As I’d feared, business at my father’s garage was dead. Not a lot of people wanted to hire an auto body repairman who sways while he gives you your estimate.
Yesterday I’d put my plan into action. It cost me seventy dollars to buy a shiny new A-frame sign for outside the shop. When I was done sliding the new lettering into rows, it read: SNOW IS COMING! SNOW TIRES SWITCHED $40.
“Might work,” my father had mumbled from behind the little TV he kept in the garage.
But I’d heard on the shop radio that snow was forecast for next week. This was totally going to work.
I got my first customer one hour after I put out my sign. An old woman pulled up outside and gave her horn a quick tap. I ran out to see what she needed.
“I do need to put my snow tires on,” she said, blinking watery eyes at me from her lowered window. “But I’m afraid I can’t lift them into my trunk. They’re stacked in my garage.”
“Where’s that?”
“Main and Alder,” she said, naming an intersection on the opposite end of town.
Beggars can’t be choosers. “I’ll follow you in my car.”
She would prove to be the first of a steady stream of customers.
Yesterday I changed the tires on four cars. Then this morning I’d put the sign outside first thing. By the time I closed up shop at five thirty, I’d had a dozen takers. I’d been so busy that my father came out to help me and to make sure that all the money went into his till.
He probably planned to pay me the same twelve dollars an hour that he’d paid me when I was eighteen. That was some bullshit right there, but I wasn’t going to argue right away. For a couple weeks I’d keep my mouth shut while I built up the garage’s revenue. I needed to make myself indispensable for longer than a day before I began making demands.
Besides, I was happy to let my father handle the cash. I didn’t want to walk around with a pocket full of twenties. A guy with a recent drug habit was better off using his debit card for everything. I kept barely ten bucks in my wallet these days, because dealers didn’t accept plastic. Any barrier I could put between myself and a quick fix was a good idea.
And physical labor was good for what ailed me. The only trick I knew for staying clean was to stay busy. Today that was easy enough. Exhausted, dirty, and reeking of tire rubber, I went upstairs for a quick shower. I used Sophie’s shampoo, and the green-apple scent rose around me in a mist. So now I would smell like a girl, but that was okay with me, because it was as close to a girl as I was likely to get anytime soon.
Without a kitchen of any sort, I had to leave home every time I was hungry. So I got into my wreck of a car and puttered into the center of town. I couldn’t eat fast food for every meal, so I went into Max’s Tavern and ordered a Chicken Caesar wrap to go. The place was abuzz with guys enjoying happy hour, and all the tables were full of happy, sociable people.
I envied them.
Once upon a time I’d had friends, but they were all off limits now. The friends I’d made in high school were the type who showed me how to crush oxies and snort them.
That’s why the rate of relapse was so high among druggies like me. It’s easy to be a champ in the controlled environment of rehab. You can promise yourself anything. Then you come out again, and the world is the same fucked-up place it was when you went in.
When my sandwich was ready, I paid and left. I would have loved to plunk down on a bar stool and order a beer like a normal person. But I wasn’t a normal person. I’d given up that title when I’d learned how to dull my pain with drugs.
So I got back into the Avenger, carefully stretching the sandwich wrapper across my lap to catch any crumbs.
When I had the Porsche, I didn’t like to have food in it. Sophie used to roll her eyes when I suggested that we eat elsewhere. “We have sex in your car all the time,” she’d point out. “But dear God—don’t eat a granola bar.”
Another fun part of being in recovery is rehashing all your ironies. I’d always kept my car clean. Meanwhile, I was dumping toxic substances into my body just as often as I could afford to.
Good times.
I’d only eaten one bite when a shiny sedan pulled into a parking spot on the other side of the divider, a few rows down from me. A dorky-looking guy in a turtleneck jumped out and hurried around to open the passenger door, making me grin. A first date, probably.
When the girl stood up, I stopped grinning.
Sophie. My heart gave a squeeze. What the hell was she doing in Vermont?
I tossed the sandwich onto the passenger seat and leaned over the steering wheel to peer out into the night.
It didn’t matter that her hair was longer than it used to be or that she was wearing an unfamiliar coat. The confident set of her shoulders was all Sophie. And the streetlight caught the classically beautiful curve of her cheek as she turned toward the guy.
Even before I finished this thought, Mr. Turtleneck stepped into her space and grabbed her chin. Then he planted a kiss on her mouth.