Brian sloshed through the puddles to her side. He leaned over with hands flat on the hood, closed his eyes, and started muttering to himself.
Maureen shivered at the sight of his bare skin touching cold wet metal. My God, she thought, he's just like one of those southern preachers, laying on the hands. Faith healing. This man is seriously weird.
"You've got a cracked distributor cap," he said, after about two minutes of communing with Jap steel. "It also needs a new air filter and new plugs, but the distributor cap is what's killing you. And remember to use the parking brake more: the cable's going to rust up and seize on you if you don't."
Bullshit! "You expect me to believe that? I've heard about wizard mechanics before, but at least they have to open the hood!"
He shrugged. "How else do you think the British Empire survived Lucas Electrics? It had to be magic 'cause it sure wasn't engineering." He straightened up and dug a rumpled scrap of paper out of his pocket.
"You should be able to start it in the morning. It won't last more than a couple of days, so you'd better get it fixed. This should cover it." She caught a glimpse of Ben Franklin in the streetlight's glow. A hundred-dollar bill.
"But . . . "
"I don't need it. You do." He shoved it into her pocket, next to the .38 Special.
Good-looking, quiet, strong, smart, reacted fast. And, apparently, rich. She hadn't seen a hundred in years. The Quick Shop wouldn't take them.
Taking money from strange men, Maureen? Like those women in the club? But her critic's voice sounded like it came from the far side of a brick wall, and the thought of comparing her life to an exotic dancer's or prostitute's almost made her laugh. The closest he'd come to making a pass at her was keeping her from falling on her butt when she'd slipped on a patch of ice.
"Why don't you come inside and dry off for a few minutes?"
Brian nodded, as if her question was totally normal instead of the summation of a formal debate. They stomped their way up the front steps, shaking off winter again like a pair of wet dogs. The outside door was never locked, and half the bulbs in the hallway were dead or stolen. A chill returned to the pit of her stomach, but all the shadows seemed to be empty.
Besides, Brian could protect her. He'd proven that.
She covered her fear by sniffing the wash of warm, damp air in the stairwell, her usual game of guessing who had what for dinner. It was the only use she'd ever found for a hypersensitive nose that could tell the difference between white and red oak by the smell of their leaves. Otherwise, a good nose was a liability in the city.
All the apartments had their kitchens near the stairs. First floor, pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni overpowered whatever the other unit had. Second floor east smelled like KFC again, and west had whipped up a pot of chili. West's cooking was a fire-hazard, real five-alarm. They loved Cajun, Tex-Mex, Thai curries--anything to steam your eyeballs out. The couple had grown up in Jalisco.
Fires kindled in her head--dismembered chunks of body burning in the alley, flames exploding out of the cellar club. Old Ones. Summer Country. Hunters. Terror dragged her into myth: visions of sleek gray cobras, man-sized and spitting fire.
Maureen started to shake again.
Brian shifted his hand, circling his arm gently around her waist as they creaked up the stairs to the third floor. It felt safe, as if he was comforting her instead of putting on a move. A memory from Girl Scout camp floated up, a skilled trainer running her hands along the flank of a skittish horse, smoothing out the mane, talking quietly to calm the frightened animal.
The trainer's hands were magic. Brian would make a good trainer. His touch was gentle, reassuring. He had a feral, furry smell with a touch of acrid male to it, vaguely fox or skunk, unlike any other man she'd ever known. It roused a sense of rightness, weirdly soothing. It might not take her a month to kiss this man.
She fumbled with her keys, her fingers cold and shaky. A man she'd known for an hour or so, and she was letting him inside her apartment. One step from letting him inside her body. Magic hands.
"You say you're English?"
"British. Welsh ancestry, anyway. Most Yanks don't know the difference. England, Scotland, Wales, even Ireland, it's all the same to you."
"You don't have much of an accent."
"I spent a few years in a place where a British accent could be hazardous to my health. Yanks were more welcome. Habits change fast with incentives like that."
She flipped on the lights. The kitchen looked presentable for once: Jo hadn't left dinner dishes all over the place, with plates of petrified spaghetti sauce or gnawed chicken bones looking like the remains of a voodoo ceremony.
Maureen hung her jacket on the coat-rack over the radiator. If the furnace didn't die again, even the quilted batting should be dried out by morning. Boots went in the tray where drips couldn't spread across the floor and ambush her bare feet when she stumbled out to make breakfast. That was a real rude way to wake up.
"Get you a drink? We've got Scotch or Irish whiskey, rum, or brandy. Cup of tea or I could make some coffee."
"Tea would be nice."
Such a prosaic end to such a surreal evening: tea for the British visitor. She set the kettle on the rear burner and cranked up the gas. It even lit. How novel.
"Uh, take a seat. I've got to powder my nose."
She'd drunk a lot of coffee in the last hour. Plus there was the question of that warmth she'd felt back in the alley. If she was thinking of letting a man inside her pants, they damn well ought to be clean.
Maureen
