Martin"s Secret

The thin man with disheveled, red hair sporting a cropped beard and wearing a mechanics jumpsuit stood beside forty-year-old Jessica Blake’s desk. The mechanic gestured with long, bony fingers, occasionally casting a guarded eye toward the customer lobby. After a while he handed her a smudged envelope and exited the building, making his way across rows of under-roof service lanes toward a garage bay at the dealership.

Jessica picked up her phone and paged Martin Harbach who was sitting in the customer lobby reading last month’s Popular Mechanics. He laid the magazine down and made his way through a hallway with colorful, framed photographs of exotic luxury cars and service-slogans lining the walls before stopping at Jessica’s desk.

She’s beautiful, he thought, unexpectedly happy he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He couldn’t recall being so instantly enamored, but then, he only remembered a few months of his life.

“The damages.” Jessica smiled as she offered him the invoice.

Martin buttoned his blue blazer’s top button with one hand and held the bill up with the other as though it was a restaurant tab.

“That’s a lot of digits,” he remarked after a quick study of the charges.

“You’re lucky, Shelby stuff is usually special order,” chimed Jessica, hoping the man who waited patiently for seven hours would explain the bullet holes in his car. “They dug, you know, bullets out of the interior and replaced some trim and an out-of-town Ford Dealership delivered the glass this morning.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” he said, reaching inside his coat.

“Excuse me?”

“Lucky, I don’t feel lucky,” he said, discretely admiring her countenance. He liked the way her slender, arched brows and long lashes framed churning eyes that doubled as tractor beams.

“The mechanic said you could have been killed, so you’re definitely lucky.”

“Oh, they did a great job. I just meant... never mind, I’m rambling,” he relented. “I guess luck had something to do with it.”

Martin produced a thick clip of money, peeled off a slew of hundred-dollar bills and dealt them loosely on Jessica’s desk.

She considered how her customer’s calm demeanor and tailored attire contrasted with his shot-up car and cash-and-carry business style. A young war-widow, she had not sought a close relationship in years, but there was something beyond essential male attributes sparking her interest. He had Chris Hemsworth’s good looks atop a powerfully postured frame that his Hugo Boss ensemble emphasized, but it was his unassuming brown eyes with their brilliant white scleras that set him apart. To her liking, Martin exuded aloofness, a contrast that seemed incongruent to someone who’d dodged a hail of bullets the night before.

Maybe he was the perpetrator, she thought, but promptly dismissed that theory in consideration of the stranger’s genuine, amicable demeanor.

“Our customers usually pay with plastic; of course, we do accept cash, but… I just meant that, well, most people, um, never mind, now I’m rambling.” God, I sound like a schoolgirl, she thought.

Normally reserved, not easily charmed, never to the extreme of speaking gibberish, Jessica regained her composure, straightened the bills like a deck of cards, patted them flat and counted the money, determining two-hundred dollars was owed back.

“You gave me too much money. They’re newly minted bills so some probably stuck together,” she posited.

“Split it with the mechanic, the one that likes to talk,” said Martin, smiling as he pocketed the money-clip.

Jessica jingled his keys from a manicured index finger, tilted her head and raised her brows curiously as a lock of glossy black hair fell over one eye.

“The customer is always right, that’s what I say. I’ll make sure the extra money gets to the guys who did the work.”

“That’d be great.”

Martin headed for the exit wondering if it was the delicate waft of perfume mixed with her body chemistry or looking into those lustrous pecan eyes that had jolted him from a mental replay of last night’s harrowing confrontation.

“Excuse me, Mr. Harbach, um, Martin....” First name, really? Leave now, schoolgirl!

Martin turned, thankful for the opportunity to talk to her.

“Did I forget something?”

“No, but... I’m sorry, it’s not like it’s any of my business, but I was just wondering what, you know, what happened.”

Fearing her uninvited pry might put him off, Jessica paused and surveyed the room as if to assure him no one was within earshot.

Martin returned to her desk and read the laminated name-tag perched on her breast.

“I really don’t know, Jessica. I don’t know the guy.” He knew how improbable that sounded but it was the truth.

“Really? I just hope you don’t meet up with him again.”

“No worries,” said Martin. “He seemed to regret the entire affair, as I recall.”

“So would you like a souvenir? They dug this out of your door.” Jessica held a flattened slug in her outstretched hand.

“Keep it for luck,” said Martin, immediately regretting his choice of words. “Um... not that you need luck, it’s just that I found a slug on the floor-mat last night so I already have a memento.”

For some reason, Jessica made him feel as vulnerable as the assassin had the night before, but in a very different way. The afternoon sun glistened through tinted glass, illuminating her face in a romantic hue. He imagined she could be a Golden Globe recipient on award night if her raven hair was not slightly disheveled from the workday. It wasn’t a glamorous, made-up beauty, but she graced the navy-blue skirt and company-logo blouse with a natural radiance. It was as though she emitted an invisible ray that effortlessly penetrated his protective shield. He wanted to engage her, somehow delay their inevitable parting, but small-talk did not come easily to him and discussing the bullet-holes in his car was at best temporary entertainment, hardly the fodder to woo such a charming gentlewoman.

Jessica eyed the blunted bullet for a second and looked up at Martin, carefully searching for the right words to communicate her own unresolved attraction.

“My souvenir from a mysterious and interesting customer.”

She knew it wasn’t Pulitzer material but decided it was best to leave things there. The two paused, communicating without speaking, words utterly failing to materialize.

“Watch your back out there,” she said after her phone signaled an incoming call. She smiled goodbye to him with her eyes before addressing the caller.

Martin hesitated at the door. He needed to share what happened the night before, but with so many gaps in his memory, it wouldn’t make sense. He opened the door but glanced back to cradle her image in his mind for a moment, a pleasant memory for a man whose lifetime was deleted.

Jessica put the phone back in its cradle and waved with her fingers, a sadness replacing her lively smile.

Outside, Martin checked his Rolex. It was three forty-five on a warm afternoon with comfortable humidity and his car was backed into a parking space several rows back where Jessica said it would be. He was about to crank the engine when an elderly man and woman passed in front of the car. The man, who looked ninety, was stooped and crooked, used a walker and shuffled slowly. The woman seemed sprier and moved purposely to steady the old man’s fragile gait.

After he adjusted the seat from where the mechanic had positioned it, Martin detected a hot electrical scent and felt a stinging sensation above his eye that seemed to radiate outward from deep inside his head. Within seconds the stabbing jolts ceased, but dizziness ensued and he slumped forward until his head rested on the top of his steering wheel.

A rapping on the window and a woman’s muffled voice woke him. The scent was gone as was the pain above his eye.

“Martin, are you alright? I was about to leave work and found you asleep in your car.”

He scanned the drive for the elderly couple but they were gone, and the sun had sunk behind the building, and different cars were parked in the spaces across the drive. He peered with disbelief at his watch then recognized Jessica’s voice and let the window down.

“Guess I dozed off,” he said with as much normality as he could muster.

“It’s six o’clock, that’s over two hours,” she informed. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

The blackouts had occurred three times, maybe four, he was not sure how many times, he just could not remember.

“I’m probably going to stop for the night, get an early start in the morning,” he deadpanned. “Guess last night’s excitement caught up.”

“Where?” Jessica’s expression begged an answer.

“Where?” he answered in a question, wishing a million memories would flood his mind beginning with his travel itinerary.

“Yes. Where?”

“Southeast.... I’m headed to Florida.”

Jessica giggled. “I meant tonight?” She hoped she didn’t sound ostentatious. “Would you like to go somewhere and have a cup of coffee or a drink before you find a hotel?”

“Um, I don’t know. I need to, it’s just that....”

“Going once, going twice,” teased Jessica.

“I’d like that. I surely would.”

His verbal stall was Martin’s waning reluctance to involve her, but he needed to trust someone and his angst quickly evaporated. Any objection he might muster was sure to fall captive to the feminine charms she effused. Despite his disrupted recollection, he had never felt more alive, more like a complete man, more purely human.