He's Never Once Looked

"He offered me a job," Jo says. "Twice. Service director. Big office, company truck, a parking spot with my name on it."

You're sitting on the tailgate of your pickup at nine at night, the shop lights off behind you, both of you eating cold casserole out of the dish with two forks. The river is black and loud with frogs.

"When?"

"Last spring. And Christmas." She shrugs. "Said no both times."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you'd do this face." She points her fork at you. "The face you're doing right now. Like you're about to go fight a dealership."

"I'm not going to fight a dealership."

"You absolutely would. You'd lose. He's got a lot of lawyers and a really nice jaw." She takes the last bite of the casserole, which was supposed to be yours. "Forget Dax. We've got ninety days and a bank to impress."

You don't forget Dax. You can't. By Wednesday, Burgoyne coupons are tucked under windshield wipers in the grocery-store lot. By Friday, there's a billboard on Route 7 with a cartoon of a crying wrench: Why Pay More?

The second week is worse. You do six jobs on Monday and two on Tuesday. On Wednesday you do zero, and you sit in the office and stare at the quarter-only vending machine for an hour while Jo rebuilds a carburetor for nobody, just to keep her hands busy.

On Thursday, the loan officer at First Riverbank calls with what she describes as a friendly check-in. It is not friendly. It is mostly the words revenue and trend and October thirty-first.

You hang up and say a word your mom would ground you for.

"That bad?" Jo asks from under a Buick.

"We need a big account. Something steady."

She rolls out on the creeper and looks at you upside down. "Riverbend."

You look at her. She looks at you. You've been finishing each other's half-thoughts since you were sixteen; it's the only kind of conversation you're both good at.

"Fausto's fleet contract," you say. "Water trucks, pace cars, the tow rig, the grader."

"Eleven vehicles. Every week of the season. He hates dealerships."

"He does hate dealerships."

"And he's throwing that gala Saturday to raise money for the new grandstand roof." Jo sits up. "Everybody'll be there. The bank. The council. Fausto, three bourbons deep and sentimental."

"So we go."

"So you go." She lies back down and rolls under the Buick. "You're the people person. I'm the person person. The person who is under a car."

"Jo."

"I don't own a dress, Ethan."

"Wear the coveralls."

"To a gala. In a tent. With string lights." From under the car comes a clank and a curse. "Great idea. Love it. Let's both get thrown out."

You can't sleep Thursday night, which means at two in the morning you're on a stool at Saathoff's with a slice of rhubarb pie you don't want. Jo shows up ten minutes later, which means she couldn't sleep either, which she will never admit.

"Proprietors," Orville says, refilling coffee nobody asked for. "Up late. Worried."

"We're fine," Jo says.

"You're broke and Dax Burgoyne is circling you like a turkey vulture with a car payment." Orville leans on the counter. Behind him, on the corkboard next to the health certificate, there's a sheet of yellow legal paper you've seen a thousand times and never read. Dates in columns. Names. Dollar amounts. "It's a hard time. Hard times bring people together."

"Orv," Jo says warningly.

"I'm just saying. Some people would look at a hard time and see an opportunity to, for example, finally—"

"Orv."

"Fine. Fine." He wanders down the counter to deal with a trucker.

"What's the sheet?" you ask.

"What sheet?"

"On the corkboard. The yellow one. It's been up since we were in high school."

Jo shrugs, eyes on her pie. "Probably the Little League raffle."

"In 2016?"

"Long raffle."

You get up to use the bathroom, and when you come back down the little hallway past the pay phone that hasn't worked since before you were born, you hear Jo's voice, low, not meant for anyone.

"He's never once looked, Orv. Not once. Ten years."

"Maybe he needs glasses."

"Maybe I need to stop waiting for a guy who thinks I'm a wrench."

You stop in the hallway. There's a guy? Jo's waiting on a guy? Jo, who hasn't dated anybody seriously since a bass player in the eleventh grade, who once threw a man's phone in the river for calling her "sweetheart"? It's got to be a customer. Somebody who comes into the shop. That guy with the Mustang, maybe, who keeps finding reasons to need a tire pressure check. He brought her a coffee once. She drank it.

You feel weirdly, stupidly annoyed about the Mustang guy.

You come out of the hallway loud, so they'll hear you coming. Jo's already talking about torque specs. Orville looks at you over his glasses like a disappointed grandfather.

"What?" you say.

"Nothing," Orville says. "Eat your pie. Like a child."

Friday, the shop is so slow you clean the bathroom. Twice. Jo spends the afternoon on the phone in the parking lot, pacing, talking low, and when you come out with two Cokes she hangs up fast and shoves the phone in her back pocket.

"Who was that?"

"Spam call."

"For forty minutes?"

"Very persuasive spam." She takes the Coke and drinks half of it in one go, not looking at you. Her ears are pink. Jo's ears only go pink when she's lying or when she's been under a car in August, and she hasn't been under a car since lunch.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." She wipes her mouth on the back of her wrist and stares at the river for a long moment. Then she says, like it's being dragged out of her by a tow chain: "Fine. I'll go."

"To the gala?"

"No, to the moon. Yes, to the gala, dipstick. You can't sweet-talk Fausto by yourself. You'll start talking about thread pitch and he'll fall asleep in his bourbon." She turns the can in her hands. "But I've got a condition."

"Name it."

She finally looks at you, and something in her face is different. Nervous. You've seen Jo stand in front of a running engine with her hair tied back and a timing light in her hand and not flinch. You've never seen her nervous.

"You don't laugh when you see me," she says. "Swear it, Ethan. On the Mutt."