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Then there’s my absolute favorite. The car I searched for years to find: the Talbot Lago Grand Sport. I’ve spent more hours on that baby than all the others combined. It’s my one true love. The one I’ll never sell.
The only thing I feel the slightest sentimentality about is my cars. Only machinery gives me that impulse to care and nurture. It’s the only time I can be patient and careful. When I’m driving, I actually feel calm. And even just a little bit happy. The wind blows in my face. Speeding by on an open road, everything looks clean and bright. I don’t see the little details—the cracks and grime and ugliness. Not until I stop and I’m walking again.
Anyway, that’s why I like summer the best. Because I can cruise around all day long and not worry about my cars getting fucked up with snow and sleet and salt on the road.
I don’t even mind being Dante’s chauffeur. We’ve got a bunch of places to go this morning—gotta drop off payroll for our construction crews. They all want to get paid in cash, because half of them owe child support and taxes and they still need money for drinking and gambling and rent. Speaking of gambling, we’ve got to pick up the rake from the underground poker ring we’re running out of the King’s Arms Hotel.
So much of our day is this kind of tedious busywork. I miss the adrenaline shot of pulling proper jobs.
When I was fifteen and Dante was twenty-one, we used to pull the craziest shit. Armored truck heists, even a couple of bank robberies. Then he enlisted out of fucking nowhere and spent the next six years in Iraq. When he got back, he was completely different. He barely talks. He can’t take a joke. And he lost that daredevil spirit.
After we’ve made the rounds, we grab some lunch at Coco Pazzo, then Dante has to meet with our foreman. I’ve got zero interest in that, so I drop him off, planning to head back home and do some work on the Mustang. Ever since I juiced up the engine, it’s been overheating like crazy. Doesn’t help that it’s a hundred degrees out today and Dante’s been sitting in my passenger seat like a 250-pound block of granite, putting strain on the engine.
In fact, even though I’m driving slow on the way home, my gauges keep going higher and higher, and the car’s straining to go up the tiniest of hills. Fuck. I might not even make it back.
As I’m driving down Wells Street, I see the weathered sign for Axel Auto. Impulsively, I pull the wheel to the left, turning round the side of the building so I can pull up to the auto bay.
I haven’t been here in ages. I used to have Axel Rivera order parts for me, before you could buy anything you needed online. And he used to do work for my father, before I got to a level where I could fix any of our vehicles myself.
I expect to see Axel working in the bay like no time has passed at all.
Instead, I see a much slimmer figure bent over under the hood of an Accord, wrestling with something in the engine. Camille is struggling with a piece, finally wrenching it free and straightening up. She sets the cap down on a nearby bench, wiping her sweaty face with the back of her arm. Then, deciding that’s not enough, she strips off her shirt, using it to towel off her face, neck, and chest.
She’s only wearing a plain cotton bra underneath, wet with sweat. I’m surprised to see how fit Camille is. Her arms are lean and strong, and there’s a line of muscle down either side of her belly button. Plus, she’s got more up top than I would have guessed—full, soft breasts, cupped by the damp, clinging material of the bra. She always dresses like a dude. Turns out she’s actually a girl under all that grime.
I clear my throat. Camille jumps like a startled cat. When she sees who it is, she glowers at me and yanks her t-shirt back down over her head.
“This isn’t a peep show,” she snaps. “Exotica is twelve blocks that way.”
“Exotica burned down,” I tell her.
Actually, I burned it down myself, when I was in a tiff with the owner. It was my first foray into arson. It was pretty fucking satisfying seeing the flames roar up like a living thing, like a demon summoned from hell. I could see how people get addicted to it.
“Really?” Camille says, eyes wide. She has extremely dark eyes—a deep, liquid mocha color, as dark as her hair and lashes. Because she doesn’t smile much, her eyes give most of the expression to her face. She seems unnerved by what I said.
Oh, that’s right—Exotica is where her mom worked.
“Yeah,” I say. “It burned down in the winter. It’s just an empty lot now.”
She looks suspicious, like she thinks I’m fucking with her.
“How did it burn down?”
“Guess somebody spun around a pole too fast,” I smirk. “G-string friction. Only takes a spark to start a fire.”
Or several cans of gasoline and a zippo.
Camille scowls at me. “What do you want?” she says.
“Is that your best customer service?” I ask her. “No wonder this place is so busy.”
I pretend to look around at a host of invisible customers.
Camille’s nostrils flare.
“You’re not a customer,” she hisses.
“I might be,” I say. “My engine’s overheating. I want to look at it before I drive the rest of the way home.”
