High Voltage

My bus died somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Argentina, and I mean the actual middle. The driver said a truck might be by before dark. I stood at the side of the road for two hours with my backpack and my doubts.

I'm Helene, by the way. Twenty-eight, primary school teacher, on holiday break, and apparently stupid enough to take a solo trip to the edge of the map. My sister told me not to. I told her adventure requires a certain amount of stupidity. I stand by that.

The truck came around six, big and ugly, with a power-line repair crew's name painted on the door. It slowed and a woman leaned out the window.

"Bus broke down?" she called.

"Very dead," I said.

"Well, hop in. We're going to the substation. It's not a village, but it's closer than here."

"You're a lifesaver."

"Don't thank me yet. The cab's crowded." She grinned. "I'm Marnie. Foreman."

I climbed up. Marnie was thirty-four, stocky, sunburned, with the kind of laugh that made you trust her before you knew anything else. There was already a man in the cab, wedged against the far window with a laptop bag on his knees.

"Helene," I said, offering a hand.

"Elias," he said. His accent was strange, English words with something Spanish underneath. "Speech pathologist. I'm riding with the crew this week."

"Speech pathologist? Out here?"

"They have me assessing some of the lineworkers. A couple of the older guys have trouble with word finding. Occupational thing, possibly. Nobody's sure." He shrugged. "It pays better than you'd think."

I squeezed in next to him. There was barely room. A third man swung up into the cab a minute later, huge, easygoing, smelling of sunscreen.

"Damien," he said. "Ignore the smell, it's the sunscreen."

"I didn't say anything," I said.

"You were thinking it. Everyone thinks it."

Marnie honked twice for no reason and we rolled.

"So what's your story?" Elias asked me. "Tourist? Researcher? Fugitive?"

"Teacher. On break. I'm going to a village two hundred kilometers past where you're going, which I understand is a problem."

"It's a problem," Marnie said over her shoulder. "But we'll sort you out. There's a woman at the substation who drives supplies down on Thursdays. Today's Tuesday."

"Tuesday. Great."

"Two days of stew and card games," Damien said. "You'll love it or you'll cry. Statistically it's one of the two."

Elias laughed. He had a nice laugh, low. I noticed things about him in the dim cab. Thirty-one, maybe. Good hands. He caught me noticing and didn't pretend he hadn't.

"So," he said. "A teacher. What do you teach?"

"Everything. It's a small school. Eight-year-olds mostly. Reading, some math, a horrifying amount of glue-based art."

"Glue-based art," he repeated. "That's a phrase I'll be stealing."

"Take it. I have others."

"Give me one."

"Hmm. The children call long division 'the long sleep.' I don't know why. I've stopped asking."

"The long sleep," he said, grinning. "That's genuinely disturbing."

"Teaching is disturbing, mostly. Rewarding, but disturbing. What about you? How does a speech pathologist end up in a truck in the middle of Argentina?"

"A grant. A boring, bureaucratic grant. Someone has to assess whether the noise exposure is contributing to language trouble in these crews. I say yes or no, they pay me, I fly home."

"And in between you ride in trucks with strangers."

"Best part of the job," he said. "Well. Second best part, maybe."

I looked at him. "What's the first?"

"Talking to people who talk back," he said, and held my eyes a beat too long, and I felt it in my stomach like a dropped elevator.

Marnie honked again. "None of that in my cab," she said, without turning around.

"None of what?" Elias asked, all innocence.

"You know what. I've been driving crews for eleven years. I know what 'second best part' means."

"Your cab is a hostile workplace," Elias said.

"My cab is the only cab. Behave."

Damien snorted and unwrapped something that looked like dried meat. "So Helene. You always hitch rides with strangers, or is this a special occasion?"

"Special occasion. My usual policy is to be eaten by wolves responsibly."

"Responsible wolf-feeding," Elias said. "Very sensible."

The road got worse. The truck lurched and I slid into him, shoulder to hip, and neither of us hurried to fix it.

"Sorry," I said.

"Wasn't complaining," he said.

"None of that in my cab," Marnie said again, louder.

"You keep saying that," Elias said.

"Because you keep doing that."

The sun went down orange over flat scrubland. I asked Elias where his accent was from and he lit up like I'd asked about his children.

"Argentina. Buenos Aires originally. My family moved to London when I was eight, so I grew up with both languages fighting over my mouth."

"That's why you sound like that. Half of each."

"Exactly. Nobody can place me anywhere. In London they hear the Spanish. Here they hear the English. It's a great party trick and a terrible identity."

"Say something in Spanish for me."

"Why?"

"Because I like the sound of it and I'm on holiday and I can do what I want."

He thought, then said something long and smooth and low.

"What did you say?"

"I said the road to the substation is long and the company is better than expected."

"That's smooth. Suspiciously smooth."

"I rehearsed it," he admitted. "During your glue-based art speech."

I laughed and hit his arm and Damien looked over with a big grin and said, "Marnie, they're doing it."

"Doing what?" Elias and I said at the same time.

"Flirting. In my cab. During work hours."

"You're on a night shift," Elias said. "These aren't work hours."

"Truck hours are all work hours. I own the truck."

"You don't own the truck," Damien said.

"I spiritually own the truck."

We bounced over a washout and everyone swore at once, which was somehow the moment I felt completely at home with these three strangers. Two hours in a cab and I was already laughing at their private jokes. That should have worried me. It didn't. Holiday brain, maybe. Or the fact that Elias's arm was resting against mine, warm, unmoving, clearly on purpose.

The substation lights came up ahead, a low orange glow against a black sky full of stars. The pressure cookers on the camp stove outside would be hissing already, Damien said, sealing stew for the midnight break.

"Stew first," Marnie announced. "Then work. Then more stew."

"What's the work?" I asked.

"Line's down four kilometers out. Storm took a whole span. We fix it tonight, power's back by morning."

"Can I watch?"

"Can you... what?"

"Watch. I've never seen power lines fixed. I teach children about circuits with a battery and a bulb. It feels fraudulent to have never seen the real thing."

Marnie glanced back and something in her face changed, warmed. "You can watch. You can even hold things. Can you follow instructions?"

"I'm a teacher. I give instructions. But I can learn."

"She'll be fine," Elias said. "She's the long sleep type."

"The what?" Damien asked.

"Long story," I said.

The truck crunched to a stop and everyone climbed out into the cold. Elias handed me down with casual ease, but his hand stayed on my waist a second longer than balance required, and I looked up at him under the work lights and thought, well. Two days in the middle of nowhere. Anything could happen.

"Stew," Marnie said, pointing. "Then introductions to the rest of the crew. Then work."

"And after work?" I asked.

Marnie looked at me, then at Elias, and grinned wide.

"After work," she said, "is when things get interesting out here. You'll see."

The camp stove sat under a folding awning, and the pressure cookers were hissing away like dragons. Marnie grabbed a rag and knocked the valve off one of them. Steam rolled out and the smell hit me right away. Hot, spicy, meaty. My stomach made an actual noise.

"Oh," I said. "Oh, that's unfair. I've been running on bus station crackers since noon."

"Sit," Marnie said, and kicked a crate toward me. "Crew eats first. That's the rule. But crew also waited two extra hours because of you, so tonight the rule bends."

The rest of the crew came in from the dark, five men and a woman named Pilar, all hard hats and dirty hands and grins. Elias sat next to me on the crate. Damien ladled out stew into metal bowls and handed mine over with a flourish.

"Careful," he said. "Marnie makes it with these little red peppers. Local. She calls them friendly. They are not friendly."

"They're honest," Marnie said.

I took a bite and my whole face caught fire. "Oh my god!"

"Told you," Damien said, delighted.

"Wine helps," Elias said, and produced a box of it from somewhere under his seat like a magician. "Medical professionals recommend it."

"You're a speech guy," Pilar said.

"I recommend it for the throat. Very professional."

We ate. The stew was honestly incredible under the fire, sweet and hot and thick, and the box of wine went around twice, and Elias told the story of how he'd once mispronounced a word so badly during an assessment that a whole crew started calling a tool by his wrong word for a month. Damien laughed so hard he nearly dropped his bowl.

"Every time I say that word now," Pilar said, "I hear your voice saying it wrong."

"That's called learning," Elias said. "I'm a very effective teacher."

"Helene's a teacher," Damien said.

"Primary school," I said. "Twenty-eight years old and I spend my days with eight-year-olds, which sounds like a joke until you realize they're smarter than most adults."

"True," Elias said.

"Rude," I said.

"Both can be true."

Marnie leaned back against the truck tire, bowl empty, and fanned herself with her hat. The night was warm for the plains, the work lights buzzing, and there was a loose, happy feeling around the fire that I recognized from hostels and long train rides, the feeling where everyone has decided to like everyone.

"Know what this heat does to people?" Marnie said. "Makes them frisky. Eleven years of night shifts, I know. Stew and wine and hot nights. Somebody always ends up kissing somebody."

"Marnie," Pilar said, scandalized and not at all scandalized.

"I'm stating facts. Occupational observation. It's like Elias's grant, but for kissing."

Damien, easy as anything, reached over and put his hand on my knee. Just that. Warm palm on my knee, and he looked at me while he did it, eyebrows up, a question in it more than a move.

"This okay?" he said.

My heart did something silly. "It's okay," I said. "Just okay. Don't get ambitious."

"Never ambitious," he said, grinning. "Patient."

Elias turned and looked at me. Really looked. Under the work lights his face was all planes and honesty and I felt that dropped-elevator feeling again, stronger.

"Helene," he said. "Can I kiss you?"

"You need Marnie's permission too, apparently," I managed.

"Absolutely I do," Marnie said. "Granted. God, I've been waiting since the cab."

"Everyone's been waiting since the cab," Damien said. "It was painful. We had to watch you two flirt like it was a spectator sport."

Elias put his hand on my jaw, slow, giving me a whole second to change my mind, and then he kissed me. Soft at first. Then not soft. He tasted like red wine and stew and he made a small sound into my mouth that went straight down my spine, and I listened to myself answer it, which embarrassed me completely and I didn't care.

Somewhere out there, Damien said, "Finally," and Pilar whistled, and Marnie said, "None of that in my truck," and then immediately, "Actually, forget it, I retract the rule."

I pulled back. Elias's forehead stayed against mine.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi. You rehearsed that too?"

"Only for four hours."

Damien's hand was still on my knee, and now, slow, watching my face the whole time, he slid it up my thigh. Not far. A few inches. Enough that my breath changed.

"Still okay?" he asked.

"Still okay," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant it to. "Where's this going, exactly? I'm on holiday. I was promised power lines."

"You'll get your power lines," Marnie said. She stood, brushed off her trousers, and looked around at all of us with the particular satisfaction of a woman whose forecast had come true. "Here's how it works out here, Helene. Nobody does anything they don't want. Nobody does anything without asking. That's the only rule I've got and it covers everything, stew