Out of Nowhere (3 page)

“Dude,” I mock, “aren’t you supposed to be a fucking mechanic? What does it look like?”

Brian, impervious and immediately bored as ever, drops it on the coffee table and changes the channel to the Penn State–Michigan game. We watch in silence for a while as Michigan pulls ahead by a touchdown. After a commercial, during which Brian explains how he could tell that the woman who brought her Accord in for an oil change wanted to sleep with him, the broadcast shows an aerial shot of Michigan stadium, teeming with maize and blue, that pulls out to include the fall leaves and artificially green grass of what must be a golf course nearby.

“Hey, Col? Do you think Daniel’s okay?”

Daniel. Our youngest brother moved to Michigan last month for an English professor job. He didn’t even tell us he was leaving until the night before he split. Which was par for the course, considering he didn’t really give a shit about any of us anyway.

“Okay, how?”

“Well, just.
Michigan
. Like, what do they even do there? Is it near Ann Arbor, where he is?”

“Nah, it’s north.”

“So he’s not teaching, like,
at
Michigan.” Brian points to the TV, and I shake my head. Brian’s never looked at a map in his life. Hell, I don’t think he’s ever been anywhere outside the Philly area except a few trips to the Jersey shore and one ill-conceived trip to New York to see a Rangers game at Madison Square Garden. He ended up getting trashed and puking into my empty popcorn bucket—well, mostly empty.

“You heard from him?” I ask, trying to sound casual. I’m definitely last on Daniel’s to-call list.

“Nope.” Brian fiddles with the remote. “Do you think—I mean, did you know he was going to move?”

“He certainly didn’t fucking discuss it with me, no.”

No, Daniel hasn’t discussed anything with me since he was about twelve—hell, he’s barely spoken to me since the day he told me he was gay. It’s like there are two different Daniels. There’s gay Daniel who couldn’t be bothered to hang around with us, who thought he was too good to let anyone know he was related to mechanics, who thought we were stupid because we didn’t walk around with our noses shoved in books the way he did. Then there’s normal Daniel, which is how I remember him from when he was a kid. Normal Daniel used to follow me around and dress like me. Hang out with us, watching Pop fix cars and running around the garage playing our brutal version of Marco Polo that usually ended in one of us walking, eyes closed, into some sharp car part or piece of machinery and Pop cursing us out as he poured alcohol on our cuts and slapped Band-Aids over them.

“It’s just weird,” Brian’s saying. “Like, I know he was busy with school and stuff, but I never thought he’d just… not be here anymore.” Brian starts biting at his cuticles, which is truly disgusting because he always has grease on his hands. “I guess he wouldn’t’ve been happy working with us anyway, though, huh? But remember how good he used to be with the cars?”

I remember. He was a natural, quickly sorting out what information was relevant to diagnosing a problem and what was secondary or unrelated.

“Remember the time that old buddy of Pop’s brought his truck in and was trying to explain some complicated problem about a fuel line? Daniel wandered in from school and looked at it and was like, ‘Hey, Mr. McShea, you got a loose gas cap, huh?’”

I snort. Daniel had been about ten, a skinny pale kid with jet-black hair that was always in his face. He wore our old hand-me-down clothes, so they hung on him, making him look even smaller. Mr. McShea had turned bright red and Pop had pulled Daniel close to his side and rubbed his head. Daniel kept a straight face until Mr. McShea turned around. Then he grinned up at Pop and over at me and ran inside to do his homework.

That memory is immediately followed by one from six years later when I came home from getting high at Xavier’s house to find Daniel on his knees in the alley outside the garage with that fuckwad Buddy McKenzie holding him down and—

My expression must be hostile because Brian changes the subject and starts talking about the Michigan marching band and how hot he thinks the girls in uniform are. I swear to god, my brother really needs to get laid.

As usual, Brian leaves a mess of beer cans, shredded napkins, and crumbs on the coffee table and between the couch cushions. They stand out, white against the dark blue fabric, and make my head buzz with the need to make them disappear. I slide the nozzle attachment onto the vacuum cleaner and go to work on the crumbs, then take the cushions off and vacuum underneath them for good measure.

When I shut the vacuum off, an unholy noise comes from outside. At first I ignore it, assuming it’s a neighbor’s TV. But it sounds like someone screaming, and unless they’re watching the horror movie I had on earlier….

If I had an ounce of sense, that’d be reason enough to keep my door shut and locked. But the noise is horrific. It sounds like a baby or something. I look out the small window in my front door and don’t see anyone outside, so I turn the doorknob slowly. As I push the door open, something streaks inside.

“What the—”

From the porch comes a scuffle and the high-pitched sound of a cat in heat. Jesus, I thought that was over for the year. Then, from just inside the door, comes an answering whimper. I shut the door and look around. Shaking under the recliner is a tiny, filthy cat—kitten, whatever. It mews and backs away from me, but its claws get stuck in the worn blue-and-white-striped fabric of the chair.

Oh man. Animals do
not
like me—not even the ones people say like everyone. And this is just a baby; I’ll probably squish it. I reach under the chair slowly and, in what I hope is a nonthreatening gesture, try to unstick it from the chair.

Not good. The kitten chomps down on my hand with teeth that are much sharper than I expected and starts scrabbling at my wrist with its back paws.

“Fuck, cat!”

It’s left bloody scratches down my arm. Jesus, I hope it’s not rabid. Probably there are animal control people or something that I could call…. I find a can of tuna in the back of the cupboard and dump it onto a plate a few feet away from the chair, trying to draw the kitten out, then go to clean the scratches it left on my arm. Within a minute, there’s a tug at my ankle, the kitten trying to crawl up my leg.

It’s filthy. I cuff my jeans and hoist the kitten into the cuff, where it grabs at the fabric, pricking my calf with its needle claws. In the time it takes to squeeze soap into a big pot and fill it with warm water, the kitten has fallen asleep, but the second it hits the water, it hisses and scrambles to get out. I hold it still with a towel and rub it clean, making sure to keep the soap out of its eyes and mouth the way my mom always did when I was little.
Tilt your head back, close your eyes, and hold your nose, love.

It tires itself out pretty quickly, and I wrap it in a towel and put it on my bed. I’m flipping through an old issue of
Rolling Stone
when the cat wakes up and pushes up out of its towel. It stretches obscenely and pads over to me, suspicious at first, then pushes into my stomach with its paws. I lie back, and as I stop paying attention to it, the kitten jumps onto my stomach and curls into a tiny ball, tucking its head beneath its tail.

After a few minutes of rumbling, it flips over onto its stomach with all four paws spread out and its tail tickling my belly button. It’s pretty fucking cute. White with a black tail and a grayish stripe running from the top of its head all the way down its back, it reminds me of the original 1965 Shelby Mustangs, which were white with a dark blue stripe, so I name it Shelby in my head.

Not that I’m keeping it or anything.

When I run a finger over its head, though, it wakes up and takes a swipe at me. Which is good. The cat may be tiny, but it sure as shit isn’t going to let me hurt it.

SATURDAY MORNING,
as soon as the first hood’s open, I lose myself in the guts of the car. Here, at least, are problems I can solve. If it’s bouncing excessively going over bumps, check for a worn shock or strut. If heat’s coming from the floor, then the catalytic converter is probably clogged. It’s a system, predictable and logical, and anything I break, anything I mess up, I can fix or replace.

Hell, given enough time and materials, I can take a car that seems beyond help and rebuild it, piece by piece. Give it a new life.

Not only does Rafael not have an oil leak, but nothing seems to be wrong with the car. It’s old, sure, but the 3 Series have great engines, some power, and good acceleration for an E-class. I drive it around the block just to be sure, and the only issues I can see are that I don’t know how such a big guy fits in such a small car and that all he has is a tape deck but no tapes. In fact, there’s nothing personal in the car at all: no change of clothes, no junk mail, no toolbox, no soccer cleats or gym bag. It’s clean inside, but not pristine. There are some cigarette burns on the passenger-side interior door and the backseats are a bit shabby. The lighter is missing from the console and there’s a ding in the windshield that hasn’t spiderwebbed. But nothing whatsoever that gives me a clue about who this guy is.

As I dial the number on my clipboard, my heart starts to race and my palms sweat.

“Yeah?” he answers, and there are voices in the background, like he’s in a park or something.

“Um, is this Rafael Guerrera?”

“Hello, Colin.”

“Hey, uh, just wanted to let you know your car’s all set. No leak. Just needed an oil change. We’re open till two if you want to come get it.”

The sound on Rafael’s side of the phone gets a little muted, like he covered it, and I hear sharp words in Spanish.

“Two, huh? I don’t think I’ll be able to get there before you close. Are you open tomorrow?”

“Nope. Monday, eight thirty to six.”

“Monday, then. Thank you, Colin.” The noise on his end crescendos to a crash that cuts off the call, and I’m surprised to find that I’m a little… disappointed?

Sam, my older brother, spends Saturdays in the office getting us caught up on paperwork, but Pop and Brian come out of the house around ten, when the usual Saturday stream of quick fixes begins. Oil changes, tire rotations, flats, busted windshields. Saturdays are dull but they always move fast. Hell, even Brian can hold his own with most Saturday issues.

“Maybe we should paint,” Pop muses over a beer after we close.

“The garage?” I ask. It’s been the same yellowish-tan since I can remember.

“The outside of the shop,” Pop says. “Maybe brighten the place up a little.”

Every few years Pop undertakes some scheme to try and make the shop more successful, and every few years he leaves it uncompleted. We have some clients that Pop brought over from his last job when he opened this place. They’re loyal and they don’t give a crap what color the outside of the shop is. There are the neighborhood clients who come to us because we’re the closest garage. Some come back, some don’t, but it’s a steady stream. It’s clear who Pop is hoping to entice with a scheme to “brighten the place up,” then: the twenty- and thirtysomething hipsters who’ve swarmed to the neighborhood in the last ten years. Daniel always called them gentrifiers, whatever that means. They look just like him.

“Sure. What’re you thinking?”

“Shit, I dunno. What’s popular these days?”

“Um.” I’m not really the right one to ask. “There’s a new place—opened at, uh, 22nd and Washington. Kermit’s. It’s cakes and pizza.” Xavier dragged me there once. Said he wanted to check out their cupcakes for Angela’s birthday. They had a bunch of fancy flavors that he thought she’d love.

“The outside of it’s cool—it’s like an old-school tattoo of pink roses and black vines. Kinda like—”

“Pink roses?” Pop grunts. “Sounds faggy. I don’t want flowers on the outside of my shop.”

Shame curls up from my stomach like a snake. “Right. I didn’t mean—I just meant, the style—”

“Psh,” he snorts. “Never mind. Maybe a new sign.”

“Yeah, sure. Sounds good. You want me to look into it?”

He pats me on the back and pulls himself up to get another beer.

“Yeah. Thanks, kid.” He runs his rough hand over my buzzed hair. “You do a good job, Colin. A real good job.”

I can’t remember the last time Pop has touched me that wasn’t to slap me on the back or push me out of his way. Usually he acts like it’s his due to have us working in the shop, carrying out his plans, playing by his rules. His compliments come irregularly, and always just at the moment I’m almost fed up with him.

The joy of his approval burns away the shame, and I feel lighter than I have in months. I remember this feeling from when I was a kid. Pop would muck around with friends’ cars in what was then our garage, pointing and asking us what was wrong with them, how to fix them. As the oldest, Sam was quickest, for a while. He had a good memory and could always repeat back ways of fixing things that Pop had explained. Brian didn’t really try, just wanted to play the game because the rest of us were. Daniel was better, even as the youngest, and he could make leaps of logic that Sam couldn’t. That was before Daniel lost all interest in cars, and in us.

I was the best, though. I could remember things like Sam and come up with creative solutions like Daniel. I cared the most, too. I wanted to be just like Pop and bring cars back to life. A few years later, when Pop opened his own shop, expanding our garage into the empty lot next door, I spent almost all my free time there, watching Pop and the men who worked with him, learning everything I could. And every time he nodded at me, clapped me on the back, or grunted at me to go ahead with the repair I’d laid out, I felt it. That warm, fizzy feeling.

MONDAY MORNING
it’s as if the sky opened up and dumped every single asshole with a license to operate a motor vehicle into the shop. When I come back from getting a cup of coffee, I find Sam contending with some dick who seems to think that because he googled “why does my car make that noise,” he’s qualified to argue with Sam about the work that needs to be done. Sam, always diplomatic, is being stupidly polite because—I’m sure—this guy has a nice SUV and the repairs would be expensive.