Upsie-Daisy Read online

  I blink. I had no idea you could do that. I should compile a write-up of all the men my mother has tried to set me up with in the past ten years. Although I guess someone has already done that: it’s called the Brooklyn White Pages.

  “And before I retire,” Max snaps, “maybe you can get your hilarious self back out there and get to work.”

  “Maybe you should have just accepted that resignation,” I say under my breath. “Any of the last five hundred.”

  One of the other mechanics is entering a work order on the computer, and I check on Avery. She’s dutifully reading her phone, although how I’d tell if she’s reading Hamlet as opposed to Facebook I have no clue. I say, “You’re not talking to anyone, right? I don’t want you picking up any guys.”

  Avery looks up with a horror and disgust matched only by that of my co-worker.

  And then, to make a total liar out of me, in walks the hottest guy in the universe.

  My breath catches while I try to maintain a stable axis. He’s tall. He’s got these shockingly deep black eyes, awesome chiseled features, and he’s dressed like someone out of the LL Bean catalog. I can’t pin down his nationality, but he’s got a permanent tan and hair that just curls a tiny bit.

  The other mechanic says, “I towed him in with a flat tire. The donut was also flat.”

  If only my mother could see me now. For one thing, she’d totally set me up with him. And I’d go.

  I have nothing brilliant to say, but I need to say it anyhow. “So, you played in the construction zone and won that coveted ride in the tow truck?”

  At first he’s taken aback, and then he recovers his grace. “Construction zones are too uncertain. I deliberately hunt for Severe Tire Damage spikes.”

  His voice: I shall bottle it and let it talk to me every day. I don’t care what it says. He could read me Avery’s Hamlet assignment. Heck, he could read me my mother’s resignation letters. Oh, yeah, tell me again how the food co-op needs a produce sorter.

  I say, “You’re not from around here, then?”

  “I was on my way to the Deep Sea Science Institute in Manhattan.”

  My eyebrows rise. “Geologist?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m a marine roboticist, and I’m better at driving a robot than a car. I hit a pothole about a mile from here, and Google Maps found this place for me.”

  I smile. “Thank goodness for Google Maps.”

  Max stalks out of his office. “Hey, Miss Elevator Inspector! Quit fraternizing with the customers!”

  I rush back behind the counter to grab his work order and his key before the other mechanic takes them. The paperwork says his name is Myron Mikelson. Mm. I like it.

  Mysterious Doctor Myron says, “Elevator inspector?”

  “You see those signs in elevators all the time.” I shrug. “Well, the lifts go up and down too, and you wouldn’t want these jokers to drop your car on someone’s head.” I flash him a smile. “By the way, my name is Lee.”

  Into the garage I escape, and thence out into the parking lot where I find Mysterious Doctor Myron’s Infiniti Q-50 hybrid. It’s not hard to identify: his tire is shredded. That pothole must have been filled with razor wire and shrapnel. Maybe he really did roll backward and forward over those Severe Tire Damage spikes. I bet scientists do things like that. “They say ‘severe’ tire damage, but how do you quantify ‘severe’? And what do they mean by ‘damage’?”

  When I hop into the front seat, Bucky awaits me on the passenger side. It’s a tiny car, but somehow his wings fit. “I thought once,” he says, “just this once, you’d have no choice.”

  “I love hurling myself into these interactions where it’s clear you’ve been having the conversation already for like five minutes.” I start the car. “Then I try to piece together what I’m being reamed out for while you keep scolding me.”

  Bucky folds his arms. “You’re lying to him.”

  “I have not even a little bit lied to anyone.” At a very, very low speed, lower even than the idle speed so we don’t bend the rim, I edge the car to the lift. “Let alone him, whoever he is in this context.”

  Eyes sparking, Bucky says, “Don’t play dumb. You’ve got your eyes on Myron the Magnificent, and even though he walked into a garage and saw you in a work uniform, you’ve somehow managed to convince him you don’t actually work as a mechanic.”

  I guess I did kind of. “Well, in all fairness, Max did it for me. And my mom.” I glance at my clothing. “And if he can’t figure out from the uniform shirt that I’m employed here, then he’s got some kind of issues. Like maybe he’s blind and shouldn’t have been driving a car in the first place.”

  Bucky sighs. “I’m so glad your bad behavior is the direct result of everyone’s decisions but your own.”

  “We haven’t actually established that I’ve done anything bad.” We’re over the lift now, so I turn off the engine and get out. “You’re right – I have a bit of a problem telling people where I work. But I haven’t told Myron anything. He assumed. And he’s a scientist, for crying out loud. Those guys are trained not to assume anything.”

  “You buried the lead.” Bucky leans out the window the better to glare at me as I raise the lift. “That so-called bit of a problem telling guys where you work: let’s get back to that. Where did you tell Andrew you worked?”

  Andrew was a guy who took me to a Yankees game two months ago. I told him I polished hardwood floors for yoga studios.

  “And where did you tell Jason you worked?”

  Jason was a cute guy who needed someone to take a salsa dance class with him before he went to Ecuador for six months. He thinks I sell tickets in that TKTS booth on Broadway.

  “And where does Bill think you work?”

  Bill is a trainer at my gym, and when both of us have nothing to do, he’ll take me to any old random place in the city. Through absolutely no fault of my own, for some reason he believes I’m part of a political action committee. I have no idea what kind of political action it’s taking, but I’m sure no one else does either.

  Bucky says, “And now Myron thinks you inspect elevators.”

  Why do they even have that job? How hard can it be?, I think to Bucky. If you push the button and the elevator plummets down the shaft, it fails inspection.

  He sounds tart. “I’m more worried about you failing God’s inspection.”

  I’ve got the tire up at the right level to work on it, so I grab the pneumatic wrench. “Well, right now, there’s a wheel failing inspection, and that’s my job.”

  “Your job is to work out your salvation in awe and trembling.”

  I don’t reply. Bucky has told me repeatedly that my state-of-life-duties always trump my religious obligations. Someday I need to ask him what state-of-life-duties are (and maybe what my religious obligations are too) but it probably means changing a tire should be done before examining my conscience.

  Tire changes in a garage are easy-peasy. For one thing, you can get your lift to just the right height so you’re not bending and stretching the way you would if the car were on the street. And for another thing, I’ve got this whole arsenal of weapons to fight the new tire into submission. I get to inflate the tires, balance them, bolt them on. They smell awesome and they have those nubbly rubber tire-hairs that they’ll lose on the street after the first few blocks.

  According to the work order, Doctor Scientist Myron has been talked into replacing both front tires and also replacing his donut. Fine by me. I roll the new donut to the trunk, pop it open, and—

  Severed heads! A hundred of them!

  Jumping backward, I manage to stifle a scream into a gasp because they’re Styrofoam. But still—he’s got dozens of Styrofoam heads lined up with their blank eyes staring out the back of the trunk, except for a couple that have fallen askew and glare with a dull resignation from their sideways position.

  Behind me, Bucky offers a bland, “That’s not at all the sign of a deranged mind.”

  And I left th
is not-creepy guy with a decapitation fetish in a waiting room with my tween-age niece.

  I lean the tire against his car, making sure not to jostle the Heads, then stalk back to the front desk. I’ve got a wrench in my hand. Just in case.

  And a good thing too, because he’s talking to Avery.

  “Doctor Mikelson,” I intone, and both of them look up, “we have some questions about the contents of your vehicle. And until they’re resolved, I’d ask you to keep a reasonable distance between yourself and that minor child.”

  He looks startled, then brightens. “Oh, that’s right, I was on my way back from the craft store.”

  I keep my gaze glued to his face. “What craft requires a thousand severed heads?”

  Avery’s eyes have gotten wide as volleyballs, and she inches away from him. Good.

  Myron The Mauler says, “There are only two dozen, but we buy them in bulk.”

  And that makes it perfectly all right?

  He opens his laptop bag, and before I can ask him not to start dismembering us with a chainsaw, he withdraws a gaudy trinket thing. Holding it in the flat of his palm, he extends it. “Go on. Take it. These are a lot of fun.”

  I lift it between my fingertips. It’s a sparkling woman’s head made up to the nines, and solid like a marble, but only the size of a walnut. It’s “decorated” the way a New Orleans Mardi Gras float would be decorated if you gave a fraternity the contents of a paint store and twenty gallons of beer.

  I say, “But what is it?”

  He hands it to Avery, who turns it around in her hands. “Whenever we send down the robot subs,” Myron says, “we get a bunch of Styrofoam head forms, and we decorate them.”

  I gasp. “Oh! And then the undersea pressure squeezes down the Styrofoam and turns the head forms into these little things! That is so cool!” No wonder he had twenty-four heads in his trunk. He should have filled up the back seat, too!

  Avery says, “Can I make one?”

  Sure, ask your dad to get you an atomic deep-sea robotic sub for your birthday; I’ll pony up for the foam head and the paint.

  Dr. Myron says, “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re not allowed in the repair bay.” I turn. “I’ll bring one out here.”

  Bummer. I’m still on the clock, otherwise I’d ask to make one too.

  Dear Principal Smith: Please excuse Avery from her class trip last Friday. She came to a mechanic’s shop to make shrunken heads.

  Twenty minutes later, Avery and Dr. Myron have a Painted Lady drying in the waiting area and I’m running his credit card for two new tires and the disposal of two busted ones.* (Yes, that’s a footnote. Bucky says I can put a footnote in an ebook.)

  And then the problem: Dr. Myron realizes that because the paint isn’t dry, he can’t exactly put their creation into his car to drive it into Manhattan. Avery’s face falls.

  I, of course, am brilliant enough to have a solution. “Why don’t we leave it here? I’ll meet you for dinner Saturday or Sunday night, and I’ll bring it then.”

  In my head, Bucky says, Smooth.

  Dr. Myron’s mouth twitches into a cute little smile. “Sounds good.”

  We exchange phone numbers. He suggests a place in Manhattan. Google Maps knows where it is (thank you, Google, twice in one day) and we set a time. Avery watches in awe: who knew you could finagle a date that easily? And then Dr. Myron leaves behind his adoring trio: Avery, me, and the Wet Paint Lady.

  I don’t have kids, nor am I ever likely to because Bucky wants me not to have sex unless I’m married, and I’ve got no reason to get married. It’s more fun running around the world on your own, and I wouldn’t have met Jason or Andrew or Bill or Dr. Myron if I had to go home every night to microwave hot dogs for Mr. Boring, so...yeah.

  Anyhow, I don’t have kids, so sometimes my niece’s parents surprise the heck out of me with the way they react to things. Now, for example.

  I’m figuring from the subtle hints Avery’s dropping (“Mom is going to kill me!”) that Corinne will be angry. Surely Avery will have her phone confiscated and the Wi-fi will be under lock and key for a month. Instead Corinne greets me at the door with, “Thank you so much for getting her,” and then she returns her attention to the phone in her hand. “Oh, hi. This is Corinne Singer, and I’m calling about my daughter, Avery Singer. Where is she?” Followed by, “No, she’s not.” Followed by, “No, she didn’t.”

  And then an icy, “Ask her teacher.”

  Corinne is looking right at me, or rather, right through me because the person she wants to strangle isn’t actually in front of her. “Put her on the phone,” Corinne continues in a very thin, very dangerous voice.

  No, I would not get between Corinne and her daughter. If this teacher is smart, she’ll bypass all excuses and go straight for the teary-eyed grovel.

  I hadn’t thought about it until now, but Corinne’s right: shouldn’t the chaperones get in trouble? I mean, if they weren’t actually chaperoning the kids, shouldn’t there be heads on pikes? And come to think about it, shouldn’t someone have noticed when my niece was getting trash-talked by her so-called friends?

  Avery grabs my hand and drags me into the kitchen. Corinne starts off cheerfully asking about her daughter’s whereabouts and then keeps pushing on her. Where is she? When was the last time they saw her?

  Not good. They’re dodging.

  I say, “So, what school are you going to go to instead?”

  Avery’s mouth twitches. “I’m not getting kicked out. They’ll just put me on a leash.”

  I huff. “I’m thinking more that by the time she’s done, your mother’s going to get them to pay your tuition to any private school you want.”

  Avery grabs a bag of microwave popcorn and gets that started, then pulls out a bowl the size of her head. “She’s not going to get anything out of anyone. They’ll just say I shouldn’t have run away.”

  Well, I’m glad she at least realizes that. I’m not sure what she’d have done if I were the kind of conscientious person who didn’t answer her phone at work. Or the kind of unconscientious person who turned off her phone and went to the movies when she should have been working.

  Speaking of which...I check my phone, and no one has called from a world-famous pen corporation. Maybe they’re taking our story to a committee meeting. You probably can’t just get approval to make a new publicity campaign.

  Avery dumps the popcorn into the bowl and devours it with me while her mother is loudly and very politely informing the teacher that when a student is missing at the end of a field trip, someone needs to know about it.

  Gosh, this stuff smells good. I haven’t eaten since breakfast. My other niece and nephew come in, attracted by the popcorn smell, grab handfuls, and then wander out again.

  Eventually Corinne comes back, her eyes livid. To Avery she only says, “If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I’m going to have you microchipped like a prize poodle.”

  Avery nods urgently.

  Then Corinne turns to me, all sweetness. “And thank you for keeping her the rest of the day.”

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” I say. “She read Hamlet and made a shrunken head.”

  Corinne’s eyes widen.

  “It’s not shrunken yet,” Avery protests.

  She puts a hand on Avery’s shoulder. “Why don’t you come with me for a minute?”

  Once again, that’s the “jump straight to the groveling apology” voice. I hope Avery recognizes it.

  Alone at the table, I close my eyes. God, please let this work out for her. Avery and her friends. Avery’s negligent school. My brother and sister-in-law. That really cute guy who’s going to have dinner with me. And God, there’s also that whole commercial thing with the pen. That’s so cool.

  I’m starving. I reach for the popcorn.

  Bucky appears across the table from me. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “Shouldn’t do what?”

  “You shouldn’t eat while pr
aying,” he says. “It’s rude.”

  I look at him patiently, and I keep eating. Without praying.

  He stares back at me, irritated.

  Then I say, “Can I pray while eating?”

  Bucky’s wings sag. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  It’s not as if God can’t hear me over the crunching of popcorn, so I enjoy greasy, salty goodness while letting my mind wander back over the way Avery’s voice trembled in the car, the way she described that moment when she’d just taken one little step backward, just a few inches back so she was out of the train and standing on the concrete platform, a door sliding shut, and then the train’s motion a permanent block between her and other people’s pointless opinions.

  Bucky in my heart keeps bringing up that moment, holding it and then moving it outward. I think he’s presenting my prayers to God when he does that, although I hope he also fixes them up a bit. You know, like the way I vacuum a car’s floor mats after doing a really long repair? Who knows, maybe Bucky changes them all around so instead of praying for Avery I’m praying for clean running water in every community on Earth, but I don’t think so. I think he’s just glossing them up and making them sweeter and wrapping them in love, and then handing them upward to God like a present to open.

  Him, handing prayers up.

  Avery, taking a step backward.

  Me, waiting.

  I don’t know if it’s like that when other people pray, but it’s like that for me. I’m never really praying alone because Bucky’s there to help, and that’s a good thing because otherwise I’d probably never do it.

  I’m still a little dizzy inside when Avery slinks back out to the kitchen, followed by her not-amused-looking mother. “I’m sorry, Aunt Lee,” she says, as though she hasn’t already said it twenty-eight times today. “I put you through a lot of trouble, and I shouldn’t behave badly because I’m afraid of what people think of me.”

  I recognize a very rehearsed apology when I hear one, and since this has got to be Corinne’s words coming from Avery’s mouth, I shouldn’t say, “Oh, it wasn’t a problem!” So instead I say, “I’m just glad you had the sense to call me when you got in trouble, and I’m glad you’re okay now.”