Alison's Automotive Repair Manual by Brad Barkley

Author:Brad Barkley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual
ISBN: 9781938604782
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2003-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Whenever wiring looms, harnesses, or connectors are separated, it is a good idea to identify the two halves with numbered pieces of masking tape so that they can be easily reconnected.

8

* * *

They left for Morgantown after Alison had spent the morning with Mr. Beachy, learning about engine hoists and stands. Bill had taken her wheels down to Smitty’s and had new tires mounted, so that now the Corvette could roll, its tires no longer mush. Together, they had pushed it a bit, just enough to shove it past its ruts. The small movement of the car had thrilled her—two inches seemed as good as a thousand miles. After her morning at AAAA, looking over all the catalog parts she couldn’t afford, Max had met her for breakfast at the Red Bird, and then they drove over, holding hands in the truck, listening to Placido Domingo and Teresa Stratas, the high notes making the speakers buzz. The demolition job Max had lined up was a twelve-story building, which had once been the Hotel Morgantown.

“I guess they didn’t rack their brains thinking up names for the place, huh?” Alison said as they parked across the street.

“It’s to the point,” Max said. “You have to admire that.”

The sign for the hotel was still in place, once-fancy gilt lettering on a dark green wooden board, all of it now peeling and flaked. For the past ten years, it had been used as a “flophouse,” as Max called it, some kind of shelter for indigent men. The front door handles were laced with chains and a padlock, and Max unlocked them with a key he carried on a cardboard tag. The street around the hotel looked as indigent as the men who had once lived here: scattered nests of paper scraps trapped by chain-link fencing, brown bottles smashed in the gutters, the sidewalk broken and buckled, sprouting weeds, a rusted washing machine in the alley between buildings. The brick facade loomed above them, striated with pigeon droppings. Brass doors opened onto columns of dust and the odor of urine, the red carpets rolled up and leaning slumped in the corner. An outline of dirt remained where the front desk had been. Plaster had trickled down from the ceiling into neat little piles, as though some child had scooped them up.

“You know what?” Alison said. “Every impulse I have tells me to give this place a good cleaning before you tear it down.” The idea made her think of Lem and Pammy, who by now had likely finished her house, all of it new, painted, and empty.

“It’s really an amazing old building, if you can overlook all the squalor.”

“Squalor. That’s a word you don’t hear every day.”

Max walked around the narrow lobby. “Yeah, I got it from the ‘Word Power’ section of Reader’s Digest. My father subscribes.”

“Every old person I know subscribes. It’s like you start running out of time, you want to read everything in condensed form.”

“Well, I read it all the time now. Learning new words every day.

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