Under the Garage Lights

Virginia looked out the window as the Buick slid down the ramp into the underground garage. Her husband's headlights cut across the concrete, and the familiar buzz of a halogen lamp greeted them as a porch light would.

"We're the only ones here," Mitch said, easing into his spot between the jack stands. "Whole city above us, and we got the basement."

She smiled at him. Twenty-six years of marriage, and the man still parked like he was showing off.

Inside she still felt about twenty-eight, which was the age she'd been when she married him. Outside, well. Outside was a different negotiation.

"Coming?" Mitch asked, already out of the car.

"Coming."

The shop smelled like oil and cold concrete. She had loved that smell for thirty years, ever since she was twenty-four and sneaking down here to see Mitch, who was in a greasy jumpsuit and supposed to be changing a customer's brake pads. They weren't supposed to be kissing in the garage, and they did it anyway, quick and fumbling behind a pillar while somebody's meter ran.

"You're grinning," Mitch said, shrugging out of his jacket.

"I'm remembering."

"Remembering what?"

"Behind the pillar. The green one. You had brake fluid on your collar and I didn't care."

He laughed. "You cared a little. You wiped it off with your scarf and then you kissed me anyway."

"Details." She set her bag on the workbench. It was cluttered the way it always was, wrenches and receipts and a coffee mug with paintbrushes in it. The half-dismantled engine sat where it had sat for three weeks, waiting on a part.

And in the middle of the floor, between two jack stands, was a card table with a tablecloth on it.

"The séance table," she said.

"The séance table." He bowed at it like a butler. "Madam. Your parlor awaits."

* * *

He set a fat white candle on an oil drum and lit it with a shop lighter. The flame threw shadows up the walls and made the old Buick appear as a sleeping animal.

"Tonight," Mitch announced, "we shall contact the great beyond. We shall speak with those who have passed over. We shall ask them the questions the living dare not ask."

"Such as?"

"Such as, why is my carburetor haunted."

Virginia laughed so hard she had to sit down on the oil drum. "That's who we're summoning? A carburetor ghost?"

"It died young. Never got to finish its work." He waved the lighter around like a magician. "Rattle rattle, knock knock. These are the sounds of the restless dead, Ginny."

"You're a terrible medium."

"I'm a mechanic in a basement with a candle. I'm the best medium available." He pulled two folding chairs over, then shook his head and kicked them aside. "No. Floor. Séances happen on the floor. I saw it in a movie."

She dug into her bag while he arranged cushions on the concrete. "I brought offerings."

"Oh good, the spirits are hungry?"

She pulled out a loaf of bread, misshapen and dense as a brick. "I baked it this afternoon."

"That is... a challenging loaf."

"The yeast didn't rise. I did it on purpose." She set it in the middle of the tablecloth like a centerpiece. "For authenticity. The dead deserve honest bread."

"The dead deserve better than that brick, honey." He picked it up and knocked on it with his knuckle. It sounded like the hood of the Buick. "Okay. This is perfect. The spirits will love it."

They sat cross-legged on the concrete, facing each other, knees almost touching. The candle flickered. The halogen lamp buzzed. Somewhere in the building a pipe ticked.

Mitch held out his hands, palms up. She put hers in them. His palms were warm and rough, and there was a fresh cut across one thumb from a sheet metal edge. She knew his hands better than her own, at this point.

"Join hands," he intoned, dropping his voice two octaves. "Spirits of the underworld. Spirits of the grease trap. We call you forth."

"Ooh, scary," she whispered.

"We ask you, oh spirits, to reveal the secret desires of the woman seated before me." He paused. "Virginia. Speak your secret desire, so the spirits may hear it."

She looked at their joined hands. The candle wobbled in the draft from the ramp.

"That's a sneaky question for a fake séance," she said.

"All good séances have a sneaky question. It's tradition. Probably."

She was quiet a minute. The pipe ticked again. She could have made a joke. She made a lot of jokes. But his thumbs were moving slowly over her knuckles and the candlelight made his face soft, and she was tired of making jokes about it.

"I want you to touch me," she said. "Like you used to. Without... the shyness."

"What shyness? I'm not shy."

"Mine, then. I want you to touch me without you being careful around the loose skin." She said it fast, before she lost her nerve. "My arms. My belly. And without you doing that thing where you avoid looking at my hair in the daylight. It's grey, Mitch. It's been grey for four years and you act like it's classified information."

"Ginny."

"And I want you to want me. Not out of habit. Not because it's Saturday. I want to walk into a room and watch you forget what you were saying." She squeezed his hands. "There. The spirits heard it. Knock yourselves out, spirits."

Mitch didn't say anything for a moment. He looked at her, and she watched something settle in his face, a man who had just been handed the exact right wrench.

"Hold that thought," he said.

He leaned over and blew out the candle.

The dark closed in, just the halogen lamp far overhead and the two of them on the concrete.

"Mitch? I can't see you."

"You don't need to see me. You need to hear me." His voice came low in the dark. "The spirits talked to me while you were talking. Long conversation. Very detailed."

"Oh, did they!"

"Yep. They told me exactly what to do." She felt his hands find hers again in the dark, sure as anything. "They said, start with her hands. That's the instruction. Direct from beyond."

"That's a suspiciously convenient instruction."

"They're convenient spirits."

Then his mouth was on her fingers.

He took her right hand in both of his and kissed the calloused pads of her fingertips, one by one. Slow. Deliberate. The kind of kissing he did when he wasn't hurrying anywhere, which was rarer than hen's teeth these days.

"Mitch," she said. It came out wobbly.

"Shh. Spirits are working." He turned her hand over and kissed the heel of her palm, then the thin skin of her wrist where the pulse was. "You know what these are?"

"My hands. They've been holding yours since I was twenty-four."

"These lines." He traced one with his thumb, from the base of her palm up across the callus at the base of her index finger. Needle work. Thirty years of hats, pins, millinery wire, thimbles that never quite fit. "Every one of these is a map. I've been reading this map since the night you made me that first hat, remember? The one with the crooked brim."

"The brim was not crooked."

"The brim was very crooked and I wore it everywhere." He kissed the callus itself, the hard pad of skin that had earned its toughness pinning felt and blocking crowns. "Seam after seam. Year after year. Right here. I love every line of it."

"You can't love a callus."

"Watch me." He kissed it again. "This one's from the wire. This one's from the pressing iron. This little scar is from the time you stabbed yourself with a hat pin on our anniversary and swore so bad the neighbor laughed through the wall."

"That hat pin had it coming."

"Maps, Ginny. All of it. I've had this map memorized for decades and you think I stopped wanting to read it?"

She couldn't see his face in the dark, which was somehow easier. She could just feel his mouth moving over her hand, unhurried, thorough, checking his work on an engine he already loved.

"You never said," she whispered.

"You never asked. You made jokes instead. Good ones. I laughed at every one." He pressed her palm flat against his cheek, and she felt the stubble there, the warmth. "You want to know what the spirits said? The whole message?"

"Tell me."

"They said the woman on the floor of this garage is the most beautiful thing in this building, and this building has my favorite car in it. So that's saying something."

She laughed, and it came out wet, and she was glad of the dark.

"Mitch."

"Yeah?"

"Come here."

"Not yet." He took her left hand now, kissing it the same way, fingertip to wrist. "I got a whole map, honey. Hands are just the legend. The key. The little box in the corner that explains everything else."

"And what do the rest of the pages explain?"

"You," he said into her palm. "Every page. Every line. Take all night if I need to."

The lamp buzzed. The pipe ticked. She sat on the concrete floor of a basement garage, fifty-four years old, and let her husband of twenty-six years worship her hands like they were the first hands he'd ever held.

"Spirits," she whispered. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Mitch.

Then his mouth left her wrist and traveled up. Slow. Over the thin skin inside her forearm, the crease of her elbow, pausing there like a question.

"Mitch." Her voice didn't sound like hers. "What are you doing?"

"Reading the map." He sounded calm. Unhurried. Like a man with a full tank of gas and nowhere to be.

He reached up, and his fingers found the top button of her blouse. He didn't pull. He didn't yank. He sat there in the dark with that one button between his thumb and finger, waiting.

"Can I?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, please!"

"Good. 'Please' gets you extra pages!"

He undid the first button. Then the second. He took his time about it, the way he took his time with a stubborn bolt, feeling for exactly the right angle. The third. The fourth. The halogen light buzzed somewhere far above them, and she could hear her