Out of Nowhere (Middle of Somewhere 2)

Blank looks and narrowed eyes.

Ignition is so cool—like an action movie. I can see it in my head: the combustion chamber and the crankcase, the pistons floating on a layer of oil in the cylinder, moving up and down, rotating the crankshaft and starting rotary motion; the valve train; the camshaft opening the intake valve as the piston moves down, forming a vacuum that sucks air and fuel into the combustion chamber where they’re compressed; the spark plug firing, igniting fuel and air, the explosion pushing the piston back down the cylinder and driving the crankshaft; the exhaust valve opening and the excess gasses being pushed out to the exhaust system. Each tiny piece has one job, and when they work together perfectly, they power this one-and-a-half-ton machine. It amazes me every time I think about it.

I realize I haven’t said anything out loud and the kids are still staring at me, and I immediately rethink my plan to explain all the systems. I don’t know how to express to them the… magic that I see.

“Um,” I say. “Well, really, it’s an explosion. Fuel—the gas you put in the car—and air get compressed, squeezed into a really small space, and then a spark ignites them and the explosion starts the car. Like a bullet.”

“Whoa, cool,” the kids chorus.

“So why doesn’t the whole car explode?” asks one of the girls who introduced each other earlier.

“Yeah,” says the other. “And sometimes don’t they just explode?”

“Totally,” Carlos says. “Hey, do real cars explode like in the movies? Like… what do you call it…?”

“Spontaneous combustion,” supplies Gap Model quietly.

“Yeah,” says Carlos, pounding on Gap Model’s shoulder in thanks, “spontaneous combustion! That’s so sweet.”

“Ooh, honey, I saw a car on fire once, at 12th and Girard. I bet it totes blew up,” Mikal says.

“Oh my god, would you stop it with ‘totes,’ Mikey. You sound like a twelve-year-old white girl.”

“Shut up with that Mikey shit, Dot.”

“Boy, don’t call me that or I’ll make you wish—”

“Stop.” Rafe’s voice cuts through the squabbling. “We have a guest. Can we please save the discussion of nicknames for later?”

Dorothy rolls her eyes but nods. Mikal turns to me and gives me a look that is clearly meant to be charming or seductive, but is mostly just amusing.

“Sorry, sweetie,” he says, pouting and opening his eyes wide.

“Uh, no problem,” I say. I turn back to Carlos and the twins. “Well, most cars aren’t going to randomly catch on fire or explode.” A few people exhale with relief and I debate whether I should go on. Eh, shit, everyone likes explosions, right? “But it can happen. Sometimes a battery will be defective and it’ll explode, and that looks like the car itself is exploding. When you’re charging your car battery, it releases hydrogen, and if a spark were to ignite the hydrogen, it would definitely explode.

“Or, you know, if you had a gas or oil leak in your car and the fuel dripped onto something really hot, that could cause an explosion too. Oh, and sometimes electrical systems go all weird. They can overheat or short out, which can cause a fire, and that can cause an explosion if the fire hits fuel.”

Everyone is staring at me. Rafe has his right hand protectively on the roof of his car as if it’s going to explode at any moment.

“But, um, those are all really rare occurrences. Really, really rare,” I reassure them. “I’ve never seen it happen and I’ve been a mechanic for almost twenty years.” This seems to put them at ease a little.

“So, what kind of car do you have,” Mikal asks, his tone flirtatious. People always expect that if you’re a mechanic, then you’re going to have some tricked-out showy car, but I’ve never known any mechanic who did.

“A ’93 VW Rabbit,” I say. “Right now.”

They look supremely unimpressed.

“Like, but why?” asks Carlos. “That’s almost as old as Conan’s car. Couldn’t you, like, put together any car you want?”

“Hey, let’s not insult our guest’s car,” Rafe says.

“No, it’s cool,” I say. “Well, most mechanics I know drive junkers. For one thing, people are always offering to sell us crappy cars for really cheap. And when you know what you’re doing, you can fix it up so it runs just fine. So why spend a ton of money when you know you have an endless supply of four-hundred-dollar cars that you can cycle through? Plus, I hate to shatter your illusions, but we don’t make that much money. It’s not like people are giving away their fancy sports cars when they have something wrong with them. So, yeah, mostly, it’s just really easy to have a car I don’t have to worry about.

“That’s how I got my first car, actually. A customer brought in a falling-apart piece of crap and my dad told him it was worth a few bucks as scrap but would cost a fortune to fix, and the guy sold it to him for two hundred dollars. I bought it off my dad and fixed it up.” I painstakingly replaced each busted, rusted-out part in that car, one by one, until it ran as well as anything—hell, better than anything I could’ve afforded. It took almost a year, but had the bonus of familiarizing me with every scrapyard and junk shop in a thirty-block radius.