June had come up behind Peter so quietly he hadn’t heard her. But she didn’t shake his hand, and she didn’t say anything.
“This is June,” said Peter, before it could get completely awkward. “We had an accident.” Her fat lip had swollen further, and looked painful. She’d cleaned the blood off her elbow, but the many small cuts were vivid and pink at their edges. Her freckles stood out like reverse constellations in her pale face.
Al looked from June to Peter, and back to June. She was half turned toward the highway, waiting like Peter for the next black SUV. Then Peter felt a tickle at his hairline. His head was starting to bleed again. Al looked back as the first warm drop trickled down Peter’s forehead.
“Hell, you people look like shit,” he said. “Let me get EMS on the horn. We got a volunteer outfit in Redway, only take them a half hour or so.”
“No,” said Peter. “Please don’t. We’re fine. We just need a car.”
“Seriously?” Then the implications caught up to him, and he put his hand on the door. “Listen, go bleed on somebody else. I don’t need your trouble. Get out of here before I call the cops.”
“We won’t be any trouble,” Peter said, thinking of the Python .357 at the top of his pack. “We just want to buy a car. We can pay you. Cash.”
Al turned to June. She cleared her throat. She looked at the highway, then back to Al. “Please,” she said quietly. Just one word, but it held a lot.
The mechanic looked back at Peter. There was something substantial there behind the wire rims of his glasses. He was a serious man. Then he shook his head and sighed.
“I have one rule,” he said. “I learned it from my abuelito. Be honest, that was his rule. Always honest. And I expect the same from the people I do business with. Or I don’t do business. So tell me the truth. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
June was staring at the highway now. Peter looked, too, and saw a pair of black Ford Explorers, shiny and new and driving in close formation, turn off the two-lane to the secondary road, heading into the mountains.
Peter said, “Can we go inside? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“You first, then her.” Al stepped back to hold the door as they passed, and closed it behind them. The shop was bright and open, but Peter’s chest tightened anyway. As the static began to rise, his muscles would begin to cramp up. Then he’d start to sweat.
“My office is there.” The mechanic pointed to a partitioned corner area. He stood five or six feet behind them and gestured for his guests to walk ahead. He’d scooped up an old-school tire iron and held it low and ready. Al was definitely a serious man.
The office was four steps up, with frame walls and big plate-glass windows looking down onto the shop. One end of the room held an old oak desk with a laptop computer, printer, and neat stacks of paperwork. Behind it stood a tall green steel file cabinet and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves loaded with diagnostic manuals and old Chilton guides. At the other end of the room was a faded brown leather couch, two wooden chairs, and a low table made of a truck rim and a big rough slab of redwood. It looked homey. Comfortable.
The static still didn’t like it. Neither did Peter.
His neck felt like it was caught in a vise.
Al walked behind the old desk, placed the jack handle gently atop the old file cabinet, and dropped himself into a modern office chair that looked like it was made for a space station. Before Peter registered the movement, the mechanic had taken a black automatic handgun out of a side drawer and set it on the desktop with a thump. His eyes were hidden behind the reflecting rounds of his glasses. “So,” he said. “Let’s hear it.”
Peter carefully unslung his pack and laid it on the scarred oak desk, then took several steps back. June stood a step back and to one side, closer to the door.
“Open it,” he said. “There’s a Colt Python .357 on the top. You’re in no danger from us. We need help.”
Al tapped his pistol with two fingers. Glanced at the pack, at June, and back to Peter. “So why the fuck are you sweating like you just ran a four-minute mile?”
“I have a thing,” said Peter. Embarrassed, still. It felt like weakness, although he knew it was biochemical, his brain miswired by the war. But it still felt like weakness. “I can’t be inside,” he said. “I’m claustrophobic.”
“Or what, you sweat to death?”
Peter didn’t want to explain this, but he needed a car. No, he needed a favor. The man had a right to ask. He could feel June beside him, watching. She might as well know, too.
“I sweat, my muscles tense up, I start to hyperventilate. It’s called a panic attack.”
Al gave Peter a long thoughtful look, drumming his fingers on the gun. Finally he said, “I got a nephew with the opposite problem, he doesn’t like to go outside. He was in the war. Overpasses, rooftops, high windows, all the places snipers used to shoot from. They freak him out. He’s a programmer now.”