Ash Phoenix

Rows B through H

Rafi Calder still knows which cinema seats need an extra push to fold. There are two in Row D, one in E and none in F since he replaced a stretched spring on a Monday when the projector lamp was out. He works while the daytime cleaner goes around him with the broom. Once the curtain opens he must leave. He buys a ticket some Fridays and runs a palm along the underside of his own stitching in the dark. He can tell when a finish will split by how a loop of thread moves under one fingernail. When a wheel on his Pontiac 1967 Firebird wouldn't move at all, he refused to touch it for six months.

The Pontiac had been waiting in Hella Wynn's back room, behind a bolt of red fabric that always tipped forward. Rafi paid her twelve notes from his Saturday envelopes to hold the car while he saved for the rest. He'd woven himself a story in which the upholstery shop would someday belong to him, with the Firebird out front on warm days. Hella sold the building to a bakery wholesaler before he got around to asking what she wanted to do with it.

The goods door

He came to collect the Pontiac on the last Tuesday. Hella had already cleared the top shelves. She was sitting on the shop's low yellow folding chair by the goods door, eating the first lunch she'd taken outside the building in twenty-five years. Rafi had brought her an inventory he thought proved the business could still pay. She set it on the wall beside her. Three months before, she told him, she'd put down a deposit on a place near the harbour where she could walk to her daughter's. He took the inventory home and left it under a pot plant until the ink ran.

The Firebird's rear wheel came free with help from two paddock hands and a clean parts tray Ada brought over from Gold Standard. Rafi had prepared a whole story about what he'd do if the wheel was ruined. He had very little to say when it turned. His old shop towels were packed in a box at home, so he wiped his thumbs on the inside of his shirt.

Afternoon test

For a month he booked every afternoon practice he could reach from the cinema. He scrubbed his hands early, clocked out and caught the 2:40. The car caught the front edge of an inside marker at low speed when he tried to put it into a corner before the weight had settled. He wanted the crew to believe he'd tried something advanced. Luca from Redline Riot was there and asked him if he'd seen the marker. Rafi said yes. They stood looking at it until he said no. The next trip took him the same length of time and was easier to talk about.

The yellow chair

Hella brought her folding chair to DGM on a Wednesday. The replacement foot Rafi slipped over one leg was a spare cap from the cinema broom. He carried it to the paddock table because he assumed she would be more comfortable there. She dragged it straight back to the fence before he reached the first bend. Rafi wants to take the top of the course from that bend cleanly enough for her to see the whole exchange. For weeks he's kept buying a cinema ticket on Fridays. He leaves one evening open now in case Hella offers him lunch in her new town.