Two from the Heart(7)

When, sixty miles up the road, a Neko Case song came on the radio, I sang along like I was trying out for The Voice. “Let this be a warning says the magpie to the morning. Don’t let this fading summer pass you by.”

I didn’t care that Beatrice could barely hit sixty-five miles per hour without overheating. I had time. The weight of my failed marriage had lifted and so had my spirits. In the rushing wind, my spider plant’s leaves were like green fingers, waving: Adios amigos!

“I will not let this fading summer pass me by, Spidey,” I said, and I didn’t even feel stupid for talking to the thing.

I was so happy that I didn’t notice my speedometer had crept up to nearly eighty. I didn’t notice the trucker motioning me to pull over. But I did hear the deep, bellowing honk of his horn. And I couldn’t miss the smoke that suddenly came pouring out from my hood.





Chapter 8


THE KID waiting by the fuel island at Atomic Gas and Auto took one look at my overheated car and ran off like he thought it might explode.

I grabbed my bag and plant and hustled to safety myself. A moment later, a man with close-cropped dark hair and high cheekbones, wearing a blue grease-stained jumpsuit, walked leisurely over to my car.

He waved away the billowing smoke. “You can stop hiding behind the trash can,” he said. “She’s not going to blow up.”

I wondered how he knew Beatrice was a she. I crept over, not entirely sure I could trust him about a potential explosion. The air smelled like gas and burned plastic.

He looked over his shoulder at the kid, who didn’t seem like he believed him either. “Taylor,” he called, “I need you to finish up on that oil change I was working on.”

The man—Josh, his name tag said—touched Beatrice’s hood thoughtfully. “This is a 1977 W123s, isn’t it.”

It wasn’t a question. I nodded.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. Then he popped open the hood and disappeared into the smoke.

“Why?” I asked. I could hear the panic in my voice.

“You’ve got a plastic radiator in here. Those things are famous for upper radiator neck failure.” He shut the hood and stood up again. “I’m guessing you’ve lost all your coolant and your aluminum core’s probably damaged. That means you’re looking at a replacement.”

I sucked in my breath. “The whole radiator?”

He grimaced in a way I could tell was meant to be sympathetic. “Or maybe the whole car,” he said.

And I felt, suddenly, as if I was disintegrating. If Beatrice was gone, then what? She was basically the only thing I had left.

I sank down to the curb and sat with my head cradled in my hands.

The mechanic put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “But you’re lucky, you know. If that radiator neck had popped all the way off, you might not even be here right now.”

I looked up at him. “I’m lucky I didn’t die, huh? That is seriously bottom-of-the-barrel luck,” I said.

He gave me a half smile. “Or else it’s the best kind of luck there is. It depends on how you look at it. Your personal philosophy, if you will.”

“What is this, Zen and the Art of Mercedes Maintenance?” I muttered.

The mechanic offered me his hand and pulled me up to standing.

“Let me get her into the bay and take a closer look,” he said. “Zelda’s is a good place to have a bite while you’re waiting.”

I turned in the direction he was pointing. Five hundred yards off, I could see a low white building, and then nothing but fields and trees for miles. Zelda’s was obviously the only place to get something to eat. “Okay,” I said weakly. “See you in—”

“An hour,” he said.

Inside the diner, a pretty red-haired waitress poured a coffee for me before I’d even sat down.

“You look like you could use it,” she said. “You all right?”

I shrugged. Was I? “My car might be a…” I waved my arm toward the garage. I couldn’t say the word goner, but that’s what I was thinking.

“Well if anyone can fix it, Josh can,” she said reassuringly. “He’s like an engine Einstein.”

I took a sip of the coffee. It wasn’t great, but at least it was strong. “I take it you know him.”

“We went to school together,” she said.

“Were you friends?” I asked, hoping conversation would keep me from complete despair.

She laughed. “We were more than friends,” she said. She pulled a cloth from the pocket of her apron and began wiping the counter. “But he was more than friends with a lot of girls.”

“Funny, I had a husband like that,” I said. My smile probably looked a bit grim.

She refilled my coffee though I’d only taken a couple of sips. And then, because I was the only customer, she sat down on a stool next to me. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said. “You know, water under the bridge and all.”

“Some of my customers really like to talk,” she said. “You’d think I was their therapist, not their waitress.”

“You must hear good stories,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “Good ones, bad ones—mostly boring ones, honestly. ‘No, Mr. Scharf, I don’t need a blow-by-blow account of you passing a kidney stone,’ you know?”