Pit Nurse

The shop smelled like grease and rubber, and the fluorescents buzzed over the polished concrete like the place was nervous too. It was nine on a Thursday, two days after Zeke had sent me a text that said, "If you ever want to stop pretending, come by after close."

I'm Ariel, I'm twenty-eight, and I'm a nurse. Which means I should know better than to walk into a dark auto shop alone at night. But Zeke and I have been circling each other at every regional event for three years, ever since we met at the Riverside competition when I was twenty-five and he beat me by four hundredths of a second and then smirked about it for a full season. I smirked back the next season. That's how it went. Rivals. Enemies, if you're feeling dramatic.

And then I got dumped last month, and something in me snapped loose.

I heard the roll-up door grind behind me. Zeke came out of the back office wiping his hands on a red rag. He's thirty-three, built like he lifts engines for a living, and he had that same smirk he's had since Riverside.

"You came," he said.

"You dared me."

"I texted you."

"That's a dare where I'm from."

He laughed, and that surprised me. Three years of sniping at each other and I'd forgotten he could laugh like that. Arnie Moreau, his lead mechanic, came out from behind the pickup truck on the lift. He's forty-five and has worked for Zeke for ten years, and he looked at both of us like he already knew how the night would go.

"I'll lock up out back," Arnie said. "Y'all do whatever it is you're gonna do. I don't need details."

"Night, Arnie," Zeke said.

"Ma'am," Arnie said to me, and he was gone through the back door before I could answer.

So then it was just me and him and a truck on a lift and the hum of the lights.

"Okay," I said. "Before I lose my nerve. Rules."

"Yeah."

"We're strangers tonight. I'm a woman whose car broke down. You're a mechanic who works late. That's the scene. Anything I say as me, out of scene, stops everything."

"Agreed." He set the rag on a workbench. "Safeword?"

"Mercy."

"Mercy," he repeated. "Good word for a shop." He looked at me. "And you want me mean. You want the stern version."

"I want the version of you that doesn't smirk."

"That's going to cost you."

"Everything costs me lately. Fine."

He crossed his arms. "One more thing. We use a condom. Non-negotiable, since we're not regulars to each other and I'm not regular to anyone."

"Fine by me. I'm tested and single, but condom works."

"Then we're set." He nodded toward the office chair by the workbench. "Whenever you're ready, stranger."

I walked to the middle of the shop floor and stood under the lights, and I took a breath, and I made my voice smaller than it usually is.

"Excuse me? Hello? Is anyone here?"

The door to the office swung shut. When Zeke came back out, he was a different man. Same body, same face, but the smirk was gone and his voice came out flat and low.

"Shop's closed."

"I know, I'm sorry. My car died about two miles back. Smoke, then nothing. I've been walking forever and my phone's dead and you're the only lights on this whole road."

He walked toward me, slow, and stopped maybe four feet away. He looked me over the way you'd look at a car somebody else wrecked.

"Nurse, aren't you? Saw the badge."

"I... yes. I came straight from my shift. I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"You walked two miles in work shoes."

"I didn't have a choice."

"No," he said. "You didn't."

There was a long pause, and I felt it in my stomach. Not fear. Something ahead of fear, something leaning forward.

"Shop's closed," he said again. "Means I set the rules. You follow them or you walk back down that road. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

I hesitated, and he just waited, arms crossed, patient as a torque wrench.

"Yes, sir."

"Better." He started moving around me, slow circles, boots loud on the concrete. "Here's how tonight works. You broke down. You need something from me. That means you're polite, you're honest, and you do what I say the first time I say it. You don't touch anything in this shop without permission. You don't touch yourself without permission. You answer my questions straight, no nursing small talk, no charming your way around an answer."

"And if I don't?" I asked, which was stupid and I knew it was stupid and I asked anyway.

He stopped in front of me. "Then there's a penalty. Every time. I'm not creative enough to make it complicated, so I'll keep it simple. You disobey, you apologize properly, on your knees, and you take what I give you. Usually my hand. If you're real unlucky, the belt off that hook over there."

My shiver was visible and he saw it and didn't pretend he hadn't.

"You're smiling," he said.

"I'm not."

"Inside, then." He leaned in a little. "Last chance, stranger. That door's right there. Walk out now, we go back to being enemies on Sunday, and nobody ever knows."

"Nobody would ever know either way," I said.

"True. But you'd know."

"That's the problem. I'd know."

He straightened up. "Then say it. Say you're staying and you'll follow the rules."

"I'm staying. I'll follow the rules."

"Say sir."

"I'm staying, sir. I'll follow the rules."

"Good." He pointed at the office chair. "Sit. Knees together, hands in your lap. I've got a truck up on the lift that needs ten minutes of work before I can even think about your dead car. You'll wait and you'll be quiet while I do it."

"Yes, sir."

I sat. He pulled a creeper out from under the bench, slid under the pickup, and started turning a wrench, and the only sounds for a while were metal and the buzz of the lights. I sat there with my hands in my lap like a good girl, and I want to tell you, reader, that some part of my brain, the nurse part, the adult part, kept running a background check the whole time. Is this sane? Is this safe? And the answer kept coming back: he's watched you race for three years, you know his hands are steady, you set the rules yourself, and the word is mercy.

So I stayed.

He slid out from under the truck after a while and stood, wiping his hands. He looked at me sitting there.

"You waited."

"You told me to."

"Huh." He walked over and stood in front of me, close enough now that I could feel the heat off him. "Most people can't do quiet for ten minutes. They fill it. Talk. Fidget."

"I'm very good at waiting. I do it in hallways for a living."

"That so?" He crouched down to my eye level, forearms on his knees. "Tell me something true, stranger. Why'd you really come here tonight? And don't say the car. The car's a story. I want the reason under the story."

I swallowed. "I got left last month. And I spent three years being the tough one, the rival, the woman who never blinks. And I'm tired of blinking first at everyone. I wanted one night where I don't have to hold anything up."

He was quiet a second. Then, "That's true enough."

"You asked."

"I did." He stood. "Stand up. Hands at your sides. I'm going to look at you now, all of you, and you're going to let me, and you're going to keep your eyes forward while I do it."

"Sir..."

"Every second you argue is a second off your allotment. Stand."

I stood. My pulse was doing something unprofessional and he hadn't even touched me yet.

"That's it," he said, low, starting his slow circle again. "Good start, stranger. Let's see how long it lasts."

"Kneel there," he said, pointing at a spot on the concrete by the workbench. "Right in the light."

I knelt. The floor was cold through my pants and I felt it in my knees and then my shins and then everywhere.

"Hands behind your back." He crossed to a pegboard and took down a coil of nylon rope, yellow and stiff with newness. "You know what this is?"

"Rope."

"Don't be clever. What's it for?"

"Being tied, sir."

"And what's your word?"

"Mercy."

"And it works anytime, on anything, no matter how much I'm enjoying myself. Say it back to me."

"Mercy works anytime. You stop, no matter what."

"Good." He came back and stood over me. "Last ask, then we stop asking for a while. You want this?"

"I want it, sir."

"Then stay still."

He looped the rope around my wrists, two turns, then a knot that wasn't a bowline but held fine. He fed the free end up through a pulley bolted to a ceiling beam and pulled. My arms rose behind me until my shoulders ached and I had to lean forward to take the strain off.

"Too much?"

"Less, sir. A little less."

He eased it. "Better?"

"Yes, sir."

He tied it off on a bench leg and stepped back to look at me, arms stretched up behind, weight forward, nothing to do but wait. The lights buzzed overhead.

"Comfortable?"

"No, sir."

"Good. It's not supposed to be comfortable. It's supposed to be honest." He went to a drawer and came back with something red. A