At lunch, he sat alone on an overturned crate eating a peanut butter sandwich. A tall, lanky mechanic with a gap-toothed grin ambled over and dropped down beside him.

"I'm Ofelia," said the mechanic, who turned out to be a woman in her forties with a shaved head and an enormous tattoo of a wrench on her forearm. "You're famous."

"I'm aware."

"I watched the video eight times. Don't take it personally, but you were really loud."

"I've heard."

"I'm not saying it to hurt you." She bit into an apple. "I'm saying it because nobody back here is going to pretend it didn't happen. We don't do that. We say the thing, and then we get on with the work. You can respect that or you can hate us. Up to you."

Brandon looked at her for a moment. Then, slowly, he found that he was almost smiling. "I respect it."

"Good." She tossed him half the apple. "You're doing the wheel wells wrong, by the way."

"I figured."

"Gus's gonna shout. Let him. He shouts at everybody. It's how he shows love."

"That's a hell of a love language."

"It's the only one he knows."

After lunch, Gus appeared at his elbow, arms folded. "Come here," he said. "I want to show you something."

He led Brandon across the shop to a low steel bench on which sat a single object, wrapped in a clean white cloth. With surprising delicacy, he peeled back the cloth.

It was a cutaway engine block, small, eight cylinders, its metal skin sliced open to reveal the pistons and rods inside. It gleamed with faint, oily light. The whole thing was about the size of a suitcase.

"The Halcyon," Gus said. "First production model. Nineteen eighty-seven. Hayes drew it. Every engine in every Aurelia since is a cousin of this one."

Brandon stared. Up close, the engine looked almost like a piece of sculpture, an intricate lattice of channels and curves, every surface shaped for a purpose. "It's beautiful," he said.

"Don't say beautiful. Say why."

"Why?"

"No. I'm asking you. Why is it beautiful?"

Brandon opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked again, and for the first time, he really looked. He saw how the passages bent smoothly, never sharply. He saw how the pistons sat in perfect alignment. He saw how every curve pointed toward a function, and every function had been given room to breathe.

"Because nothing's wasted," he said slowly. "Everything's there for a reason."

Gus's mustache twitched. It might have been a smile. "Not bad for a salesman."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Wheel wells." He pointed with his chin. "And you still haven't earned the right to touch that. Not till the end of the week."

Brandon nodded, and went back to his bucket. His hands ached. His back was knotted. But as he scrubbed, he noticed something unfamiliar in his chest, a small, steady warmth, like a pilot light catching.

It was a long time before he realized that it was not humiliation. It was the first honest day's work he had done in years.

The Sound of a Healthy Engine

By the end of the second week, Brandon's hands had hardened.

The calluses came first on his palms, then along the base of each finger, rough yellow ridges that caught on bedsheets and made his mother wince when he held her hand. He had learned to wear gloves, and then to stop wearing them when a job needed feel. His shoulders ached in places he had not known existed. He ate like a horse, slept like a stone, and woke each morning at five without an alarm.

He could change oil. He could rotate tires. He could bleed a brake line, though not well, and Gus still stood over him with a wrench like a man guarding a priceless vase. He had learned the names of everyone in the department. Ofelia, who spoke in a rolling alto and sang while she worked. Terrence, a gentle, enormous man who kept a framed picture of his daughter's recital on his toolbox. Little Raj, nineteen years old, who had a gift for diagnosing electrical faults and a deep fear of public speaking. And Gus, who said very little and noticed everything.

It was a Wednesday, late in the afternoon, when Gus summoned him again to the steel bench.

"Today you learn to listen," he said.

"Listen to what?"

"The engine. Come on."

They walked to the far bay, where a gleaming black sedan sat idling on the floor. It was an Aurelia Meridian, the second one the dealership had received, a pre-delivery unit that had just come off the truck. Its hood was raised. Under it, the Halcyon V8 lay nested in its bay like a sleeping animal, the metal clean and bright.