The next night he sat in front of a slot machine, once again waiting for Rick’s shift to end, near enough to the café that he could see the booth where he had been sitting moments before, his empty coffee cup still resting on the tabletop. He reasoned he could play the slots for a good long while and not spend more than ten dollars and so he dropped quarter after quarter into the machine, watching bars and lemons and plums and bunched cherries on little stems spin through their reels, but the repetition of that single machine bored him and he worked his way down the row and then into the next. After a time he found himself playing Wild Wild Nights, a dollar slot with five reels that spun simultaneously, the win lines moving in all directions, and he pulled and pulled and pulled at that handle.
He stopped when he was down sixty dollars, not because he was done but because he knew Rick was probably already sitting in the café waiting for him, and so he stumbled away from the machine in a wide-eyed daze looking like a man who had been struck by lightning or as if he had been asleep for some period of years and had now suddenly awakened into a world of clanging bells and ringing alarms. What have you done? You goddamn idiot. What have you done now?
He still had more than fifty dollars and perhaps it would be enough to keep Johnny, to keep Mike, from breaking more of his bones, but he still feared that meeting, even though he knew it was inevitable. But that night passed and then it was the week of Thanksgiving and he reasoned that even a man like Johnny Aguirre must have family somewhere. Perhaps Mike as well. Maybe they were both simply out of town. Maybe it was as simple as that.
He returned to work at the start of that week with a note from the medical clinic and with his finger still splinted and aching. On his break he bought a candy bar from the vending machine in
the carpeted hallway that led to the sales floor. From there, he could see the door to Milt Wells’s office: a plain wooden slab, painted white to match the hallway, sometimes closed, sometimes wide open.
The alarm keypad was mounted on the wall by the back door, the same door he used to get to and from the lube bay. The screen read simply DISARMED. A waferlike sensor on the door itself and on the doorframe.
All day completing oil changes and greasing ball joints for one car or another: a Mercury Monarch, its shape floating above him on the lift like some enormous slab of powder-blue stone, a Fiesta, a Mustang, an LTD, a Granada, a Lincoln Continental. With each pull of the grease gun’s flat trigger came the sound of pressurized air escaping the valve and the low galumph of the grease pushing forward through the zerk. The cars different but the cars also the same. This was what he did, a thought that filled him with a sense of unrest and unease of such intensity that it made his splinted finger throb. He thought again of the lion in the arcade at the MGM Grand. Lethargic. Chained to the platform upon which it rested. The photographer waving the steak. The great lion’s head rising. Those sparkling eyes. The grim smiles of the family as the flash popped. All its days the same.
When five o’clock came on Wednesday, his constant watching for Johnny Aguirre and Mike had worn him down to a frayed mess. He stood by the bay doors and smoked three cigarettes in rapid succession, watching the huge white airliners as they rose from and descended to the airport past the highway. Most of the mechanics had already gone. Down on the road beyond the rows of new cars, he thought he saw a rust-colored vehicle moving slowly along the frontage road but although he stood on his tiptoes he could not be sure. As he watched he puffed his third cigarette down to a stub and lit another. A newspaper swirled away from him in the direction of the runway, riding a freezing wind down from the mountains to the west. He could not see the rust-colored car anymore and did not know if he had seen it at all.
Hey there, a voice came.
He turned from his view out over the cars to see Milt Wells stepping through the door that led from the service bays to the long carpeted interior hallway within, his swoop of white hair just as perfect as it always was, bolo tie swinging gently with his step.
Hello, Nat said. And then added, Milt.
Milt held a small zippered bag in his hand with a bank logo on it, packed thickly with what Nat could only imagine was some quantity of cash.
Off to the bank? Nat said.
My weekly errand. Usually Fridays but with the holiday I thought I’d better get it in early.
Good idea. He stood there for a moment in silence. Then he said, You … uh … want a cigarette?
No but thanks, Milt said. My wife made me quit. If she smells it on me I’ll be in for it.
Nat grinned a little at the thought.
You break your finger?
He nodded.
That happen here?
Naw, I slammed it in my car door at home last week.
Ouch, Milt said.
Yeah, not my most brilliant moment.
I came out to the shop last week but they said you were out sick.
Yeah, I got the flu or something.
Broke your finger and got the flu?
Yeah it was quite a week.
Feeling better though, now?
More or less. He looked out toward the airport again, where another white plane was descending slowly from a gray sky.
How’s your mom doing? If you don’t mind me asking.
She’s doing all right. Needs surgery. So that’s coming up.
Jeez, I’m sorry to hear that, Milt said. What kind of cancer?
Lung, Nat said. He looked at the cigarette in his hand. I guess I shouldn’t be smoking this either.
Probably not, Milt said. You could quit right now.
I could, Nat said. But I’d just start again when I got home.
That’s the choice you make.
Is it?
Absolutely. Everything’s a choice.
Nat looked at him then. He wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that just because he had choices did not mean that those same choices existed for Nat or for anyone, that the life and experiences of the proprietor and owner of Milt’s Reliable Ford-Lincoln-Mercury were by no means transferrable. But instead he only nodded and said, I guess you’re right.
I am right, Milt said. You work the lube station and then you move to, I don’t know, brakes or something, and at some point you’re running the whole service department.
Maybe so, Nat said.