Fixing What’s Broken

       Bang. Bang. Bang.

      It had been going on all morning. Banging, often followed by cursing. I glared at the door to the garage. What the hell was he doing out there? Better question: why wasn’t he in here doing me?

      Bang! Bang! ‘Stupid fucking car!’ Bang!

      I couldn’t take it any more. My head was starting to throb in time to the banging he was doing – which was a far cry from the banging I wanted to be doing. I opened the door and tried to keep my voice even and serene. ‘You OK out here, sweetheart?’

      Mark glanced around the hood of his jet-black ’69 Mustang. Actually, glowered was a better word to describe what he was doing. ‘Does it sound like I’m doing OK? This piece of shit engine is giving me fits. It used to purr like a kitten and now it rattles like an old man on a respirator. I’m a shit mechanic if I can’t make this baby run.’

      I bit my tongue to keep from stating the obvious solution. It was a familiar argument. Every time I suggested buying a new car – even a new Mustang – Mark went postal. He was a mechanic by trade and would not hear of parting with his ‘baby’ no matter how many dollars – or hours – he ended up dedicating to the cause of keeping her running. Or how many hours it cost us in matrimonial togetherness, apparently.

      Not that I hadn’t known what I was getting into when I married him. Mark had been recommended to me by my friend Hannah when my Mini Cooper had needed some serious work. He’d been so sweet and charming, I hadn’t minded the grease under his nails or the fact that he always smelled faintly of gas, oil and that harsh cleaner all men keep in the garage. I had even enjoyed hanging out and watching him work – watching the easy way he moved around a car, admiring his ass when he had his head under a hood. Mark was a manly-man and that had an appeal a girly-girl like myself couldn’t resist, even if he did take his work home with him. Or, in this case, drive his work home. I was trying to be patient, I swear I was, but a girl can only take so much.

      The Mustang had belonged to his father and I knew there was no way he would part with it. And I wouldn’t ask him to. But we could afford another car so that the Mustang wasn’t his primary means of transportation. Mark wouldn’t hear of it. ‘A car is meant to be driven, not kept in a garage,’ he would say, repeating something his father had said back in the day when money was tight and there were five kids to feed. I tried to remind Mark that our financial situation was far better than his dad’s had been – and we didn’t even have kids yet to worry about – but my argument was as ridiculous to him as an automatic transmission in a sports car. It was enough to have me banging my head against a wall in frustration.

      ‘Well, why don’t you take a break and have lunch with me?’

      Mark’s head had disappeared under the hood again. ‘Maybe in a few minutes,’ he mumbled. ‘Thanks, babe.’

      Bang! Bang! ‘You stupid fucking –’

      ‘Right,’ I said, slamming the door on the cacophony of noise.

      An hour later, when Mark was still a no-show for lunch, I gave up and ate my soup and sandwich alone at the kitchen table. Every weekend, Mark promised he’d give the car repairs a rest and every weekend, there he was, greasy and sweaty and cursing until all hours while I waited for him to return to the land of the living. It hadn’t always been like this. He used to put in a couple of hours on the car on Saturday morning and be done with it so that the weekends were our own. But since his father died a couple of years ago Mark seemed to spend more and more time on the car. At first I thought it was just his way of staying close to his dad, some sort of testosterone-fuelled grief process, but it was starting to feel like he was avoiding me.

      Enough was enough. Either I needed an all-consuming hobby of my own or I needed to remind Mark that there was another kitten in his life in need of some attention. I didn’t want a hobby, though. I wanted my husband back. I decided it was time to bring out the big guns and stop waiting around for what I wanted.

      Twenty minutes later, after some primping and a wardrobe change, I carried a sandwich and glass of iced tea out to the garage. Mark didn’t notice, of course, because his head was where it always was – buried under the car hood. I smiled, watching his bent head, blond hair tousled and a streak of grease along the back of his neck. His head would be buried some place else momentarily if I had anything to say about it. My confidence wavered for a moment. It’s not as if we’d just met and I could lure him with my pussy. Marriage had the effect of softening the edges of our lust. On the other hand, it had been a long time since I’d put this kind of effort into enticing him.

      ‘I brought lunch to you,’ I said sweetly. ‘Since you’re so busy.’

      Bang! Bang! Bang! ‘Fuck!’

      ‘Honey?’

      ‘Thanks, babe,’ he said, not even looking up.

      Not easily deterred, I put the sandwich plate and glass on his workbench and leaned against the car. ‘You really should eat something. It’s after three and I’m not making dinner.’

      I didn’t know if it was the tone in my voice or the fact that I was in the garage for more than thirty seconds, but Mark finally looked up. Looked up and did a long, slow double take. Then he straightened to his full six-foot-two height and gave me a long, slow smile that made my toes curl in my four-inch shiny patent-leather fuck-me pumps. Even with the shoes, I was still several inches shorter than him. I felt a shiver of desire looking up at Mark, his broad shoulders straining the seams of his old white T-shirt. We’d been together since high school, but he still took my breath away.

      I returned his smile and crossed my arms under my breasts, accentuating the low, low cut of my wispy white blouse and the fact that I was not wearing a bra. While his gaze hovered at my cleavage, I spread my legs slightly and watched the marionette-like shift of his eyes downward, to the denim skirt cut so short I was practically flashing him and the red heels that were a remnant from an ill-fated pole-dancing class I’d taken three years ago.

      ‘Going somewhere?’ Mark asked, though it took him three tries to get the words out.

      ‘Coming, not going.’ I licked my bottom lip, glistening with a lipstick appropriately called Sexy Harlot, and smiled. ‘I hope.’

      I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have heard a 747 landing in the backyard at that moment. ‘Uh-huh.’

      ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

      He was trying hard to focus on my face and failing miserably. ‘Did I miss a holiday or something?’

      I walked around him – enjoying the way he pivoted to watch me – and slammed the hood of the Mustang. I slid up on the car, feeling