Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

know about Kevin’s job offer? He can’t. Kevin told me no one knows. What’s more, that “still got it goin’ on” remark is, again, uncomfortably close to the line. Or maybe I’m too sensitive. I mean, I was thinking about his jeans, right? But the observation was just clinical. I would never consider saying it out loud.
    I wave a leather glove in his direction, trying to diffuse the moment. We just had a pretty narrow escape. It’s cold. We have work to do. Franklin’s waiting. The mechanic is waiting. And there must be a glass of wine and Josh’s fireplace in my future.
    “Hey, Boston’s market five,” I say. “How’s that tire coming?”
    “Changing the subject. Got it.” With a nod and an overbroad wink, J.T. returns to work.
    He’s not even attempting to hide his smile.
     
     
    The Power House Garage in Boston’s South End reeks of oil and gas and rubber. Drills and power tools whine. Engines rev, ignitions churn. I’m sure the whole place is full of carbon monoxide. Which reminds me, for a melancholy moment, of Dorothy Wirt. A twist of concern, unwelcome and unpleasant, begins an uncomfortable spiral. How am I going to make all of this work?
    Reining myself back into the moment, I put my other life on hold. Behind the massive glass doors of the garage, we’re warm and finally dry. I’ll think about the rest of it later.
    Our rented black hatchback is high on a mechanical lift, its spare tire a glaringly obvious mismatch. Franklin,J.T. and mechanic Frick Jones, all wearing thick plastic safety goggles held on by orange plastic straps, are conferring underneath the chassis, heads tilted back, looking up at something. I know my limitations. I wouldn’t recognize a broken rotary valve if I saw one, but I’ll learn about it soon enough. We didn’t tell Frick about the recall. We want to see what, if anything, he finds on his own.
    I take a sip of the first chamomile tea I’ve ever had in a garage and wait for the verdict on our rental car. As so often happens in journalism, bad news would be good news.
    “Here’s your problem, Charlie.” Frick Jones, who looks more like my ninth-grade chemistry teacher than an auto mechanic, selects a pencil-thin flashlight from a wide tool belt and shines it at the car’s undercarriage. “You can see it right here. The torsion bar on the rotary valve is cracked. Actually, it’s almost cracked through.”
    Score one for us. With Frick’s pronouncement, we have our story confirmed.
    I glance at Franklin, who’s giving me a low-key thumbs-up at the good-bad news. He says something to J.T., pointing. The photographer takes off his goggles and picks up his camera from a sleek black Formica counter, adjusting the viewfinder. Franklin clicks open the tripod, a not-so-subtle suggestion to J.T. that he expects rock-steady shots of the broken rotary valve.
    Frick’s still talking, playing the light beam back and forth between the two front tires. “Good thing you brought it to us when you did, in fact. Couple more yanks on the steering wheel and you might have lost your control. You say you had a flat tire on the way here? In the snow?”
    He emerges from under the car, slowly shaking his head. He points the flashlight at my chest. “Lucky you.”
    My knees, almost recovered, suffer a brief relapse. I know my smile is weak. “You can fix it, right?”
    “One more thing,” Frick says, pushing a red button ona gizmo hanging from the ceiling. The lift begins to lower. With a puff of hydraulics, then a soft clank, the car hits bottom. Frick clicks open the hood and points to what even I know is the battery.
    “Look here. This black wire. One battery lead is loose. Look.”
    He reaches forward, and with two fingers, wiggles a thin black cable. Then he tightens the nut that’s attaching the cable to a stubby metal post on the battery.
    “Sometimes the cable works itself loose. Especially on newer cars. Easy enough to fix. But if that had come off while you were