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Motivated Stephen Gardner
The engine’s rumble arrives before the machine. He wrings his hands in the rag, hangs the rag in his pocket. The paisley red looks good draping down his skinny hip. She likes the pose. There’s not an engine that he can’t make run again. He’s taken a Cord wide-open and burning from Albuquerque to Salinas with only a wrench, pliers, and black tape. She throbs thinking about it, believes the road is all shoulders, knows it’s merely perfume curling above the asphalt in the evening heat. He believes much less, that the curves are soft and the valves are tight. When she’s gone, he wipes his hands on his jeans, remembers it’s time to change the oil. Originally published in The Connecticut Review
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