Free Speed of Life by J.M. Kelly Page B

which makes me stand a little straighter. “Apparently that David kid never shuts up. Asks about a thousand questions an hour.”
    I’m like Jimmy—​a silent hard worker who only asks when I really need help. Otherwise, I figure it out on my own. Sometimes when I’m doing a tricky repair, I sneak inside the store and Rosa lets me use her cell phone to look things up on YouTube so Jimmy doesn’t know I’m not following what he showed me.
    He comes out and we head across the parking lot to the garage. Jimmy would love to have a full-time shop and ditch the gas station, but there’s not a lot of restoration work for such a small outfit. He could fix new cars after they’ve been wrecked, but he refuses to do it. “Anything with a computer in it is bullshit,” he says. Mostly, we do small repairs on vintage cars that have already been restored, and mechanical stuff like changing brakes and shocks.
    â€œToday, we got something special,” Jimmy tells me. He unlocks the garage and puts in his alarm code. The lights flicker to life, illuminating the shop. In the third bay is a Studebaker Hawk, stripped all the way down to the metal.
    â€œâ€™Sixty-two?” I ask.
    â€œGood girl,” he says.
    We cross over to it, and I run my hand along the smooth hood. “What’s up?”
    He leads me around to the back and shows me a dent in the right rear fender. “They trailered it into Custom Designs to have it sprayed and some idiot lost control and backed into something. I don’t know what.”
    â€œCouldn’t they fix it there?”
    â€œSure,” Jimmy says, “but the customer was royally pissed off, so he brought her to me instead. They’re taking her to Frank’s for the paint job after that fuck-up.”
    I nod.
    â€œShe’s all yours,” he says. “I gotta get the timing belt on that Camaro done before the guy gets here. I was supposed to do it last night.”
    â€œCool.”
    If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s pull out dents and make the body look so perfect that once it’s painted you’d never know I’d been there. The Mustang was full of dings and dents when me and Amber bought it off Jimmy three years ago, and I fixed every one of them.
    I’m mixing up the Bondo when David comes in around nine thirty. He hovers over me, asking questions, but I “mm-hmm” and “uh-huh” him until he goes off to bug Jimmy. In the few weeks he’s worked here, we almost never cross paths, and when we do, I’m like a brick wall. The asshole stole my job.
    When Jimmy finishes the Camaro, he comes over to check on my progress. Not that he needs to or anything. David’s following him like a looming shadow. “Looks good,” Jimmy says.
    David nods like he’s an expert too.
    â€œThanks.” I stand up and stretch. I might as well get a cup of coffee while I wait for the Bondo to dry.
    The dent isn’t very big, but it’s in a tough spot, right on a curve, so it’s detailed work. It takes me until lunchtime to get it right. Jimmy sends David out for subs, telling him to get me one too, and he even pays.
    â€œYou could do this for a living,” Jimmy says.
    I throw my rag on the floor. “That was the plan before David showed up.”
    â€œI know, I know . . . Come outside with me?”
    I follow him to the parking lot and he lights up a cigarette. I stand close, inhaling deeply.
    â€œThe deal is,” he says, “the kid wants to go to some fancy school where they teach you how to restore old cars, but my sister and her husband, the dickwad, want him to go to Stanford or some bullshit school like that to be a doctor. They think if he spends some time with me and sees what it’s really like to work in a repair shop, he’ll give up on the idea.”
    I wonder if Jimmy is talking about McPherson College in Kansas? Probably. I