Failing car brakes, a couple at a crossroads, and the mechanic in between

She exited the highway, moved her foot to tap the brake, but the car kept going, losing speed only because the exit ramp ran uphill, and not before coasting through the stop sign into the intersection, finally coming to a stop directly facing oncoming traffic.

Her body shook with the understanding of how close a call it had been. How many seconds had gone by since the white truck had sped across the intersection in front of her? How many seconds separated her from a fatal car wreck and sitting there unharmed?  Shaking, gasping. She steered the gray hatchback over to the right side of the road, trying not to work up much speed, testing the brakes, only to find them working again.

When she arrived safely at the apartment—the apartment that had too many signs of her to be completely his, but was still far away from being theirs—she recounted the incident.  Stefan listened, and responded: “It’s probably nothing. I doubt it will happen again, but we’ll take it to Roger.”

It was not yet a week ago Stefan had sat on the couch and said he needed to join a basketball league. What a funny word choice, she thought: needed? Two eggs are needed to bake a cake, a pen is needed to write a note, a bathing suit is needed for the pool, because the strap tore on the old one. Why is a basketball league “needed?” That word, the number of fights they’d been having, the random talk of the Thursday night basketball league—it all began a series of connected thoughts in her mind, a complex mental version of the old mousetrap game she’d played as a kid, a set of strategies to prevent this thing from happening. What were the series of pieces she could find that would be her rubber band, her seesaw, her bucket to keep him from rolling away at the end like the marble?

What were the series of pieces she could find that would be her rubber band, her seesaw, her bucket to keep him from rolling away at the end like the marble?

Now they were standing together, in front of the mechanic. Roger was implying, in the form of asking, whether she was driving too fast off the exit ramp, necessitating her to slam on the brakes, causing them to lock up. “Didja pump the brakes? You gotta pump ‘em.” Roger spoke to her with his face turned toward her boyfriend. There was a discussion between the two men about downshifting, about using the parking brake should it happen again.

The two men couldn’t have been a more drastic visual contrast. Roger looked more cast in the role than a real, trained, automotive expert. Heavy, his stomach sliding over his belt, grease on his hands, jeans riding down to expose his butt crack, cigarette in the right hand, Diet Mt. Dew in the left, while Stefan looked the part of a hipster, long before the word existed. Dark eyes with hair that was the product of too much thought and just-the-right-amount of hair gel, jeans with a purposeful, accidental roll at the bottom. Behind the two of them, the scene was set with a framed poster of a woman in a bikini despite no water in sight, looking mock-surprised, laying on the hood of a car. Stefan’s eyes briefly (intimately?) connected with Roger’s, and she wondered when this man, who had six months ago discussed spending his life with her, had become closer to the mechanic.

“Could be air in the lines,” the mechanic said, “might be the master cylinder. I’ll bleed the lines, that’s cheap to do, doesn’t need parts, if it happens again, we’ll go with the master cylinder.”

Her body shook as they walked down the gravel driveway, away from Roger’s shop. She was nervous, but hadn’t disagreed with the plan when she had had the chance—a plan that had at least some percentage of putting her back on the freeway with no brakes. She already had a shortfall for the tuition bill for next semester’s classes and didn’t have the money to pay for a new master cylinder, let alone a master cylinder that, according to Roger, might not be needed. She was still a year away from having a degree and a teaching job, and her only money was from waitressing at Pizza Hut two days a week. Stefan was close to finishing his final semester and already had two interviews lined up, one as a project manager at an auto parts manufacturing company two hours away and one preparing budget forecasts for a local beverage distributor. She had been helping him think through the pros and cons of the two positions, sneaking in additional pros for the local job at every chance, hoping the disparity in her analysis was going unnoticed, positioning herself as objective by throwing in lame advantages (“the parking options are great”) for the out-of-town job. Either way, it would work out, she thought. There was no reason to be nervous. Act equally excited for either outcome, don’t press the decision, she coached herself.

Her thoughts turned to the brakes. What if they failed again, would the parking brake really bring the car to a stop? It was called an emergency brake, after all. It would probably work?

Three days, just long enough to rebuild confidence, the brakes worked. Flawlessly, competently, the car reliably came to a stop upon each request. On day four, approaching the Pizza Hut parking lot, the gray hatchback kept going, though, sailing past parked cars and a couple of people exiting the restaurant, holding cardboard pizza boxes. Surprised to see a car going so fast, alarmed at the disregard for people, one of the customers tried to hold up a middle finger while balancing the pan pizza leftovers. The car came to a stop at the end of the lot, only slightly aided by stacks of cardboard boxes next to a dumpster.

The car came to a stop at the end of the lot, only slightly aided by stacks of cardboard boxes next to a dumpster.

“It was the master cylinder after all,” she announced, walking into Roger’s shop alone after her waitressing shift. Roger grabbed the rag hanging from his back pocket and wiped grease from the rim of a tire, then sweat from his forehead. Stefan had followed through with the basketball league, and now she stood by herself in front of Roger, forcing him to address her.  “I’ll put in the order tomorrow,” he said, “will be here inacoupla days. Keep driving the car until then if you want,” he said, “or just leave it.”

“I’ll leave it,” she said.  “I can’t keep driving it thinking the brakes might not be there for me when I need them. Can I use your phone to call Stefan for a ride?”

“Yeah.” Roger looked at the ground and pointed to a desk in the corner. The phone was on the desk beside stacks of paper, three coffee cups, a hat, a paper bag, a roll of duct tape, file folders.

He made a noise, like he wanted to say something but didn’t want to, and then he said, “Sorry about things.” She began to say the master cylinder wasn’t his fault, but before the words could come, he had said: “The thing with the nurse is a mistake. I always liked you. And by God, that job is a mistake, too.”

The basketball league, the job, a nurse.

The marble rolling away.

She stopped walking toward the phone on the desk and turned around. “I’ll drive it home,” she said. “I’ll shift down and use the emergency brake.”