Wrench and Release

I have been a museum curator for six years now, and in that time I have learned that the worst days always start with a phone call from a donor. This one started that way six weeks ago, on a Tuesday, when I scraped the passenger side of a 1967 Ferrari along a concrete pillar in our loading dock. The donor, a man named Mr. Calloway who lends us his collection every spring, was due to pick the car up in nine days. My director gave me one week to fix it or give her my resignation.

I was 28 years old, and I had exactly one name in my phone for a problem like that. Jim. I had met him fourteen months earlier when the museum sponsored a vintage car exhibit out at his shop in industrial Detroit, and he had walked me through his row of restored classics for an hour while I took notes. He was 34 then, broad across the shoulders, and he had a way of looking at you that made you feel cataloged. I never thought about it much after that. Professional contact, a few emails about loan agreements, nothing more.

But when I called him about the Ferrari, he came out on a Saturday, looked at the damage for ten minutes, and said he could handle the paint work off the books. No invoices, no paper trail, no questions. He had the car back to me in six days, flawless, and Calloway never knew. My job survived. I told Jim I owed him one and he just smiled and said he'd keep track.

He kept track. Last Thursday my phone buzzed with a text from a number I'd saved months ago. It said: Tonight. My shop. Wear something you can take off.

I read it about forty times that afternoon. I knew what it meant. I knew what he was asking for, and I knew that some part of me had been waiting for that message without admitting it. I typed out three different replies and deleted all of them, and then I sent back one line: What time. He answered with an address and the number nine.

* * *

The salvage yard sat behind a chain-link fence topped with old barbed wire, and at nine at night it was dead quiet except for a single light burning over a corrugated door. I parked my little hatchback next to his truck and sat there for a minute with my hands on the wheel. I had taken his instruction seriously. Under my winter coat I was wearing nothing but a pair of plain cotton underwear, because it seemed stupid to go all the way bare when I did not know what he wanted yet. My stomach was doing slow flips the whole drive out.

Jim opened the door before I knocked. He was in a gray work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he looked me over from my face down to my knees without hurrying.

"You came," he said.

"You knew I would."

"I figured the debt would bring you. The rest was up to you." He stepped back to let me in. "Coat off at the door. There's a hook."

I did it. The cold air hit my skin and my nipples went tight right away, and I stood there in nothing but underwear while he latched the door behind me. We were inside a shipping container he had converted into a private workshop, long and narrow, lined with steel shelving. It smelled like WD-40 and cold metal, and there was a hydraulic workbench in the center under a hanging fluorescent tube, a leather-padded thing that looked like it had been built for exactly this.

"Lenore," he said my name once, and I looked at him. "Last chance to say no and walk out. You say it, we never mention this again, and the Ferrari debt is still settled. That part's done regardless."

"I know it is," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I'm not here because I owe you. I'm here because I want to be."

"Good. Then get up on the bench and lay back. Head toward that end."

I climbed up, the leather cold under my thighs at first, and stretched out under the light. He adjusted the bench height with a foot pedal until I was level with his hip, and then he looked down at me the way he'd looked at those cars fourteen months ago, like he was reading a spec sheet.

"Hands above your head," he said, and when I did it he tore off strips of gaffer tape from a roll on the shelf and wound them around my wrists, binding them together and then anchoring the bundle to a bolt on the bench edge. He tested the hold with one pull and nodded. "Tell me if anything goes numb. And if you want out of any of it, you say red and it all stops. Those are the only rules tonight."

"Okay," I said.

"Okay, sir."

"Okay, sir."

He opened a battered red Snap-On toolbox against the wall, the top drawer, and came out with a Hitachi Magic Wand still in its box, the big old two-head model, and a coil of cord. He plugged it into a wall outlet and thumbed it to low just to test it, and the hum of it filled the whole container. My skin prickled from head to toe.

"I've never used one of those," I said, and it came out almost a whisper.

"You're gonna like it." He set it down on the bench beside my hip and slid one hand into my underwear, not rushing, just resting his palm flat over me while I squirmed. "These are coming off. Lift your hips."

I lifted. He peeled them down my legs and off over my feet, and then he spread my legs wider with the toes of his boots, nudging my ankles apart until I was open under the light with nothing to hide behind. I felt the cool air on everything and my face went hot.

"Look at you," he said, mostly to himself. He gathered my hair in one hand at the back of my skull, not yanking, just holding, so my head stayed where he put it.