Although my Jeep, to my whole family’s surprise, made the whole trip from Denver to New Orleans without incident (discounting that time in Oklahoma when the engine start quacking), today my lucky streak ended.
Or so I thought.
The thought that my guardian angel had run out on me struck me this morning, when I went out around 8 to drive my belongings over to my new apartment to move everything in. And the car wouldn’t start.
I reasoned to myself that it really wasn’t the worst time it could have happened. I wasn’t on the way to a job interview, going to visit a dying relative in another city or trying to flee a hurricane. Any one of those three scenarios might have qualified as the worst time for a car to not start. But, I told myself, I just wanted to move my things in. No big deal. It can wait.
Like a true college girl, I called my dad. He is very manly and said, in a deep man-voice, that of course it sounds like something that would be absolutely no problem at all for him to fix if he were here, but much too advanced and greasy for the likes of me. Far from the most helpful advice my dad has given me in all my life. His only suggestion was to call AAA and have them tow me somewhere. I dug out the phone number from underneath all the clothes, shoes, cleaning supplies and water bottles littering the back seat, and called in the big guns. (The tow truck)
So, Javier the Tow Truck Driver* showed up about an hour later, hooked up my Jeep and took us both (me in the cab) down to the AAA shop.
(*NOT HIS REAL NAME)
Well, Javier and I became semi-friends in the car – he has a daughter in middle school and is a Saints fan – and everything went great until the shop.
I had to go talk to the guy in their little office, and man, he was just a big mean jerk. Like many people who work in offices of mechanic shops, he oozed desire to take terrible advantage of innocent college girls (financially), and wanted to charge me all sorts of money to even look at the Jeep. I went outside to teleconference with my dad as to what he would do in the situation.
I saw Javier coming towards me with a paper to sign for the towing, and I had a little inspiration. Clearly, I couldn’t afford what Mr. Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins Auto Shop Guy wanted to charge me, but neither could I afford to not have a working vehicle for very long.
“Javier, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Javier said obligingly.
Looking around furtively, I leaned forward and whispered, “Do you think if I went somewhere else they would charge me less?”
Javier too looked guiltily around, before asking how much they were asking. I told him and he ceded that, in fact, cheaper service at an alternate location might be more economical.
“And would you take me there with my car if I paid the tow rate?”
Javier said that, yes, he would take me somewhere else, but needed to talk to a friend first. I went back to the tow truck cab (scornfully, in case the Auto Shop Office Guy saw me leaving his premises to take my business elsewhere).
After a brief consultation, a mechanic in a jumpsuit sidled over to the truck cab door and motioned for me to open up.
“I don’t really want to give you a recommendation for a mechanic,” was his cryptic opener.
“Um, okay,” was my somewhat baffled and ineloquent response.
“Because,” Marcus* (as his name tag proclaimed him) continued, “if you don’t like the service or somethin’ over there and you call this shop and complain, I could get in trouble.”
(*Close to his real name, but not actually it)
“That’s alright, you can recommend somebody,” I tried clumsily to reassure him.
“See, this guy isn’t AAA, and I really am not supposed to send you to him, as a AAA mechanic.” Marcus’ eyebrows raised conspiratorially.
“So - if you told me – it would be as a – a friend?” I tried.
“Exactly!” Marcus was glad I finally cottoned on.
This friend of his, he told me, was where he took his own car when it needed a tune-up, and he would never, never try to fleece anybody. Marcus added that he lived in Colorado for a while himself, as a further recommendation of his reliability.
He needn’t have tried so hard – I was only sure that I didn’t want to pay one more penny at AAA, and Javier quickly agreed to take me over at the normal rate.
Marcus said he would come along to “make me feel more comfortable,” and started back to his own truck. He turned around, came back, stuck his hand through my window and shook mine.
“Marc,” he said, as if we were meeting for the first time. (I judged permission to call him by a shortened form of his name as an invitation to friendship, and was happy that I now had 1½ friends in New Orleans.)
So after a bumpy but relatively quick ride, we arrived at Sidney’s auto shop. It was a grungy little building in between a couple of highways on a tight, jam-packed little road full of cars of various degrees of broken. I clambered down to go meet Sidney, whom I identified because his name was stitched into his clothes in that way that jumpsuits have.
He popped open the hood and looked at it for about five seconds. He went to the driver’s seat and tried to start it. It didn’t work. He walked back and looked at the engine, hard. He returned to the driver’s seat, and turned the key.
And it started.
I am convinced that, although Sidney had every appearance of normalcy – a huge, black, jumpsuit-wearing mechanic with greasy hands and a rumbly voice so deep I could hardly understand it – he fixed my car with mind power.
Really.
Not only did he use his telekinetic abilities to return the Jeep to full working order; he also refused to accept pay for it. (I was secretly relieved, though I pretended to feel bad)
Then Javier refused to be paid for driving me all around. (He also offered to, in the event of a long rehabilitation period for the Jeep, drive me back to my apartment for free). Again, I was secretly relieved.
Had I owed Marc anything, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he refused payment too.
I swore my fidelity to Sidney as a faithful customer should anything befall the Jeep again, and started back home, realizing that my guardian angel had not gone anywhere.
