He waves to her from the blind corner that leads to his cul-de-sac. The girl has wisely dropped him off a block or so from his house and is now executing a U-turn that will point her back in the direction of the highway and, eventually, into town. Their eyes meet for a second and she blows him a kiss. He moves to mirror the gesture but she reaches over to fiddle with her stereo—playing a kind of black person’s music at a deafening volume that he could barely understand—and misses his sendoff. In another minute she turns left onto Mill Hollow Drive and vanishes into the murk. The man can see that a light is on upstairs in the colonial he calls home, but he lingers for a moment on the sidewalk, knowing that he will get one last view of the Citation when it reaches the gates at the front of the property. It will only be a fleeting glimpse, but he decides to wait. He turns up the collar of his jacket—a lightweight Brooks Brothers sports coat that was a gift—and rises up on his tiptoes. Watching.

Full Service

I can’t tell what color her nails are, not completely, because of the dirt and oil smeared across her fingers. They’re soaked in the stuff, actually, but it’s only because she’s changing my fluids at the moment. Brake, transmission, wiper. And the coolant, too; she’s also taking care of that. She seems very efficient, this little technician of mine. Not that she’s one of those specialized people, some Mr. Goodwrench or something—though actually she would have to be a Mrs. Goodwrench or at least a Ms. Goodwrench, things being what they are in the world—no, she works locally at this mom-and-pop garage that I frequent, down the road from my lake cottage. “Frequent” in that it’s convenient for me, not that I’m this longtime customer or anything. Well, I suppose my family is, since my father used to come here when he first bought the cottage. And believe me, back then there wouldn’t have been any girl changing your oil or anywhere near your car, for that matter, oh no. And the original guy, the owner, he’d had daughters, too, but they didn’t work in the shop area. The oldest one, this buxom redhead, she maybe ran the cash register during her last few summers of high school, but that was about it. And even that was a maybe.