Toniann Fernandez: The Mechanic

Toniann Fernandez is a writer based in New York.

---

The Mechanic caressed the hood of the truck with a manicured hand. Its skin was delicate against the penetrating glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. Each fingernail was filed into an oval forming five milky crescent moons that extended just beyond the tips of each finger. They squeaked faintly against the semi truck’s fresh coat of purple acrylic. The lacquer was the color of a night sky lit by airglow. The shop lights' beams refracted from its gloss in starbursts. The Mechanic’s hand and its reflection moved through them, swirling hypnotically over the truck’s metallic curves so that each finger seemed to dip through the hood’s surface to meet a phantom limb below. Suddenly, The Mechanic slapped the hood with his palm. The strike sent a hollow beating sound through the shop that startled Rey. He jumped. The Mechanic grimaced. He was pleased to have shaken Rey from his inanimate trance.

“She’s all yours, caballero,” The Mechanic drawled. The corners of his mouth curled upward. Rey could feel The Mechanic’s stare, but he kept his eyes on the truck. Eye contact with The Mechanic felt nonconsensual. His gaze begged to be returned, but Rey tried to act natural and avoid it like an actor avoiding a camera lens. The Mechanic smirked and began to run his hand over the big rig’s hood again. His stare burned in the periphery of Rey’s vision. The Mechanic was standing on a stepstool on the far side of the truck so that the eighteen wheeler formed a long barrier between himself and Rey.

“Is she wet?” Rey asked, taking a step backwards as The Mechanic stepped down from the stool and rounded the cab towards Rey.
“Jeeze,” The Mechanic replied, “why don’t you take her out to dinner first?” He winked. The Mechanic liked to make jokes, but Rey felt like he had heard them all before. His timing and tone was more that of someone reading a script than inventing thought. He found The Mechanic’s antics offensive but milktoothed, and eerily familiar. Rey rolled his eyes and exhaled. He needed to start his clock soon, and The Mechanic’s games were threatening to put him behind schedule. He finally looked directly at The Mechanic, and his impatient glare connected with The Mechanic’s dead eyed stare. The look in his eyes didn’t match the shape of his mouth. A feeling of tightness shot through Rey’s chest, and his eyes darted away from The Mechanic’s and back to the truck.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” The Mechanic said. Gesticulating wildly he half squatted and looked at the ceiling, “you’re ready to hit the road... Jahhhhhhhh–” he paused and looked down at his feet, trying to remember something. He placed a finger on his lip, pensive for a few moments before the corners of his mouth curved upwards again, and, pleased with himself, he yelled, “Jack!”

Exactly what The Mechanic’s jokes and gestures reminded Rey of always felt just out of reach. There were moments when he found The Mechanic endearing, but they were punctured by disgust. Each time he visited the shop, The Mechanic’s persona was slightly augmented, but his chin length gray hair, tucked behind light brown ears to frame his wrinkled face was constant, and his sense of curiosity never waned. He hosted a rotation of obsessions that up until today had mostly been quite simple: taxi cabs, boats, motorcycles, traffic lights. He had framed photographs of these things behind his desk. They were low quality, pixelated images, and each looked like they had been cut from a larger scene. Rey had never thought to ask who took the photographs or why they were there, for while the intensity with which The Mechanic engaged Rey on the topic of these things was strange, the topics themselves had not seemed like unconventional obsessions for a mechanic.

“Hey, where’s that girl that used to come by with you?” The Mechanic asked. A different pang of anxiety shot through Rey’s chest. This was the third in a line of personal questions The Mechanic had asked Rey that morning, which was far more uncomfortable for Rey than discussing traffic lights or motorcycles. He was growing tired of The Mechanic’s curiosity, but The Mechanic either didn’t want to or was not catching on to Rey’s impatience.

“She’s not... here,” Rey replied bluntly. The Mechanic looked around the room to confirm Rey’s response.
“Oh,” he said. Rey was somewhat surprised that this had been a satisfying answer to The Mechanic’s question, but there were rarely follow-up questions when speaking with The Mechanic. He preferred to respond with a new, yet, thematically related query.

“Hey, what’s your mom’s name?” he asked. The Mechanic had already asked Rey how many siblings he had and what his favorite pet’s name was. Rey thought today’s theme might be something to do with relationships.
“What’s your mom’s name?” Rey replied. The Mechanic laughed in three strong ha’s: “HA. HA. HA.” Answering a question with the same question was a tactic Rey frequently employed to end The Mechanic’s interrogation because it always worked.

“Yes, Rey,” The Mechanic sighed, “she’s wet. Fulla hot air more like it. No more hauling that liquid stuff you’re used to. Waves are out, gusts are in. She’s ready to go up, down, and up again... if you’re lucky.” The Mechanic moved his hand through the air, carving the shape of deep a valley in the space between them, then winked his left eye, contorting his face to keep his right eye open. Then, at once, his face became serious, and he turned intently toward Rey. “Do you have a gun?” he asked. Rey did, but he didn’t need The Mechanic to know that. It was against company rules to have a firearm in your truck, but after the third time headquarters had denied Rey’s request for an armed escort vehicle, he felt that he had no choice. Water was arguably the most dangerous thing you could haul though Atland, though some argued that gasoline was worse. “Technically, I’m hauling both,” Rey had retorted the last time a petroleum hauler challenged his valor. Now that fire season was starting, the camps were starting to move to higher elevations, and the physical danger of hauling a truck full of liquid was beginning to match the civil risk, but he had to keep hauling. The people couldn’t fill drums of urine to put out the fires when there was no water to drink, and he was still under contract.

The Mechanic accepted Rey’s silence as a response in itself, nodded, and walked to his desk. He stood looking at something with his hands on his hips, and after a moment, without turning around, yelled, “Rey, would you do me a favor and come take a look at this?”
The Mechanic waved his hand over his shoulder, beckoning Rey closer. Rey looked at his phone to check the time, and accepted that he would not be on the road until well into the afternoon. He exhaled, resigned, and walked toward The Mechanic’s desk. Standing at the desk, Rey looked down and saw a silver puzzle. It looked mostly finished, save for one piece that sat to the side of the almost perfect rectangle. Rey looked closer and saw that the metallic puzzle had only two pieces. The largest piece’s foil surface was broken up by thin black lines drawn in a jigsaw pattern to simulate pieces that had been fit together. Its only vacant space was the same shape as the piece lying to its side, whose reflective covering curled at the edges to reveal a thick black layer underneath. The puzzle reflected light, but not image, so that when Rey leaned over it, he saw darkness in the shape of his head in its surface. Rey moved his hand over the puzzle and watched its shadow traverse crinkles and bubbles like faults and hills in the puzzle’s glossy landscape. The shadow moved a few inches ahead of Rey’s motion. The Mechanic looked at Rey and nodded his head excitedly. When the shadow of Rey’s hand reached the hole where the remaining puzzle piece would fit, The Mechanic put his palms out in front of him, gesturing for Rey to stop. “Yes, there,” he said to Rey, “right there.” Rey took his hand from above the puzzle and slowly moved it down toward the one remaining piece. “Yes, Rey,” The Mechanic said.

Rey picked up the puzzle piece. It was heavy in his hand and its bottom layer was cold and smooth like a magnet. He pressed his thumb into its foil and watched the material around it gather in ripples. When he lifted his thumb an impression of his fingerprint was left behind. He smoothed over its surface, erasing the impression to form a slick metallic plane. He placed the piece into the open space of the puzzle and pressed it into place, this time leaving the swirls of his fingerprint in the finished work.

“Ahhhh...” Rey said, relieved, “It’s electric.” He looked at Rey, who looked back at him with a limp smile. Rey didn’t understand the significance of this interaction, but it wasn’t the first time The Mechanic had demanded Rey’s participation in some sort of game before getting down to business, and Rey thought the old man must just be lonely. Plus, asking The Mechanic, “Why?” never yielded a straight answer. “Well, now that that’s settled, are you ready to meet her?” The Mechanic asked, walking back towards the truck.

“Yes,” Rey exhaled deeply, “yes I am.”

The Mechanic opened the driver’s side door and climbed the steps to enter the cab. He sat in the driver’s seat. “What’s the title?” he asked Rey.
“The truck?” Rey replied. The Mechanic nodded, fiddling with the knobs on the big rig’s dashboard. “Seyo,” Rey replied.

“Seyo,” The Mechanic repeated. Rey stood on the dusty concrete shop floor looking up at The Mechanic in the driver’s seat. He moved closer to get a better look inside, stepping up onto the truck’s treaded steel steps, but just as he was about to lean into the cab, The Mechanic turned and put his hand on Rey’s chest. Rey grabbed the safety railing next to the cab door to steady himself.

“Hey,” The Mechanic said, “before we go any further I’m going to need you to trust me. Do you trust me, Rey?” Rey thought for a second. Truly, he did not, but he could tell that honesty wasn’t going to make the interaction move along any faster.
“Yes,” Rey replied, “I trust you.”

He must have sounded unsure, because The Mechanic frowned and shook his head.
“Let’s shake on it,” he proposed, extending his hand to Rey. Rey hesitated, then removed his hand from the safety railing and took The Mechanic’s hand in his. It was cold, and as he tightened his grip around The Mechanic’s palm, it gave like raw, boneless meat between his fingers. The nausea of revulsion erupted in Rey’s stomach as his hand closed tighter around The Mechanic’s whose fingers inflated like gelatinous balloons bulging out from beneath Rey’s grip. The Mechanic pulled his arm back, but the hand stayed in Rey’s grasp. Rey looked up from the handshake to see cracked, wrinkled, oil stained fingertips protruding from The Mechanic’s shirt sleeve. The Mechanic wiggled them, his real fingers, grotesquely at Rey, and threw his head back, howling maniacal laughter as Rey, clutching the prosthetic hand against his chest, fell from the truck and crashed to the shop’s concrete floor.