I'm not sure what I said while I was in the garage. I was in shock. He certainly didn't say anything or let on about anything. Of course that might be because his boss was standing in the doorway to the office behind me and listening to what was being said.
The mechanic was dressed in loose-fitting coveralls—and maybe just that and the boots, because he didn't have a shirt on underneath them. It was New York in the Christmas season. I was bundled up in a long leather coat and gloves, and it made me shiver to see him clothed so lightly. The service garage doors were closed, but it wasn't warm in the car bays—and it was drafty. The armhole slits of the coveralls went midway down his hips and it was clear he wasn't wearing anything underneath. He was tall and sort of gangly here in the garage of the custom car repair shop. He looked sort of like a stork or a ferret in the light of day. He was something over thirty—maybe closer to forty than twenty. Nothing about him was that attractive, and yet he was sexy to me in ways I couldn't explain but I certainly would feel and reacted to.
"It's the oil pan," he was saying. "The rattle is because it came loose from its screws . . ."
I think I blushed when he said "screws." I know I had every reason to. He was drying oil off his hands while he talked with a rag that was oilier than his hands were. The hands were big, the fingers long and slender. They almost made me hyperventilate. But then I knew where those hands had been, what they had done. Once a man had fucked you it was hard to think of him as anything but a man who has had his way with you.
". . . but you have another problem. While the pan was loose and hanging . . ." there was a provocative word again; he may be no looker, but he definitely was hung. ". . . you ran over something that put a dent in it. I've tightened the screws, but you really need to have a new pan put in. Where it's dented is likely to give and then you'll have a mess on your hands. We can replace that, but for a baby like this, we'll have to order it. Say, maybe you bring it back around 4:00 p.m. next Thursday? Drive it as little as possible between now and then." Even the world "drive" cut into me like a knife.
The baby he was talking about was a classic 1956 Thunderbird convertible. Vijay had bought it for me for when we were stateside. Vijay bought me just about everything I owned—and he didn't stint on cost or style.
"Uh, OK, I think I can do that," I managed to say. He was giving me a noncommittal look. No smile or knowing sneer or anything. Maybe he didn't recognize me.
"Come on into the office, and we'll write it up and make a note of the next appointment," the office manager was saying.
"Uh, sure. Right." I turned to follow the office manager out of the garage bay and then turned and smiled wanly at the mechanic and said, "Uh, thanks. That wasn't as serious as I thought."
"Good," the mechanic said. "It's a sweet ride."
That made me almost hyperventilate yet again, but I looked sharply at him, and there didn't seem to be any double entendre in his voice, even though that was the second time he'd said that to me. Indeed, he didn't really look smart enough to be engaging in word play.
Still he had me hard. The last time he'd said that to me was when he said I had been a sweet ride. I turned and fled into the office.
When I was finished paying the bill for today's work, the baby blue Thunderbird was out on the concrete apron in front of the garage and the mechanic was nowhere to be seen. I drove off and traveled—gingerly, looking for potholes to avoid and trying to follow the tracks in the snow-covered side streets that other cars had plowed—to the new symphony hall that had been built for Vijay's orchestra next to the Bronx Zoo. Although I'd been trembling, I managed to maneuver into the parking garage under the building and parked in my slot, next to Vijay's, which was empty because I'd driven him in from New Rochelle that morning. I'd have to switch cars we used until Thursday.
I put my head down on the steering wheel, closed my eyes, and conjured up the scene from two Saturday's ago—when Vijay was here, conducting one of Alan Horanhess's mystical Armenian symphonies and I was slumming across the river in Chelsea.
Somewhat frustrated at the aloofness of Vijay and him being consumed with Christmas concerts and pulling together the symphony's new season program, I'd searched until I had found a leather bar. I stuck out like a sore thumb there in my preppy button-down shirt, khaki's, and loafers, without socks, on top of my all-American junior accountant looks, which pretty much was what I was for Vijay at the symphony in addition to being his bed partner.
I'm in good shape and enjoy blond good looks and haven't hit thirty yet, so I drew some interest in the smoke- and obscenities-filled air with a slim guy in tight black leather pants and not very much else doing a bump and grind to loud music on a pole on a small platform jutting out from the side of the bar. I guess that's why I went in the bar—to assure myself that I could still draw men's attention and catcalls. There were catcalls aplenty. The pole dancer was getting a few more than I was, but he was working harder for them than I was.
One guy, leaning into the bar, stood out in looking at me like he was looking through me, like he had no interest in me at all. Of course that meant I was interested in him. He certainly wasn't a looker. He was thin and tall and rather gawkish, with a face that was all sharp angles and a mop of greasy black hair. Still, I'd say he was muscular, in a tight, sinewy way, in that there were knots of muscles in all the right places and he was hard bodied, without an ounce of fat on him. His veins stood out in a pattern that made me want to follow them with my tongue and that had me going hard for him even though there shouldn't have been anything about him that was appealing.
It was a biker's leather bar. He was in black leather—tight black leather pants, biker boots, nothing on top except for a black leather harness. He had a funny thing around his waist for a belt, and I shuddered when I realized that it was the strands of a black leather hand whip, with the handle dangling down one of his slim hips. He was covered in crude tattoos that looked like he might have burned them in himself when he was drunk, and there were silver bars pierced in his nipples. His chest was covered with a matting of curly black hair, which ran down into the front of his low-rise trousers in a line that radiated in a way that emphasized his tight six pack as it descended.