Chapter 123: Working Towards VJ

"Read it back to me," Adrian said.

Dom, one hand on the Corolla’s fender, squinted at the estimate like it owed him money. "Eleven-ten for the essentials, three-eighty to redo the support weld. Fourteen-ninety, labor included."

"What does that get me?"

"Straight frame at the nose, a radiator that doesn’t boil you on the highway, headlight that matches. Alignment so it stops pulling." He tapped the hood. "What I can’t promise is what’s behind it. I opened the front. I haven’t opened the rest. If your crash found one weak spot, it can have found two."

"If it did?"

"Then I call before I touch it. Nobody gets a surprise invoice."

"Fourteen-ninety," Adrian repeated. "In writing."

"Everything’s in writing," Dom said. "Eventually."

That was the right answer, and also the kind a man gives when he’s been burned. Adrian signed the essentials, left the cosmetic line blank, and asked for a clean copy with the new total, one sheet he could staple to a folder and watch grow. Dom printed it. The machine groaned.

Tim was at the counter pretending to organize a drawer. "Thursday," he said, to nobody, in the voice of a man giving a verdict.

"Thursday." Adrian folded the sheet along its crease. "Do you know a mechanic you trust for regular maintenance? After this."

"My brother."

"I meant besides him."

"Then no." Tim grinned. "Dom’s it. I just do his paperwork. Tuesdays, mostly. Invoices, supplier bills, whoever’s behind on a balance."

"All on paper?"

"Mostly. A binder. A spreadsheet with a lot of sins."

Adrian glanced at the counter, where a stack of invoices leaned like a tired tower. "Is that this week?"

"That’s this quarter."

Adrian didn’t offer anything. A man who offered fixes to problems he hadn’t diagnosed was just a salesman with better posture. "How does he track what a part cost against what he charged for the job?"

Tim opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at the binder like it might answer. "Honestly? He remembers."

"Remembers."

"Mostly." Tim scratched his neck. "I can ask if he’d talk about it. He’s weird about outsiders."

"Ask. No pressure."

"I’ll text you," Tim said.

The ride home smelled like pine air freshener and someone else’s cologne. The driver glanced at the bandage in the mirror. "Barrier," Adrian said. "It won." The driver nodded like that was the usual outcome.

Adrian watched the road with his phone in his hand and the notification open, as though a third look might change the wording.

[Pending Opportunity: Corolla Repair]

[Estimate verified: $1,490.00]

[Expenditure recorded. No eligible recipient identified.]

[Opportunity remains open.]

’Expenditure recorded.’ So it had seen the number. ’No eligible recipient identified.’ Which meant either that somebody out there qualified and he hadn’t found them, or that the thing he’d been paying for wasn’t the kind of thing the system paid back on. He turned the sentences over like coins. Maybe the recipient mattered. Maybe the way he paid mattered. Maybe there was a condition he hadn’t met, written in a line he couldn’t see. He liked none of the theories enough to trust it.

At home he dropped his apartment key in the bowl, opened the system, and read everything it already knew. No new tab, no hint, no fine print. He tapped the opportunity twice, as if it were a stuck door. It stayed open and said nothing.

’You can’t force it.’ It was irritating, the way true things usually were. He disliked mysteries that came with a receipt.

He wrote it in his notes under Questions: Who counts as a recipient? Does it have to be a person? Is Dom one, or is the shop? He didn’t spend a dollar on an experiment. A test with no hypothesis was just a bill.

He opened his bank app next. $15,593.74. Then the repair, subtracted, to $14,103.74, and he made himself separate the three numbers in his head: money he had, money he’d committed, money that could actually move. The last one was smaller than it looked. A balance was a mood until you assigned it jobs.

He pulled up the investment notes, his own handwriting: Rose 82. Jenna 53. The stream. Under it, the thing he hadn’t named: Calloway’s paperwork. He didn’t write a value. He didn’t know what Dom needed or whether Dom would pay for anything, and a figure without a source was just a hope with a decimal point. He compared them the way you compare apartments: not by which had the nicest photos, but by which he could actually walk through.

His phone buzzed.

Rose: Prompts. Pick one.

Rose: 1. "A cat that thinks it’s a landlord." 2. "The last slice of pizza at a funeral." 3. "A man apologizing to a plant."

He read them in order and immediately knew which would work on camera. A viewer needed to get the joke in two seconds. The cat did. The pizza took too long to land. The plant had the best face, but the plant needed a plant.

Adrian: Cat or plant. Cat’s faster. Plant needs a prop.

Rose: The plant is based on you.

He chose not to ask which part.

Rose: Cat. Format?

Adrian: You get one sentence from me, one from Jenna. Fifteen minutes, two paintings, strict timer. We record the sentences separately so neither of us can adjust after seeing you react.

Rose: You’re turning a drawing challenge into a controlled experiment.

Adrian: It’s called a fair test.

Rose: It’s called being you.

He didn’t know what to do with that, so he answered the logistics.

Adrian: Saturday, ten. No new equipment until the next one performs.

Rose: Yes, accountant.

Jenna called twenty minutes later, which meant she’d decided texting was a coward’s medium.

"Saturday still?" she said. "Is the format locked?"

He explained it: two sentences, two paintings, the recording rule. She was quiet for about three seconds, which for Jenna was a thesis defense.

"Viewers need to get it in the first ten seconds," she said. "If they don’t understand the rules, they leave. And the reveal—you can’t show both paintings at once. Hold the second until the end. Make them wait."

He saw it, and it irritated him that he hadn’t. "Fine. First sentence at the start, second revealed at the finish."

"And the timer on screen. People like to watch someone panic."

"You want a countdown."

"I want your face next to a countdown."

"That’s a lot of face."

"It’s a good face." She said it flatly, like reading an invoice, and the silence that followed was eight seconds longer than it needed to be.

He didn’t pretend the kiss hadn’t happened. She didn’t bring it up. They both heard the quiet, and he understood it was her way of not pushing, and he was grateful and slightly alarmed at how much.

"Jenna."

"Yeah."

"I’m not making promises right now. Not while I’m still working out what I’m doing with Rose."

"I know."

"I just don’t want you thinking—"

"Hayes." Her voice had lost its edge. "I’m not asking for a promise. I’m asking you to be honest. If something changes, you tell me. Don’t make me find out from a text."

"I will."

"Good." A beat. She exhaled, and the line carried it. He wondered whether that was relief or a woman deciding not to be hurt where he could see. "Saturday. Bring a better lamp."

She hung up before he could answer, which was the closest thing to a bow he’d get.

At nine, Tim texted.

Tim: Talked to Dom. He’ll hear you out. He’s skeptical. Says outsiders don’t get how a shop works.

Tim: Main problem is supplier invoices, job costs, and who owes what. Three piles.

Adrian: Does he use software?

Tim: Honestly not sure. I’ll find out instead of guessing.

Adrian: Good. I’ll meet him briefly once you know. No promises.

He opened a fresh note and typed the questions: How does he track it now? How long does it take? What goes wrong most often? What would he call a worthwhile improvement? He didn’t write ’build,’ or ’hire,’ or ’sell.’ He didn’t know the problem yet. A solution was just an answer you’d bought too early.

He read the whole page once: repair booked, video planned, a stranger’s weld, a boundary with Jenna, a plan with Rose. The pending opportunity still sat there, patient. He checked it one last time. Open. He decided the lack of a reward wasn’t a failure. It was the exact edge of what he could know, and edges were useful: they told you where to look next.

The phone buzzed.

Tim: Tuesday, 4pm. Dom says bring questions, not a pitch.

Adrian looked at the message. He’d come home from a wreck with a broken car, and the only lead he had came from a man he’d helped carry a mattress. Not from the system. From a staircase.

Thursday the car. Saturday the cat. Tuesday a man named Dom who didn’t like outsiders. His week had a shape, and he hadn’t drawn it.

He saved the note and typed: Tuesday works.