Fixin’ Tyrone (40 page)

“I told you I did.”

“Let’s get your shop
first
and see how much we have left,” she said with a smile.

* * *

Tyrone went out and bought an old-timey filling station with the outdated gas pumps still planted. The first time he rode by and pointed it out to Mia and the kids, TC didn’t hold any punches.

“That’s ugly.”

“We have to clean it up,” Tyrone said.

“That will take forever.”

“That’s why we’re starting
now
,” Tyrone said. He pulled up to the building, got out, and popped the trunk. Inside, he had trash bags, mops, brooms, buckets, and a lot of soap. Mia stood beside him and surveyed his equipment.

“I hope you’ve got someone else coming to help,” she said. “With just us four, this
will
take forever.”

Tyrone laughed. “Yeah. I got some of my homeys coming. They’ll be here in a minute.”

True to his word, two carloads of the roughest looking thugs you’d ever want to meet converged on the property. Between pulling their pants up, washing paint off of their rings, and talking on their cell phones, Mia didn’t think any work would ever get done, but once again her husband knew what he was talking about. In just two weeks TC’s Automotive was spic-and-span, freshly painted, and ready for business. Tyrone had his grand opening on a balmy Monday morning.

He came home that first day not in the best of moods.

“We’re already in the red,” he told his wife over dinner.

“What’s wrong?” Mia asked.

“I only had
five
customers all day.”

“
Five?
That’s a lot,” Mia said.

“Not if we’re gonna pay off that building.”

“You should put ads in the paper,” Crystal suggested. “You need to put up fliers, too, at the mall and beauty shops, and at the auto part stores. You can put them anywhere, really, just ask the owner of whatever business you’re at.”

Tyrone and Mia stopped eating and stared at her with big smiles. “I didn’t know Crystal could do all that,” he said.

“I didn’t either,” Mia said. “Wow, Crystal, you’d do all that for us?”

“I love you, sister-in-law,” Tyrone said.

“Y’all is corny,” Crystal said, but she became their advertising executive anyway. And the fruits of her labors became evident in the very next quarter.

Tyrone went from five cars a day, to ten, to having so many he had to turn away business. His marketing strategy was genius, based on a wonderfully simple motto:
We’ll do the work of Auto Boys for half the price
.

Crystal actually printed that on some of the early fliers before Mia made her stop, fearing they would get sued.

“How can you do the same work as Auto Boys and only charge half of what they do?” Crystal asked him one day.

“Simple,” Tyrone said, “Auto Boys
overcharges
for everything. It’s all a scam. I’m gonna be the only honest mechanic out there.”

It sounded too legitimate to work, but Tyrone’s strategy of bringing integrity to the auto repair business was effective. Six months in, and TC’s Automotive got out of the red. Two months later, Tyrone hired his first employee, a mechanic he knew from ATI. Eleven months into the venture, and Tyrone was able to pay off his building.

He bought another one eight months later.

They didn’t purchase the third building for another two years, but it was worth the wait. This one was erected from the ground up. It had a large office and an even larger waiting room. Tyrone had enough bays and parking lot space to work on a dozen cars at the same time.

With three shops in the city, Tyrone was definitely a force to be reckoned with. He had twenty-three employees, serviced over a hundred vehicles a day, and never had to get under any of them, just as Mia said it would one day be. Tyrone bought Mia the biggest rock they had in the jewelry store on the day he went, and even paid for a very, very late honeymoon to the Caribbean Islands. They stayed five wonderful days and four beautiful nights, returning more in love than before they left.

They never teased her, but Crystal never managed to reach the same level of success. Even while witnessing the power of education firsthand, she still dropped out of most of her courses and ended up taking one class a semester again. By the time Tyrone’s third shop was being built, Crystal still didn’t have enough credits for a two-year degree.

She did manage to find a nerdy boyfriend, however. Crystal swore she would never marry Chad, but she eventually moved into his apartment. Mia was so happy to see her go, she toted three trips worth of Crystal’s belongings personally.

* * *

Mia went to Claire’s one stormy Saturday afternoon. She walked in talking on her cell phone. When she hung up, she sat down in Vasantha’s chair with a loud sigh.

“What’s wrong?” the stylist asked her.

“I got a flat,” Mia said. “Right when I was pulling up.”

“That’s messed up,” Gayle said. “You gonna get out there in that rain, or wait ’til it stops?”

“
I’m
not changing that tire,” Mia said.

“Oh, that’s right. Your husband owns all those repair shops. Is he gonna come fix it?”

“No. I just talked to him,” Mia said. “He said he’d probably send someone.”

“Ooh,
big time
,” Vasantha said. “He’s not going to fix it
hisself,
y’all. He’s going to
send someone
over to do it for him.”

“You hear that, everybody?” Gayle announced. “We have been blessed by the rich and famous!”

Everyone laughed, but they weren’t laughing ten minutes later when a brand new Ford F350 pulled up behind Mia’s Navigator. A brawny, light-skinned gentleman stepped out into the environment as if wasn’t even raining and kneeled next to Mia’s flat tire. He then went to the back of his truck and hefted a hundred-pound hydraulic jack like it was a bag of potatoes.

“Girl, who is that?” Gayle asked, doing a whole 360 so she could stare out of the front window.

“I don’t know,” Mia said without looking back.

“He’s changing your tire,” Gayle said.

“Tyrone’s got twenty-five employees,” Mia said. “I don’t know which one that is.”

“But this one is
fine
,” Gayle said, causing Vasantha and a few more stylists to turn and look.

“
Ooh
, he is fine,” Vasantha said.

Natiesha left her seat in the waiting room to see, and soon there were a dozen or more women at the window.

“Look, girl, he bending,” Gayle said to no one in particular. A second later the girls squealed as the mechanic did whatever he was doing back there. Mia was happy with her man, so she was the only one who didn’t turn to gawk.

“Look at his
arms
,” one woman said.

“Look at his
chest
,” said another.

“It’s still raining, Mia. You’d better check this out. His shirt is sticking,
ooh,
it’s sticking to his body. His pants, too. Look at that ass, y’all.”

“Damn, he do got a nice ass,” Vasantha said.

Mia did turn to look then. What she saw made a silly grin spread across her face. She turned back in her seat like it was no big deal and listened to the girls ogle her man for another ten minutes, and then Gayle announced, “Okay, y’all, he coming inside!”

Everyone scrambled to their places and almost looked normal by the time Tyrone walked through the front door. He wore blue Dickey pants and a short-sleeved collar shirt that was tucked in. He was completely drenched, which, as Gayle pointed out, made his shirt stick to his body like a second skin. Tyrone had no undershirt, and Mia could see his nipples clearly through the fabric.

The slight workout had his muscles pumped up to competition level. His chest was like a silverback’s. His biceps were like two cantaloupe halves. Fresh rain glistened on the waves in his hair like a mystical black beach. His lips were full, and his eyes were the color of a flowing field of wheat.

He scanned the room until his eyes found his bride.

“Baby, you had a nail in there, but I got you taken care of.”

“Thanks, Tyrone,” Mia said. “You’re the best.”

Tyrone looked around nervously. “Uh, how you ladies doing?”

“
Heeey
,” they all said, almost in unison.

Mia rolled her eyes at them.

“I’ll see you later,” Tyrone said and turned to leave.

“All right. Be careful out there,” Mia said.

When he was gone, all the ladies turned and stared at Mia as if her outfit was made of solid gold.

Mia leaned back in her chair with a smug grin. “Yeah, that’s
Tyrone
,” she said finally. “And you bitches need to quit eyeballing my husband. Go fix your own man!” The ladies laughed and returned to what they were doing, but a few of them went back to the window anyway to see if Tyrone looked as good going as he did coming.