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?”
I laughed. “In fairness to Mr. Scharf, whoever he is, that story sounds more disgusting than boring.”
“True,” she admitted.
“So what’s your story?” I asked.
She looked quizzically at me. “What do you mean?”
“Like, what would you tell your therapist-waitress?” I asked.
She smiled then, and it just lit up her whole face. “Okay, I’ll tell you something,” she said. “Ten years ago I was a knockout. Hell, even five years ago I was still pretty hot.” She held up a warning hand. “Don’t bother telling me I still look great.”
“I was going to,” I admitted.
“So one day I won a makeover contest—you know, you mail in your picture, and the TV producers pick you to be on their show. So here I am, Kate Prior, the small-town waitress, getting flown to Los Angeles. They gave me hand-painted blond highlights and put so much makeup on my face it felt like spackling paste. When I walked out on stage, the women in the audience clapped and screamed. Suddenly I looked like Miss America! It was wild.” She shook her head and chuckled at the memory. “Later they took me to a really fancy party. I had agents in expensive suits on either side of me, pouring me Champagne and trying to sign me. They said they could build my brand, make me a household name. And I’m like, ‘Brand? What does that mean? I’m not a laundry detergent!’ But at the same time it was wonderful. You should have seen the shoes they gave me—they cost more than my car.”
“Mine, too, no doubt,” I said, and I felt a pang of sorrow for Beatrice.
Kate reached into a case and got us each a croissant. I’d never been in a restaurant where people just handed you things.
“So later I’m chatting with this great lady—she’s a movie producer—and some hot guy she’s with,” Kate went on. “And she says to him, ‘I want to get a picture with Kate.’ So I go to put my arm around her, and I’m smiling all big and proud, but then she gives me the camera. This was before selfies, so I’m really confused—until I turn around, and I see Kate Winslet right behind me. The producer doesn’t want a picture of me! She wants a picture of herself with Kate Winslet. And Kate Winslet knows this, and she’s laughing her British ass off. But I roll with it. I go, ‘One Kate at a time—get in line behind me, Limey.’ Even though, inside, I was dying.”
My mouth had fallen open. “And then what?” I asked.
Kate shrugged. “I went back to my hotel room, and my daughter was so freaked out by my new look that she hid under the bed.” She started laughing. “She wouldn’t come out until I washed off all my makeup and changed into my ratty old pj’s.”
“And then what happened,” I said.
“And then I flew home and came back to work at Zelda’s,” she said, shrugging. “By the way, do you want to hear about today’s specials?”
Later, when I asked if I could take her picture, Kate posed with one hand on her hip and the other on the handle of a coffee pot. Her smile was dazzling.
“Do you ever wish—,” I began.
Kate cut me off. “I wish a lot of things,” she said. She gazed out the diner window at the flat fields stretching far away. “But girl, I don’t wish I’d tried to become a brand. I’d rather be a real person, and a good mother. Like I believe I am.” Then she turned to me and grinned. “I do wish I still had those shoes, though.”
Chapter 9
I FELT a little better walking back to the gas station, and when Josh the mechanic came out to meet me with a smile on his face, I felt my spirits lift even higher.
“How’s Beatrice?” I asked eagerly.
“I can fix her in half a day,” he said.
“That’s amazing,” I cried.