All right,” he said. “So I’ve told you before, if you remember all that. Think you’re clever saying it back to me, I ’spose. But if you was clever you’d understand, instead of using it to make fun of me. Your daddy understood. I’m not a combination man. I do body work. Been doing it since back when you was playing with dolls and putting on training bras and learning to paint your nails.”

Same old shit. He’d start bitching about his workload, then begin with his what-a-pretty-little-girl-you-are routine, slighting her gender either directly or with what he thought passed as slick humor.

“Tell you something, Jerry? When I was learning to paint my nails, I was also learning how to paint a car. Now it’s time that you do.”

She turned and walked away from him, heard the bitch muttered under his breath and kept on going, out of the shop and into the tow truck. Sat behind the wheel and let the engine warm and lifted her hands to her face and thought, I would’ve cried about this. A year ago, maybe even six months ago, I would’ve cried.

Not any more, though. No way. But was that entirely a good thing?

She wasn’t going to think about it. Pointless exercise. What she needed to think about was the cars waiting for her up on County Y. That was more than a pleasant surprise—it was salvation. She’d spent the morning trying to determine which bills she could be late on. It was down to that now, down to creating a rotating schedule of missed payments because otherwise she simply could not keep the doors open. Now here was a phone call offering enough work to keep those wolves distracted, if not completely at bay. And to think, she’d been one ring away from missing it altogether.

It felt longer than twenty minutes. The gray-haired guy kept up a constant stream of chatter, the words sounding more nervous each time there was a pause, as if he were scared of silence. When a car passed by, though, he’d stammer the way you do when you lose your train of thought, stare intently at the vehicle until it was out of sight. A couple of times, people slowed and put their windows down, ready to offer help, and the gray-haired guy just waved them off and shouted that everything was fine, go on, have a nice day.

It was a hell of a nice day, though. If the Lexus driver would shut up for a few minutes, Frank wouldn’t have minded it at all, standing out here. It had been a long time since he’d lived in the city, so it wasn’t as if he’d arrived in the woods fresh from garbage-riddled streets that stunk of exhaust fumes. Even so, this place felt different. For one thing, there wasn’t a building in sight. Turn right, turn left, see trees and blue sky, nothing else. A pair of hawks rode the air currents high above, staying on the south side of the road. Must be a clearing back there, something offering prime hunting ground for the birds. Frank could’ve watched them for a long time, if this jazzed-up dude would let him. Instead, he was busy fending off meaningless questions and observations.

He was relieved when he saw the tow truck at the eastern end of the road, and a minute later it had pulled up beside them. The driver opened the door, and Frank felt his eyes narrow, saw matching surprise on the gray-haired man’s face. The driver was a woman, and a good-looking one, that much evident even with her face shadowed by a baseball cap. She hopped down onto the road—the truck was too high for her to just step out; she couldn’t go an inch more than five-three and might go an inch less—and walked around to face them.

“Sorry about the wait, guys. I got moving as fast as I could.”

“No problem,” Frank said, and he was going to shake her hand when the gray-haired man interrupted.

“If it’s no trouble, can we do this car first?” He pointed at the Lexus.

The woman wore jeans and boots and a denim work shirt, sleeves rolled to expose thin forearms. There were grease stains on her clothes, and both the pants and shirt were loose, giving her a shapeless look. She didn’t wear any makeup, but her eyebrows—not a feature Frank would ordinarily notice—had been carefully attended to, well shaped. Cool green eyes, now fastened on the Lexus driver.

“There a reason that one needs to go first?”

He gaped at her for a second, then looked at Frank and forced a smile.

“Well, I was just hoping . . . I’ve got a meeting to get to, and I was sort of—”

“In a hurry,” the woman finished.

He nodded.

“Right,” she said. “Well, I can give you the first tow unless this gentleman has an objection.”

Frank shook his head.

“Great,” the woman said. “Here’s how we’re going to do this—I’ll get the Lexus rigged up, tow it back to the shop, and you guys can ride with me, unless you’ve got someone coming to get you.”

This time Frank and the gray-haired man shook their heads in unison.

“Okay. Well, probably be easier to figure out your situations from town, unless you’d rather stand out here on the edge of the road.”

“Sure,” the gray-haired guy said. “Town’s fine.” But he was looking down the road with a frown.

The woman walked over to the Lexus and knelt beside it, studying the front end. Frank turned away when she bent over to see under the bumper, not wanting to stare. When was the last time a guy had wanted to check out a tow truck driver, anyhow? She straightened up and walked back to the truck, climbed in and put it in reverse and had the thing centered in front of the Lexus in half the time it would’ve taken Frank.

“I have to winch you out of that ditch before I can get it ready to tow,” she told the gray-haired guy. “Looks like the Jeep is sitting clear enough already.”

She hooked the winch beneath the front bumper of the Lexus, went back to the truck, and turned it on. The chain went taut and the gears hummed and the Lexus slid away from the trees and up the ditch, shedding a tangle of branches and broken glass in its wake. When she had the car on the flat surface of the road, she shut the winch off, went back and fussed with the chains for a few seconds, and turned to the car’s owner.

“This thing’s all-wheel drive. We should use the dolly on the rear wheels to keep from hurting your axles or transmission. The thing about that is, we also charge an extra thirty dollars to use it.”

The gray-haired man stared at her, mouth open about an inch. Didn’t see many women winching your fifty-thousand-dollar car out of a ditch.

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re okay with that?”

“You think that the dolly will save time?”

“It’ll save your transmission.”

“Whatever. Faster the better. I want to get moving.”

She went back to the Lexus, and Frank thought her stride was slower, almost as if she were screwing with the guy because he was in such a hurry. It made a wry smile build on Frank’s face, and he turned before the Lexus driver caught it.

Once she had the wheel-lift under the front end of the Lexus—looked like a set of mechanical arms wrapped around the wheels—she strapped the tires to it for added security and disappeared behind the car. Frank and the gray-haired man stood together in silence, waiting. Eventually she walked back around to the front, gave the wheel-lift one last look, and then made a small nod of satisfaction and turned back to them.

“Go on and get in. Short straw gets to sit in the middle.”

Frank got to the passenger door first, pulled it open, and slid across to the middle seat as the gray-haired man climbed up beside him and the woman got behind the wheel.

“What’s your name?” Frank asked her.

“Nora Stafford.” She took one hand off the wheel and extended it. When they shook, he felt fine bones on the back of her hands, the skin smooth and cool, but hard on the inside, beneath her fingers.

“I’m Frank.”

“Good to meet you, Frank.” She put the truck in gear and checked the mirror. “Who’s your buddy?”

“You know, I didn’t make his acquaintance yet, just his car’s,” Frank said.

“My name’s Dave O’Connor. Sorry. Should’ve introduced myself earlier. I’ll be paying for this, which brings up a, uh, a question. I was wondering . . . see, I’m from out of town, and I need this done fast, but, well, I don’t have my credit cards on me.”

“Credit cards?” Nora turned to him with surprise. “Sir, I think you’re going to want to make an insurance claim on that.”

“No, we’re not going to do that.”

“Um . . . I don’t mean to tell you your business, but this job is going to be several thousand dollars,” Nora said.

Frank shifted in his seat. He’d hit the guy, and his insurance should be paying for the damages, but the gray-haired man had been adamant.

“So what I was wondering was, I mean my question, well, could I give you cash? Because I’ve got some cash on me, see. And if I gave you that, you know, to get started, and then I could come back with a credit card or call you and give you the number . . .”

Nora’s face hardened just a touch, barely noticeable, a little frost in her eyes even though she didn’t take them off the road. There was something about the edge she showed in that moment, like the way she’d slowed down just because the gray-haired guy was in a hurry, that Frank found damn appealing.

“Two cars, both with substantial damage,” she said, her voice friendly. “Parts and paint alone are going to run up a decent bill, Dave. That’s without labor figured in.”

“I could give you two thousand dollars today. Surely that’s enough to get started? You aren’t going to burn through two grand in the first day.”

Nora kept her eyes ahead, and so did Frank, but in the few seconds of silence that followed he felt a shared curiosity with her—no credit cards on you, but two grand in cash?

“Well . . .” Nora nodded her head as if in discussion with herself. “Two thousand dollars is a sizable down payment. The bill for this work will run well over that, but it’s certainly enough to get us started.”

They were on the highway now, southbound toward Tomahawk, the tow truck’s engine throaty, straining to get its load up to speed. Nora’s thigh was warm against Frank’s. He looked at her hands on the steering wheel, saw no wedding ring. So it wasn’t her husband’s body shop. This was just what she did, drive a tow truck in a town like Tomahawk? A young girl, intelligent, with perfect teeth and eyebrows?

“You guys have someone to come get you?” Nora asked.

“Nope,” Frank said, and Dave O’Connor shook his head.

“I’ve got to get something figured out,” O’Connor said. “Like I told you, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Got a meeting that won’t wait all day for me.”

“A meeting at the Willow?” Frank asked.

“No. I, uh, I’ve got to get to . . . Rhinelander. Little bit of a drive left to make, so, you know, got to figure something out.”

Rhinelander. He’d been westbound on County Y, headed for Rhinelander? That was an interesting route, considering County Y took you out to the Willow, across the dam, and then looped back down to the old highway and into Tomahawk. O’Connor had been driving the exact opposite direction from Rhinelander, and not toward any highway where he could correct his course.

“Any chance you’d have a car you could rent me?” O’Connor asked Nora.

She shot a sideways glance at him. “I don’t rent cars. I fix them.”

“You don’t have anything around the shop? It’d be one day. One day, and I’ll give a couple hundred cash for it. I’ve got to make this meeting.”

Nora let a few cars pass before she answered.

“Only drivable vehicle I could give you—unless you want to drive the tow truck—is a beat-up old Mitsubishi that probably can’t do more than fifty without blowing up.”

“That’s fine. I’ll take it.”

“And if it does blow up on you, I’m certainly not going to take responsibility. I’m doing this as a favor.”

“It’s not a favor. I’ll pay you—”

“You won’t pay me anything. Sounds like you need something to get you to Rhinelander, and the Mitsu will do it. Slowly.”

“I appreciate that,” O’Connor said. “It’ll be a huge help. Save me the time of renting a car, and I don’t have time to waste.”

Something else it would save, Frank thought, staring out at the lumber truck ahead of them, was the process of renting a car. You couldn’t do that with cash—and Mr. Dave O’Connor seemed damn concerned with sticking to cash.