Free Rust by Julie Mars Page B

“I thought that was only for the movies.”
    She laughed, a lovely sound that he had never heard before.
    “Nope, all real,” she said. “That and more.” He had made no move to get up from his chair, so she added, in a conversational tone, “Ever been to New York?”
    “ Mira , I don’t leave the South Valley unless I have to. I get lost in downtown Albuquerque.”
    Margaret smiled. Downtown Albuquerque consisted of a couple of square blocks of courthouses, a fourteen-screen cineplex, a few oddball businesses—such as a men’s hat store and a Holocaust museum—and some restaurants that seemed to wrap it up by ten P . M ., even on the weekend. It had pool halls and an Institute of Flamenco. Many of the buildings were painted with murals that looked left over from the sixties—big smiling suns, elongated androgynous humans falling through the cosmos, hot cartoon babes carrying signs that read “No glove, no love,” and such like. Margaret adored it. Walking along Central Avenue was like entering a time warp or a dream that someone she didn’t know had had a long time ago.
    She fished into her bag and brought out a notebook, a pen, a bottle of water, and a scrunchie for her hair. Rico, with all the women in his life, was well versed in hair accoutrements, and he even knew the mythology associated with each one, such as why they protected the hair follicle from split ends or breakage, though he had no specific idea how such knowledge came to him. Probably through osmosis during the dinner table discussions he tuned out.
    “You can hang your bag on one of the hooks in the garage,” he said, finally standing up and moving in the direction of the work bays. She followed him, her step light and ready, as if she were on the verge of breaking into a run just to get there faster. He intended to emphasize safety first, warn her about the danger of serious flash burns from exposure to the hostile ultraviolet light in arc welding, about hot metal and the way it sears through flesh and ignites any combustible material, about vapors locked inside of some container you might have cause to cut or weld that explode like rockets and drive a man or an acetylene tank or anything else in the vicinity straight through the wall or roof. All welders had horror stories, and Rico knew for a fact that most were true, but when he turned to face her and saw her standing there, her notebook and pen in hand like a schoolgirl, he couldn’t bring himself to start off by scaring her.
    And he had a second lesson planned in his mind, a lecture of sorts in which he would outline and briefly explain the types of welding—fusion, gas, TIG and MIG electric, brazing, and soldering—and also throw around all the technical terms she could ever hope for; but something told him that Margaret needed her initiation by fire, not words, and right then and there he scrapped all the ideas he’d come up with about being a good teacher and just pointed to the low rider he was currently working on.
    “The guy who owns this wants to put some big-ass tires on it,” he said, “real fat, and they’ll stick way out from the sides if I don’t shorten the axles. So that’s what I’m doing this morning—cutting out a chunk of the axle and then welding it back together. You can watch.”
    “Can I ask questions?” She sounded so businesslike that Rico almost laughed.
    “Yeah, but I might not answer right away if I have to focus on what I’m doing.”
    She nodded and said, “Okay, no problem.”
    It was a strange experience for Rico to have any woman, and this woman in particular, in his shop. Rosalita rarely came here, and his daughters only stopped by every blue moon when they happened to pass along Fourth Street and felt a sudden urge to say hello to their Papi. A woman changed the atmosphere in the garage, invaded it somehow without meaning to. She made it feel like a radio was playing even though there wasn’t one. It would take getting used to, this