“I really don’t think anyone’s following us,” Alex said, scanning the road. Even as he spoke, he realized his own queasy sense of being followed had diminished. In fact, looking around the unfamiliar landscape, he sensed himself coming into focus for the first time in months. Caught in his lonely experiments with the old toy robot, he hadn’t realized how much he had wanted to go on another trip with his grandfather. Despite the tumult and danger of their last adventure, and the ominous mood surrounding this new mission, he felt sharper, looser, than he had in a long time. The air seemed sweeter against his skin, an undeniable prickle of excitement.

Shabby walls around eight feet tall ran on either side of the road, shielding the buildings behind. Alex’s grandfather stopped at a large, weathered gate. To judge by the flakes of paint clinging to the wood, it had once been green. A smaller door was set into it, beside an unmarked buzzer.

“Top man in Paris,” the old man said as he pressed the button. “Harry swears by him. And sometimes at him.”

A laborious shuffling of feet on gravel approached from the other side, there was a sound of latches being pulled, and the door opened a crack. A suspicious, bloodshot eye appeared. Beneath it, a hollow cheek sporting gray stubble and a mouth turned down in a sour pout around a half-smoked, currently unlit cigarette. The red eye scowled, scrutinized, then widened.

“Ah!”

The door opened, revealing a skinny man in his seventies, almost drowned by a shapeless blue cardigan and well-worn overalls. A black beret that had known better times sat back on his head. Tucking the cigarette behind his ear, he threw open his arms to embrace Alex’s grandfather.

“Albert,” Alex’s grandfather said, after he had disentangled himself. He indicated Alex. “Voici mon petit fils, Alex. Alex, meet Albert, the greatest mechanic left in all France.”

Alex held out his hand but was engulfed in a serious bear hug. He staggered as Albert released him and waved them through into a small yard made smaller by teetering mounds of scrap: creeping heaps of tires, exhausts, engine blocks, and other unidentifiable components in varying degrees of decay.

As they entered, cats scattered in every direction and assumed precarious perches, watching them suspiciously. In one corner, the bright remains of two pinball machines stood lopsided beside the rusted skeletons of two ancient cars propped on bricks, and a low, hulking shape covered by a rain-spattered blue tarpaulin. Along the back wall, garage doors stood pulled back to reveal a large workroom. Albert disappeared inside.