“We’re skidding!” J.T. yells. “Steer in the-”
“Shut up!” I reach down for the stick shift, then remember I’m not in my Jeep.
“Quickly align your tires with the direction of your intended travel.” It takes me half a second to recognize the voice of Mr. Grosskopf, my grouchy but effective drivers’-ed teacher at Anthony Wayne High School. We practiced exactly this in a slippery A & P parking lot. I take my foot off the brake, and quickly turn the wheel back the way I want to go. As soon as I see “ahead,” the car starts skidding in the other direction.
Yes. I turn the wheel back the other way, straightening us out again. Back and forth, smaller and smaller turns. And finally it’s clear road in front of us. And we’re going-more like klunking-in the right direction.
I check the rearview. Nothing.
“I’m pulling over into the breakdown lane,” I say, barely recognizing my own voice. “You okay, J.T.? We have a flat.”
Once we stop the car and get out, J.T. starts unsnapping straps from the floor of the trunk. He’s searching for a jack and spare tire that had better be there. Being stranded on the interstate was not in our plan. “What if the power steering had-”
“It didn’t,” I say. My heart rate is back to normal. My voice is, too. My knees, not quite yet. “I must admit, though, the words defective rotary valve did cross my mind.”
The narrow, rutted breakdown lane of I-93 is never the safest place. Now, huddled behind our rental car, Saturday at noon, in freezing, bleak January with snow swirling and cars streaming by and a slashed-to-rubber-ribbons flat tire lying dead at my feet, I wonder, briefly, about my years-ago flirtation with law school. Choices then, choices now. I pull my wide plaid shawl up over my head, wrap it tighter and try to keep the glass half-full. “What they don’t teach you in journalism school, right?”
J.T.’s hair is frosted with the falling snow, his sandy curls damp, cheeks ruddy. With one quick motion, he hoists the spare tire from deep within the trunk. Thankfully, it bounces on the pavement. At least the spare tires haven’t been recalled.
He balances the tire with one gloved hand, pushes his sunglasses up onto his head with the other. He looks at me. Up and down.
“All in a day’s work,” he says. “But you know, McNally, you pretty much rocked back there. That was some smart driving. Most women would have-”
‘Most women?’ Ignoring his scrutiny, which is almost unacceptably unprofessional, I open my mouth to inquire what “most women” is supposed to mean. J.T. holds up a hand, stopping me.
“Hey, I take it back. I just meant you did a great job. Driving. And this is a hell of a story, too. You’re all business, McNally. I can see why you’ve lasted this long in TV. Most women your age are-”
“Most women my age?” I try, again, to come up with some sort of retort, even though the ground he’s treading here is actually a bit more solid. Fortysomething women in television are as rare as shoulder pads and leg warmers. I know my own style is destined to go out of style. You’re only as good as your last story-or the whim of a new boss.
J.T. gives me an anchorman-worthy smile, all teeth and cheekbones. Crackling blue eyes. Major-league shoulders. He could easily be on camera, maybe in someplace like Santa Fe, or Cheyenne, where those supertight jeans, leather jacket and kick-ass boots would wow the female eighteen-to-forty-nine demos. Which, of course, I’m still in.
“It’s what they call a compliment, McNally,” he says. “You’ve still got it goin’on, as they say.” Tipping the tire against the car, he cranks the black metal jack one notch higher. With a few quick motions, he lifts the tire into place and slams on a wrench to tighten the lug nuts.
“You ever think of going network? Maybe some all-news operation? Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be after you. Emmys, all that. You’re too big for Boston, I’d say.”
Keeping both hands on the wrench, he stops midmotion. He looks up at me, suddenly serious. “I mean it. They ever call you?”
A wave of suspicion flares, disturbingly, through my mind. Can he possibly know about Kevin’s job offer? He can’t. Kevin told me no one knows. What’s more, that “still got it goin’ on” remark is, again, uncomfortably close to the line. Or maybe I’m too sensitive. I mean, I was thinking about his jeans, right? But the observation was just clinical. I would never consider saying it out loud.
I wave a leather glove in his direction, trying to diffuse the moment. We just had a pretty narrow escape. It’s cold. We have work to do. Franklin’s waiting. The mechanic is waiting. And there must be a glass of wine and Josh’s fireplace in my future.
“Hey, Boston’s market five,” I say. “How’s that tire coming?”
“Changing the subject. Got it.” With a nod and an overbroad wink, J.T. returns to work.
He’s not even attempting to hide his smile.
The Power House Garage in Boston’s South End reeks of oil and gas and rubber. Drills and power tools whine. Engines rev, ignitions churn. I’m sure the whole place is full of carbon monoxide. Which reminds me, for a melancholy moment, of Dorothy Wirt. A twist of concern, unwelcome and unpleasant, begins an uncomfortable spiral. How am I going to make all of this work?
Reining myself back into the moment, I put my other life on hold. Behind the massive glass doors of the garage, we’re warm and finally dry. I’ll think about the rest of it later.
Our rented black hatchback is high on a mechanical lift, its spare tire a glaringly obvious mismatch. Franklin, J.T. and mechanic Frick Jones, all wearing thick plastic safety goggles held on by orange plastic straps, are conferring underneath the chassis, heads tilted back, looking up at something. I know my limitations. I wouldn’t recognize a broken rotary valve if I saw one, but I’ll learn about it soon enough. We didn’t tell Frick about the recall. We want to see what, if anything, he finds on his own.
I take a sip of the first chamomile tea I’ve ever had in a garage and wait for the verdict on our rental car. As so often happens in journalism, bad news would be good news.
“Here’s your problem, Charlie.” Frick Jones, who looks more like my ninth-grade chemistry teacher than an auto mechanic, selects a pencil-thin flashlight from a wide tool belt and shines it at the car’s undercarriage. “You can see it right here. The torsion bar on the rotary valve is cracked. Actually, it’s almost cracked through.”
Score one for us. With Frick’s pronouncement, we have our story confirmed.
I glance at Franklin, who’s giving me a low-key thumbs-up at the good-bad news. He says something to J.T., pointing. The photographer takes off his goggles and picks up his camera from a sleek black Formica counter, adjusting the viewfinder. Franklin clicks open the tripod, a not-so-subtle suggestion to J.T. that he expects rock-steady shots of the broken rotary valve.
Frick’s still talking, playing the light beam back and forth between the two front tires. “Good thing you brought it to us when you did, in fact. Couple more yanks on the steering wheel and you might have lost your control. You say you had a flat tire on the way here? In the snow?”
He emerges from under the car, slowly shaking his head. He points the flashlight at my chest. “Lucky you.”
My knees, almost recovered, suffer a brief relapse. I know my smile is weak. “You can fix it, right?”
“One more thing,” Frick says, pushing a red button on a gizmo hanging from the ceiling. The lift begins to lower. With a puff of hydraulics, then a soft clank, the car hits bottom. Frick clicks open the hood and points to what even I know is the battery.
“Look here. This black wire. One battery lead is loose. Look.”
He reaches forward, and with two fingers, wiggles a thin black cable. Then he tightens the nut that’s attaching the cable to a stubby metal post on the battery.