The Art of Crash Landing by Melissa DeCarlo Page B

language?”
    Luke has popped the trunk and is watching this little brouhaha with an enormous grin on his face. How lucky for him that I am around to provide him with quality entertainment.
    â€œYou can’t take that without paying for it.”
    â€œBack off, lady,” I say.
    The woman grabs the handlebars, forcing me to pry it from her grasp in order to lift the rear wheel and angle the bike into the trunk. The woman is ineffectively pushing at me while I’m struggling to slide the rubber tire over the trunk carpet. Either the drive here, or the ongoing tussle over the bike has caused the jewelry box to slide partially out of its pillowcase. The woman notices this and reaches in to push the pillowcase away from the initialed lid.
    â€œHey . . .” the woman says, reaching for the box. “This isn’t yours . . .”
    â€œThe hell it isn’t.” I bump her aside, give the bike a final shove, and strap on the bungee cord. “All this shit is mine.”
    â€œBullhonky,” she says. This woman must be the type of person who, no matter how angry, is not willing to use profanity.
    â€œFuck off, pork chop,” I reply. I am not that type of person.
    I hop in the car, and Luke pulls away. When I look back, she’sstill standing in the street, shaking her fist in the air and shouting, “Thief!”
    When we’re a block away he turns to me, laughing. “What was that all about?”
    â€œI left that bike parked there less than an hour ago. I don’t know what in the hell was wrong with that lady.”
    â€œPork chop?” He’s laughing again. “Oh my God.”
    â€œWhat?”
    Instead of answering he shakes his head, still grinning. “So what’d you find out about your car?” he asks me.
    â€œIt’s the transmission.”
    â€œOuch.”
    â€œYup.” I slump down in the seat and prop my feet on the dash. “Unless you’d like to loan me a couple grand, it looks like I’ll be here awhile, Howdy.”
    It’s not that I actually expect him to give me any money, but I figure I’d be a fool not to drop the hint. I wait for him to refuse or laugh it off or tell me to get my feet off his dashboard, but he does none of those things.
    He just frowns and says, “What’s with calling me Howdy ?”
    â€œHowdy Doody . . . you know . . . red hair . . . freckles . . . cute smile . . .”
    â€œI guess it’s better than calling me a random cut of meat,” he says. “But calling me by my actual name would be even better.”
    The smart thing to do here is to apologize and then shut my damn mouth. But when do I ever do the smart thing?
    â€œThat’s true. You have a good name,” I say. “ Luke Lambert is an awesome name, in fact.”
    He gives me a quick look and then asks, cautiously, “ Awesome because . . .”
    â€œIt sounds like a Superman villain.”
    He laughs. “Good Lord. What is wrong with you?”
    I laugh, too, mostly because I’m relieved that he’s laughing. “It’s a long list. Right now, I think it’s low blood sugar. I’m so hungry . . .”
    He offers to feed me, of course. When we get to the order-window of the fast-food deli, Luke looks a little disconcerted when I ask for a foot-long meatball sub, but he repeats my request into the speaker-station without comment. And when we drive up to the next window, he pulls out his wallet and pays the total, and I don’t argue. Tacky? Absolutely. But standard operating procedure for someone with a wallet as thin as mine.
    I notice a “help wanted” sign, and so on a whim I lean past Luke to ask the teenager at the window for an application.
    The girl hands it to Luke who passes it to me along with the enormous sack holding my sandwich. “I think I can find you a job you’d like better than this