One Last Grease Monkey Goodbye

I got to Hooper's Garage a little after two on Sunday, and my stomach was already in knots about shipping out Monday. Ophelia Fredericks, fifty-two years old, combat engineer, and I still get jittery walking into that shop. Jonas Hooper has that effect on me, two years now and counting. We met at the Riverside Speedway car show back when we were both fifty, and he leaned against my brother's old Impala and asked if I knew anything about small blocks. Well, I did, and that was that, more or less.

The main bay smelled like gear oil and the cheap coffee he keeps in a dented percolator by the workbench. The race car was up on the lift with its guts half out, and Jonas was under it on the creeper, only his boots sticking out. I heard a wrench clank around before I saw his face.

"Don't tell me," I said, dropping my duffel by the toolbox. "Third gear again."

He rolled out backward, forearms shiny to the elbow, and grinned up at me. Glasses pushed up on his forehead, gray stubble, the whole grease monkey picture. "Third gear again. You know me too well, sweetheart. Hang on, let me find a rag." He wiped his hands on something that had stopped being a rag years ago and stood up, kissing me quick on the cheek. "You good? You look wired."

"Pre-deployment jitters. I've cleaned my rifle twice and it's still in the armory. Don't ask me how."

He laughed and got a funny little look, like he was keeping a secret. "Well. I might have something for that. A surprise, back in the back room."

"For me? Jonas, I told you not to spend money on a going away thing."

"It's not a going away thing. It's, uh." He rubbed his hands together, which for him is the equivalent of blushing. "It's a gear. Modified. I got it special out of the classifieds, took me three weeks to hunt one down."

Now, here's where my brain went sideways. Around the barracks, and honestly around my generation, "gear" has come to mean one particular kind of high-end toy, the rechargeable kind with the app and the settings. My bunkmate Sofia bought one in the spring and wouldn't shut up about it. So when my big strong mechanic says he's hunted down a special gear from the classifieds and it's waiting in the back room, well.

"Jonas," I said, and I could feel my face going warm. "You did not."

"Did not what?"

"A gear. From the classifieds. For the back room." I raised my eyebrows at him.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and turned a little pink around the ears. "It's, uh. It's one of a kind. You'll have to test it out yourself, I figured."

"Oh my god," I said, and swatted his arm. "You sneaky old devil. Sofia has one and she talks about it like it's a religious experience. I can't believe you."

"I can't believe it either," he said, which I took for modesty. Bless him, he was being modest. Or so I thought.

The back room of Hooper's Garage is just a couch that creaks if you breathe near it, a mini fridge, and a wall of trophies from his pit crew days. My mind was already three laps ahead, let me tell you. Two years of us and the man has never once bought me something like that without me dropping a hundred hints first.

That's when the bay door rattled up and Jamie Jenkin walked in. Jamie is eighteen, some kind of junior pit crew volunteer, son of one of Jonas's colleagues, and he idolizes Jonas the way only a teenage boy can idolize a man with a torque wrench. He had a pizza box under one arm.

"Hey boss, heard you were wrestling the transmission, thought I'd bring lunch, oh hey ma'am, sorry ma'am." He stopped dead in the middle of the bay, looking from Jonas to me like he'd walked in on something, which he absolutely had not, yet.

"We're looking at schematics," Jonas said, way too fast, and grabbed a binder off the workbench. He shoved it open in front of us and we both stared at an engine diagram like it owed us money. "Timing chain routing. Very complicated. She's got a security clearance, you know, Jamie, she understands these things."

"Oh. Cool. Cool cool cool!" Jamie set the pizza down and hovered. "Does the schematic say when the car might actually run again, because Marv's got money on the next race."

"Jamie. Pizza's for after. Schematics are for now."

"Right. Yep. I'll just, uh, sweep something." And he swept, badly, in the far corner, sneaking looks at us every ten seconds.

I leaned close to Jonas under the cover of the binder and kept my voice down. "I cannot wait to test drive your surprise tonight, you absolute menace. The couch in the back room, after he leaves?"

Jonas made a strangled noise and nodded at the binder. "The, uh. The timing chain. Yes. Test drive. Tonight." His ears had gone from pink to red and I figured it was just because Jamie was standing right there. Poor man. I winked at him and he dropped the binder.

"Boss, you okay?"

"Fine! Fine. Get the torque specs out of the truck, Jamie, and don't come back until you find them."

"They're in your shirt pocket, boss."

"Then get them out of there and go."

Jamie fled with the pizza box, and the bay door rattled back down, and Jonas sagged against the lift as if he had run a marathon. I was already unzipping my jacket, thinking about that creaky couch and whatever was hidden back there with a bow on it, probably, knowing him.

"So," I said, walking my fingers up his greasy forearm. "Show me."

"Show you."

"Don't tease, Jonas. Three weeks in the classifieds. Show me this gear before I lose my mind."

He looked at me, and then he looked at the race car, and then he looked at the back room door, and I watched a whole wrestling match happen behind his glasses. He opened his mouth twice before anything came out.

"Well," he said finally. "It's in a box. In the back room. Under the couch."

"Under the couch?"

"Wrapping was, uh. Didn't have wrapping. Come on, then, before I chicken out."

He took my hand and led me across the bay, and I was grinning like an idiot the whole way, and the man was sweating like he'd just set a lap record. I figured he was shy about it. The man rebuilt transmissions for a living but the man cannot take a compliment, so a gift like this? Sure. Shy tracks.

The back room door clicked shut behind us and he knelt down by the couch, muttering something under his breath that I chose not to hear, and came up with a shoebox that had CLASSIFIEDS DOT COM printed on the