Caught

Short story

It’s the case that the summer I dropped out of high school, I got hired to wear a blue work shirt with a car dealership’s name embroidered over my chest. On my first day, the brakes repair guy pointed at my shirt and laughed.

“Polyester,” he said. “Warm in the summer, cool in the winter.”

The brakes guy’s red toolbox was taped over with centerfolds, the newest of which appeared to be two decades old.

“I’ve the finest,” he said.

Every mechanic in the shop believed he displayed the best pornography, each according to his own tastes.

I swept the lot and drove cars from the service intake bay to the back lot, where they waited for me to drive them back inside when a mechanic became available. For weeks, I moved them in and out, maybe forty vehicles per day. It’s the case that strangers’ cars are horrible. Ashtrays stuffed with wads of hair ripped from brushes, loose change glued to consoles by soda and stale beer, odors suggesting darker habits. Many seats show the vague outlines of drivers’ legs, traced by ancient food and drink stains.

Late summer, the girl drove her Sebring into the shop, opened her door and her bare left leg unfolded, and all at once there were her strap sandals, red pinpoint dots on her legs—razor burn, or maybe freckles—a yellow sundress, a small bulge of fat above her dress’s waist knot, an oval sunhat, her beauty levitating it all.

My elfin boss stood tip on his toes to peer over the registration counter as she got out of her car. The girl freed a tote bag from the back seat.

I headed out to take her car to the back lot.

She handed me a brass keychain cast in the letters “KR.”

“Thanks,” she said.

It’s the case that her car’s spotless interior smelled new. A gold graduation tassel swayed on the rear-view. Tiny purple and gold hearts hung twisted in the strands, with an evil eye and a chain that suspended a star marked with letters in a foreign alphabet.

Later, in the break room, I wrote the girl a letter on the back of a repair ticket. I confessed what I’d felt when I saw her in the garage. I wrote that I wanted to say something to her in the moment that had passed. I told her that there was little that summer for me to think about, and that it was the case that she was the cure for the monotony of the dark garage, the smell of engine oil, and old centerfolds.

“What are you writing?” the brakes man said. “Your last will and testament?”

I folded the letter and went to the oil change lane where her car waited, and slid the letter onto the dashboard.

Two hours later, my small supervisor got on the loudspeaker to tell me that a customer was here and to bring up the Sebring.

In the back lot, my confession letter lay on her dash, white hot in the sun. I got into her burning car. My work shirt stuck to my skin with sweat. I drove toward the garage, but at the turn to the bay I stopped. I touched her gold graduation tassel, her charms, the star. She knew things I could never know, and it was the case that my only charm was the car dealership’s logo on my shirt rubbing my left nipple raw and wrong for every season.

I needed to idle through the dark garage, past the line of oil change stations, the brakes man bent over his job, into the sunlit bay where I would stop by “KR,” who waited for her car.

The chain link gate to the lot stood open. Fifteen minutes later, my supervisor and a junior sales associate found me filling the girl’s gas tank at a station. My supervisor asked me why I didn’t take the side streets instead of the boulevard if I was going to steal a car, but I hadn’t known where I was going, and I hadn’t thought I was stealing it, so I didn’t think to hide. He told me that I wanted to get caught.

I got into my supervisor’s pickup. The junior sales associate sat at the wheel. He was pleased to meet me, a dude who just fucking drove off the lot in the Sebring? Outstanding.

We followed my supervisor as he drove the girl’s car back to the dealership. I decided that if I could somehow get the letter back, I would bury it in a box. But it’s the case that my supervisor opened the ragtop, and the wind sent my letter over his small head into traffic.

In the back of the dealership, my supervisor took me into his office. It was a jail cell of filing cabinets and dirty uniforms on hooks. He brought out his phone and took my picture like he was taking a mugshot.

“Don’t you look like a dumb little shit,” he said.

Laughing, he turned his phone to face me. On its screen was a photo of my letter.

I don’t think anyone wants to get caught. It’s always a surprise, getting caught. I think instead, it’s the case that we want to confess.