He gestures with his coffee cup to a pickup truck, old, but old in a rounded, classic, vintage sort of way. Not in a dumpy-piece-of-shit way. It’s a deep maroon, the color of my mom’s beloved merlot.
“Wow. That’s a great truck,” I say, thinking maybe he does have money after all. It looks mint — shiny and rust-free.
“Thanks.”
It suddenly occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t be getting into his truck, at night, to go to a deserted body shop. I don’t know him that well and I haven’t had enough experience with boys to develop a radar about these sorts of things. But my fears subside slightly when he opens the passenger-side door for me. Once I’m in, he hands over my laptop case and makes sure I’m settled before closing the door carefully behind me. It’s an old-fashioned gesture that, right or wrong, makes me feel safe.
Plus, I’ve got my dad’s number on speed dial and there’s a Taco Bell that’s open until midnight right next to the body shop. It’s not like we’ll be in the middle of nowhere.
The truck has a vintage smell to it: a little musty, like my grandpa’s attic. The faint 1960s scent of cigarettes and Aqua Net is embedded in the leather upholstery.
In the absence of cup holders, Zenn balances his coffee between his knees and starts the engine.
“Here, I’ll hold it.” I reach out. “That looks like a recipe for disaster.”
Zenn laughs a little and hands me his cup. I’m careful to make sure our fingers don’t touch in the hand off.
“Yeah, I guess stick shifts and hot coffee don’t mix,” he says.
“Unless you want a third-degree burn to the groin.”
Oh. My. God. What is wrong with me? Just the mention of his groin has made my cheeks burn. I’m so grateful for the dark.
“I definitely do not want that.”
His coffee cup is fractal-free, as I figured it would be. He’s only held it for a few minutes, and nothing traumatic has happened during our walk to his truck. He drives us to the body shop, making small talk along the way.
“Did your friend go to the dance? The tall one?”
“Charlotte?” I try to remember whether Zenn and Charlotte have crossed paths, but I can’t think of when they were both at the same place at the same time. She comes to see Josh and Josh alone. She and Zenn have never actually met, as far as I know.
“I don’t know her name. I’ve just seen you guys at lunch.”
Ah. So he doesn’t apparate. I wonder how he sees me but I don’t see him. Then it occurs to me that maybe he just sees Charlotte.
“You have lunch fifth period?”
He shakes his head. “Sixth. But I’ve seen you leaving.”
“Oh. Right. I guess Charlotte is hard to miss.” He opens his mouth to say something — probably to comment on her increasing beauty and popularity — but I cut him off. “Yeah, she went. With Pepé Le Pew.”
He smiles. “Mooney, huh? She’ll come home with clear sinuses, anyway.”
“Yeah. I hope that’s all she comes home with.”
Zenn glances in my direction. I hadn’t realized I’d sound so bitter.
I wave my hand, dismissing my comment. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. He seems like a nice enough guy.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m not going to defend Mooney.”
“I just worry about her. She’s not used to that sort of crowd.”
“They do take some getting used to.” Zenn pulls into the parking lot of the body shop. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” I agree, though the thought of what Josh might expect after his senior homecoming dance, and what Charlotte might be willing to do to keep him interested, worries me.
We both climb out of the truck. I leave my laptop on the seat and Zenn uses his key to open the shop. He leads me through the dark to the garage, where he flips on a few lights. The van is there, though it is almost unrecognizable. Gone are the blue skies and headless sheep. It looks fantastic already.
I tell him that.
He nods. “Amazing what a coat of paint will do.”
The van is now a blank white canvas. He has already sketched the artwork on the side, and the lettering. It looks amazing, and he hasn’t even started painting yet.
He moves a pile of rags off a chair and rolls it toward me. I sit while he starts getting his equipment ready: airbrush pen, compressor and various small vials of paint. He takes off his jacket and his hat and tosses them on a tool bench. His hair is so short it isn’t even messed up, though he seems like he wouldn’t care if it were. I imagine Josh might have spent more time on his hair tonight than Charlotte did.
It’s cold in the garage so Zenn pulls on a paint-stained hoodie. When he reaches up to tug it on over his head, his T-shirt creeps up and I get a glimpse of the smooth, surprisingly tan skin just above the waistband of his jeans. My fingers ache to know what his skin — what any boy’s skin — feels like. It makes me incredibly sad that I may never find out. Or at least without releasing a shit storm of childhood trauma and who-knows-what.
I fold up in the chair, wrapping my arms around my bent legs, resting my chin on my knees.
“Sorry it’s so cold,” he says as he scrolls through his phone and starts some music. “I don’t like to turn on the space heater because of the paint fumes.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Better cold and alive than warm and blown to pieces.”
Zenn gives me one of his rare, full smiles, and gets to work. He applies the paint in short, quick strokes that look like mistakes, at first. In fact, I almost say something, cringing at how he’s so bold and decisive with permanent paint. But each added layer, each color, each stroke of his hand adds a new dimension. If he actually does make mistakes, I don’t see them.
“How’d you learn to do this?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just my thing. Like … you and math.”
I don’t remember learning math, although I’m sure I did. It feels more like I uncovered it, like the math knowledge was always there inside me and it was just a matter of peeling away other stuff to get to it. Michelangelo said that every block of stone has a statue inside and that the sculptor’s job is to discover it. Maybe everyone has a gift like that: something that is there already, waiting to be discovered.
“This is so much cooler than math, though.”
Zenn pauses and raises one eyebrow at me. “I’m not sure there is anything remotely cool about airbrushing church vans.”
This makes me laugh. “Not airbrushing vans, exactly. Just … art. In general.”
He changes the color cup on his gun, his hands moving like he could do it in his sleep. He tests it out on a piece of cardboard, then turns to the van and starts spraying.
“Do you ever make mistakes?” I ask.
“Never.” His answer is immediate, purposefully serious, sarcastic.
I laugh.
“You make a ‘mistake,’ you figure out a way to work with it. It is what it is. You can’t let it ruin everything,” he says.
“That sounds kind of like a whole life philosophy.”