Boost Willis

Opening line

Boost Willis admits he'd rehearsed what he would say when the Bugatti EB110 SS came back to the garage. He wanted to thank two people in the kind of order that would make everyone else feel included. His partner Mae caught him doing it in the glass of a shop door and said she preferred his voice when he had to ask a question. He went home and ironed a good shirt anyway. The following morning he took the Bugatti out of its box and found an axle fault he had put away with it. By the look of the car's dust he could just about tell how long he'd been expecting that fault to work itself out.

The last season had been a time he preferred to describe with the word move. It included a shop relocation, a dispute with a longtime supplier, and the canvas machine going through a stairwell at a slant that made him briefly consider giving up the whole business. Mae kept the work orders on the kitchen table so they could both look at the next job while the old one was being settled. Boost kept the Bugatti near the back so he would have something to do after work. He spent most evenings turning off the lights around it.

The first booking

Awnings make Boost a little proud in a way he has trouble sharing. He can walk a long stretch of Brass Harbor and tell you whose doors can sit open in rain because his crew set their canvas high enough. The car appeals to him for a different reason. Leaving a clean corner in the Bugatti feels like letting a rush of air out of a room. He likes it enough to start pushing while he's still winding the steering back, and once a friend stood outside the last bend with two empty hands held much farther apart than Boost could possibly need. Boost took that personally for an hour.

At the first booking, the axle seemed all right until the car went a short way and came back. Miles Perhour offered to put the checks in order on a card. Boost said he'd remember them all. Miles sat down and wrote the card anyway. When the wheel tightened during the demonstration on the bench, Boost stopped halfway through the line he had been about to deliver. Nobody needed the end of it.

The trestle

Hank Horsepower offered a low trestle while Boost was looking for a space at a tall canvas bench. Boost had planned to show anybody who came by what he was working on, but at that height he could put his elbows down and make a better job of it. Mae found him with his good shirt folded under the apron. She went to fetch a bottle of water and came back with two cups. The pair of them watched a page of the card gradually get darker where Boost pressed hard with his thumb.

He did another check when dusk started to bring the harbor ferries' lights on. By the time he finished, there was nobody left who expected him to say anything.

The next invitation

Mae put a new booking slip under the kitchen clock and made Boost look at it with her. It would cost him a morning, which he had. It would cost her a lift to the east docks, which he'd promised and forgotten. They found the plan together. He wants the next running day to start in work clothes and leave him time to take the long turn three times. The good shirt is clean. He has a place in mind for it later.