Welcome to E. Mayberry

A couple of minutes later, Bastian drove up in his car, rolled his window down and said, “Hey beautiful stranger, want a ride?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I replied as I climbed into the passenger seat.

“Go get him!” someone yelled from the garage sale.

Bastian drove away with a honk at the onlookers and before I could ask where we were going, we were already there. The sign read: Car Wash.

I hadn’t walked far enough the other day to see that the community had a gas station. The garage where typical maintenance would take place was transformed into a car-wash station of some sort. Other than that, the place was empty aside from soapy water that ran from the garage door down the driveway.

“A gas station?” I asked. “How do they get their gas if you don’t want anyone to know about this place?”

“We,” he reminded me again. “We don’t want people to know about this place.”

He flashed me a smile.

“Maintenance professionals are called in,” he said. “We do need to have the phones fixed and electrical issues solved. We experience the same problems any neighborhood would. We try to solve most of our own problems. We have quite a few handy men and women living here. What we can’t do ourselves, we contract out, but we have to be very careful how we behave while their workers are here in the neighborhood.”

“So that old couple can’t fuck on their front porch if there’s a powerline down nearby,” I said. “Got it.”

A bubbly girl who looked barely older than a teenager jogged out to our car wearing a white and pink baseball jersey that read: Bubble Bath Car Wash. Her necklace popped out of her shirt as she approached the car but she tucked it back in and held a clipboard up at Bastian’s window.

“Dr. Bastian,” she said. “And…”

“Sunshine,” he replied. “My woman.”

He hadn’t said “my pet.”

I wanted to jump his bones for allowing me the pleasure of hearing anything other than the typical introduction around here.

“Hi, Sunshine,” she said. “I’m Amber.”

Of course she is.

“I run the Bubble Bath Car Wash. What would you guys like? Baby bath? Hard Scrub?”

“How about a Double Deluxe,” he said.

“Oh,” she said with a wink. “Good choice.”

She scribbled something onto her clipboard and Bastian handed her a twenty. She didn’t offer up any change.

This is an expensive fucking car wash.

Bastian rolled up his window and drove into the garage.

“You’re gonna like this,” he said. “Trust me.”

He rolled his seat back and turned off the car.

“Watch,” he said. “And put your panties in the glove box.”

I looked at him for a moment and wondered if he

was kidding. He wasn’t. I kicked off my shoes, slid off my panties, and put them in the glove box.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I think so.”