Monique Modine kept two vintage pink Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Converibles – a ’57 and a ’59 – up on blocks in her barn. She had a FWB mechanic in Albany come out the first day of each Spring, take them down, inspect them, give them a once over and make them road worthy, and first day of each Fall to winterize them and put them back up on their blocks. She, her Cadillacs, and her mechanic FWB were all the same age, and that’s how Monique liked it. She purchased the ’57 at a mid-state auction. She’d already done her research and knew which mechanics within an easy drive of Acra worked on older cars. The first garage she went to she was met by a Clearasil faced kid with his head stuck under the hood tuning his barely legal hot rod. She yelled to get his attention. He banged his head standing up and greeted her with a hockey player’s toothless smile.
“Your father or grandfather around?”
“No, Ma’am. I work here alone.”
She kept her best top-selling real estate agent smile firmly in place. “Good for you.” She asked for the address of the next shop on her list. He scratched his head and picked up a pad of paper and pen in grease covered hands. “No, that’s okay. You can just tell me. I can remember it.”
The next garage was owned by a fossil in blue-striped mechanic’s overalls. He hacksawed a pipe at about one stroke per minute.
He didn’t seem aware of her until she stood in front of him and cleared her throat. He continued his one stroke per minute momentum without looking up. “Help you, Miss?”
She smiled. Only someone as ancient as this one would call her ‘miss’. “Any reason you’re sawing that so slowly?”
“Best reason in the world. I’m ninety-eight years old.”
She asked for directions to garage number three.
A man came out from under a car on a creeper, held up a grease covered finger to signal “in a minute,” put his other hand into a tin Mione container on his workbench and came up with a glom of what looked like shiny vaseline. He thoroughly rubbed the glom onto his hands before rinsing them in a service sink and wiping them dry, then came out to where Monique waited.
She handed him her card. He glanced at it but paid more attention to the ’57 and smiled. “Your car’s got tits.”
Monique, not shy in the tit department herself, returned his smile. “Oh, we’re going to get along fine.”
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