I looked at the bike. He was asking for a guarantee no honest mechanic could make. But he was also asking something more reasonable beneath his anger: don't lie to me just to collect a bill. That much, at least, I knew how to promise.
"I'll give you evidence," I told him. "Not a guess."
Grip wrote his number on the folded paper and set it beneath an empty coffee mug. "Call me when you know."
"And the broken lock?" I asked before I could stop myself.
He turned, looked at the chain, and unexpectedly reached into his pocket. He placed a hundred-dollar bill next to his number. "That enough for a new one?"
"More than enough."
"Then put a decent lock on a decent door."
He went outside. Three engines started, one after another, and their sound faded toward the county road. I remained beside the red motorcycle until the shop had gone quiet enough to hear the ceiling fan clicking at every revolution.
I counted ten seconds. Hector had taught me that, too. When a problem frightened you, you gave yourself ten honest seconds to be frightened. After that you went to work, because fear was an emotion and work was a decision.
The shop was a long, narrow building squeezed between a closed upholstery warehouse and a vacant parcel that collected tumbleweeds each winter. Hector had rented it when he was twenty-four, bought it through a seller-financed agreement years later, and spent nearly three decades adding shelves, benches, lights, and machines whenever he could afford them. His sign had once been bright black letters on cream-colored wood. Six months after his death, it looked as tired as I felt.
There had been a time when the tool board was full. When Hector died, the bills didn't wait for the grief to pass. The hospital had sent its final notices. A supplier refused to extend more credit. The roof leaked over the back bench, and the bank that held the equipment loan wanted payments I couldn't make from oil changes and occasional brake jobs. I sold a spare compressor, a high-end scan tool, and two sets of specialty wrenches to cover utilities, telling myself I would buy them back when things improved.
Things had not improved. The mortgage was four months behind, the equipment loan three. My total overdue obligations and urgent repairs approached thirty-eight thousand dollars. I'd written the figure on a sheet of paper and put it in Hector's bottom drawer because seeing it every day didn't make it smaller.
My uncle had raised me more than anyone understood. My mother, his younger sister, worked unpredictable shifts for a medical transport company near Fresno. She loved me, but the hours and the distance meant I had spent most afternoons at his shop from the time I was seven. My father had left when I was little enough that the only thing I reliably remembered about him was the color of his truck. Hector became the person who taught me how to patch a bicycle tire, read a pay stub, make an apology that meant something, and stand still long enough to hear what a frightened person was actually asking.