Page 33 of Her Sloth

She gets out of the car and leans against the door.

“You sure?” she asks.

“No,” I say, because there will be many questions following. First and foremost, the one I have myself, and that’s the one about my own sanity. “But let’s do it anyway.”

Though everyone in the house has seen me in all episodes of Elise, I can already hear the talking that’s happening about bringing her here. Not to forget the small disaster from two nights ago.

I walk her past the garage to the house.

She stops.

“That’s her?” she asks at the open gate with the Porsche in it. But before I can say anything, she slips into it.

Her hand caresses the freshly done bodywork in the half-dark.

I walk past her and turn on the light on the workbench in the back. I don’t know what I feel right now, her being in here. It feels strange to the point of repulsion, and I dislike all the feelings she is causing in me.

“You’ve done her well,” she says, a faint smile on her face. And I know that she knows.

“She was a mess,” I say. “I’ve been working on her for years now.”

“Of course she was,” Addy says. “Elise never did things half.”

I have to laugh, because doing things fully, like crashing this car, was her thing.

“So what’s the matter with her?” Addy asks, glancing at the motor in the back of the Porsche.

“Everything,” I say and lean into her to turn the key. “Listen.”

The motor coughs like a dying smoker with lung cancer.

“Give her a little slap with the throttle,” Addy says, “Like a heartbeat.”

I do as told.

Addy chuckles, rolls up her sleeves, and walks over to the tool cart. She opens several drawers, pulls out torque wrenches, metric sockets, feeler gauges, and Allen keys.

She removes the valve cover bolts, which sit close to the wall and are a pain in the ass to get off while the motor is in the car. But she does it like someone who has done this a million times.

After it comes off, she just watches it for a while.

“Three is your culprit,” she says. “Turn her off.”

She takes the feeler gauge and gets to work on the third valve.

“Don’t get too excited with that one,” I say.

“I’m not,” she says, sliding her hand into the small space and down. “The thing with a German girl is, she is over-engineered and yet simple in her needs.”

I snigger a bit. It’s been a while since I met someone who sees cars in the way I do.

“You need a new cover for the bottom,” she says when she comes back up. “The magnesium ones suck. Get the 930 valve cover. Make sure everything is clean and stone cold when you take them out, and she should purr like a kitten.”

“You mean this one?” I say, holding up the cover I already got.

“Yes,” she says as she sees it with lit-up eyes.

“Wanna help?” I ask, pointing to the motor lift. We definitely need to get the motor out for that.