Then the handlebars. Leo stood on his toes to reach them properly, because the bike was tall and he was ten, and he wiped each grip, each lever, each piece of chrome around the mirrors, with the same patient care. He wiped the gleaming headlight housing, a great round eye of glass and chrome that stared back at him, and he polished it until it shone like a new coin. He stepped back, once, to look at his work, and then he stepped forward again to catch a spot he had missed on the primary cover, that shining chrome plate on the side of the engine, where the dust had clung thickest. He worked it in circles until it gleamed, and then he stood back again, and he felt, for the first time that day, something that was not hunger and not worry, but pride, small and quiet and his own.
He turned to the primary cover next, the shining chrome plate on the side of the engine, and he gave it the same patient attention he had given the exhaust. The dust there was stubborn, baked on by engine heat, and it took longer to lift, circle by circle, until the metal underneath began to gleam again. Leo worked the edges first, where dust collected in a fine line, and then the broad middle, where his reflection grew clearer with every pass. He could see his own eyes in it now, wide and serious, and he looked away quickly, because staring at himself felt foolish, and because there was still work to do.
Then he went back over everything, the way his mother had taught him to go back over a room after sweeping it, looking for what the first pass had missed. A smudge on the mirror's rim. A dull patch low on the fender where the road grit had clung hardest. A fingerprint on the headlight housing, his own, left when he steadied himself. He wiped each one away, gently, without hurry, and he stepped back after each correction to judge the whole, the way an artist might step back from a picture. His arms ached from reaching and circling, and sweat ran down his temples, but the ache felt good, the way the ache after honest work always felt good, because it meant something had been done.
His rag was grey now, grey with road dust and chrome polish and the summer's dirt, and Leo folded it to a cleaner square and kept going, because the last part of a job was the part that showed. He thought, as he worked, about the dollar again, not greedily, but practically, the way a boy thinks about a tool he needs. A dollar was a sandwich. A sandwich, cut in half and wrapped in a napkin, was half for now and half for his mother. He did not let himself think further than that, because further than that was Friday and the pantry and all the things he could not fix with a rag. He thought only about the chrome, and the circles, and the shine coming back, inch by inch, under his hands.
Ten minutes. That was how long Leo worked, though it felt both longer and shorter, longer because the sun beat down and his arms ached, shorter because the work pulled him in and the world narrowed to chrome and rag and circles. Ten minutes of careful, meticulous work, during which no one came out of the diner, during which the lot stayed quiet except for the tick of cooling metal and the distant sound of traffic on the road. Ten minutes in which Leo forgot, almost, about the empty pantry and Friday and the walk home, because he was doing a job and doing it well, and a job well done was its own kind of food for a boy who had not had much else.
He was wiping the last smudge from the headlight housing, his rag now grey with dust, his forehead damp with sweat, when the sound came. It was not a sound he had been listening for, and so it hit him like a blow. The heavy glass door of the diner swung open with a violent crash, the glass shuddering in its frame, the bell above it jangling wildly, and a voice boomed out across the lot, deep and gravelly enough to shake the dust from the awning.
Hey! the voice roared. "Get your hands off my ride!"
Leo froze. His hand stopped in mid-circle, the rag pressed against the chrome. His heart hammered violently against his ribs, so hard he thought the man across the lot must be able to hear it. His throat closed. His legs, which had been steady while he worked, went weak, and he had to lock his knees to stay standing. He turned, slowly, because turning fast felt like running, and running felt like admitting he had done something wrong, and he had not, he told himself, he had only cleaned, only cleaned, but his body did not believe his own argument.
The giant man was coming down the diner steps. His boots crushed the gravel with every step. His beard was thick and grey, his arms were covered in ink, his sunglasses were dark. He filled the doorway and then he filled the steps and then he filled the space between Leo and the sun. Leo stood beside the shining motorcycle, rag in hand, dust on his shirt, and he waited, because there was nothing else to do, and because waiting was the only brave thing he knew how to do when a giant was coming toward him.