He looked at, and through, the picture of a muscular shirtless mechanic on the cover of an erotic novel she was reading. A strategy within his mind began to form, he wanted out of this gloomy marriage, peacefully, and maybe he could make things better for everyone.
“You should be a mechanic,” he said. “You’d be the sexiest mechanic ever.” She looked up from her book, flashed her eye-brows at him, and smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her smile in weeks.
A red 1970’s one-ton service truck roared up to the businessman’s tire store. A greasy man climbed out of the cab and strode through the main door, leaving a hand print on the glass and making the bell on the door tinkle. He gave a toothy grin to the lady at the counter and walked passed her into the businessman’s office, in the back.
“I see ya got a new girl up front. She ain’t as cute as the last one, but she’s got bigger titties” said the mechanic loudly as he sat down in a chair in front of the desk. He wiped his nose with his greasy hand.
The businessman was on the phone, he smiled at Phil and said “just a minute” then continued with his droning conversation. Phil fidgeted, then turned around in the chair and leered at the desk clerk’s butt. The businessman smiled at Phil as he set down the receiver.
Phil heard the conversation end and turned his attention back to the man behind the desk. “She’s gotta nice ass too,” Phil said.
“I need truck six and fourteen serviced, and there’s something wrong with truck five, won’t start” said the businessman, “and there are some lights out on one of the trucks. I can’t remember which ones. Could you check all their lights?” he added.
“Six and fourteen need serviced, five needs work, and lights, no problem. Is that all?” said Phil.
“There’s one other thing I want to ask you,” said the businessman.
“Anything,” said Phil.
“You need an assistant?” asked the businessman.
“Not really,” said Phil.
“More of an apprentice, she’ll be starting tomorrow. Teach her everything you know,” said the businessman.
Phil jerked his head back, his face flushed red. “I can’t afford. . .” he began to protest.
“I’ll throw you enough work to cover her wages,” said the businessman.
“How much does she know about turning wrenches?” asked Phil.
“Nothing,” said the businessman.
I was sitting at the kitchen table listening to Phil tell the story of how he and Kim met. Kim was cooking dinner. They fed me really well, the whole time I worked for them. I worked for them because Kim had been hurt. They went on vacation in Montana, and got in an accident that broke Kim’s back. She wore a back brace, sometimes a neck brace, sometimes she walked with a walking stick. There were a few weeks where she wore a full hallo, and looked like a robot. Her condition healed, and regressed many times. She handled pain with grace.
A blue macaw named Poncho was dancing and saying “cracker, cracker, cracker,” in a cage behind me.
Phil continued his story. “Well, I sure wasn’t happy about having an uninvited helper along, but I couldn’t say ‘no’ cause he was my best customer. So she started riding along, an I told him ‘I can’t be spending all day with your wife, you know what kind of a dog I am,’ but he wouldn’t listen.
“I never did too good before Kim came along, barely ate. I can’t read, so I had to trust the customers to write-up their own bills, and to pay up, but Kim is good at the business stuff, and that’s all good, but the best thing for our business has been that Kim likes to flirt. She’d rub all up on those drivers, and chat ‘em up, and before long we had more calls than we could handle. Her big titties didn’t hurt things either. We cleared almost a million dollars some years, before the economy tanked. Wish we’d saved some of it.
“She an I worked together for about a week before we fucked. I tried to stay outta her pants, outa respect for her husband, but she cornered me and raped me,” said Phil. I looked at Kim, and she gave me a “Cheshire Cat” grin. I blushed.
“Well, I felt real bad about it. I went to her husband, with my tail between my legs. I told him ‘I messed up, I banged your wife. I knew this was a bad idea.’ Well her ol’ man said ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m try’n to get rid of her,’” said Phil. I looked at Kim, and blinked nervously. She shrugged and nodded in affirmation.
Having a broken back was hard on Kim’s mind. She complained about being stuck in the house, about feeling useless. Phil was constantly on the phone with her while we drove around.
Their business was amazing. They would get a call that a semi-truck was broke down on the side of the road. They would ask a few questions, stop and buy a part or two, repair the truck while it was on the side of the road, or in a parking lot, and be on their way. They also worked for companies that had large fleets of trucks. Phil could do the services, and make sure the trucks could pass a DOT inspection, on site.
Phil said, “It’s called K & P Truck Repair, Kim and Phil Truck Repair. I’m a damn good mechanic, but I’m nothing without her.”
The new service truck was amazing. It had cabinets filled with tools, drawers stocked with fuses and light bulbs, a crane, an arc welder, a sump pump to suck up dropped oil after a service, and all kinds of other bells and whistles.
I worked off the books, for less than the minimum wage, happily, because the job was so fun, hard at times, but fun. I was always learning new stuff, going new places, meeting new people. I could see why Kim loved this life so much.
“One time we changed out a rear axle on a dump truck, on the side of the road, in foot deep snow” said Kim.
“That’s about the time we decided to rent the shop. We’re getting older, and all the working outside was getting to be too much,” said Phil. The shop was a large tin building near the back fence of a large gravel pit.
I first met Kim at karaoke night, at the bar.
“The first time I saw you, I thought you were Amish” Kim told me. She was one of the first people I met in Oregon. She and her friends insisted that I sit with them, and not by myself.
When it was my turn to sing, she would go outside and smoke. I would start a song, and hear her say “This is going to suck,” but she would also tell me when a song sounded good. Her blunt honesty helped me improve.
After her daughter turned twenty-one, and after she had her baby, I saw Kim and her daughter every Wednesday, religiously. Kim liked to sing “Pour some sugar on me.” When she sang the “Pussy Song” I always got embarrassed and left.
Phil and Kim knew how to have fun. When the money was rolling in, they vacationed in Mexico, several times.
They had a car hauling trailer, with an elevator-lift battery in it that could run a heater and lights for weeks, and five snowmobiles, that they pulled with their truck and camper. They played in the snow every winter.
They were both very sexually liberal. In the morning when I met them at their house for work, I passed the TV that always had fleshy flickers of porn on. I’d get a cup of coffee in the kitchen, where Poncho would say “morning” in Phil’s voice as I reached for the coffee pot.
“Yea, we had to replace the ridge beam in the house with an iron I-beam for our sex room, to hold the swings,” Phil told me once. I blush, just thinking about it. Phil harassed me mercilessly because he loved to make me blush. Kim saw that I was uncomfortable and tried to reign Phil in, but he is who he is. People at the bar harassed me for working for “the swingers.”
My conservative religious background told me that Phil and Kim shouldn’t have been happy together, but they were.
You might have noticed that I’m speaking of them in the past-tense. There was an accident.
Phil and Kim were finishing up some work, standing beside each other, in their shop, on Thanksgiving Day. Phil ran a piece of metal across a grinder, shooting long sparks. An oxygen bottle was leaking, there was an explosion, which killed Kim instantly, but didn’t touch Phil.
