Re: Garage: Elijah/Aubrey
Elijah didn't enjoy clothes. He understood this was something that people thought about, sometimes continuously (or how else would magazines be produced, slick and fat with the lustre of consumerism?) but he didn't think about clothes. He was the kind of man who bought underwear in plastic packs at Walmart, along with undershirts and jeans that sat on the hips and didn't do much else. But observation was observation, and Elijah's eyes were glass-blue and wary from behind the counter.
The man left his black 'Rover parked on the forecourt. That was how Elijah thought of cars, he thought of them as composites of pieces rather than any sort of fondness of the whole. It was a carburettor and exhaust, ignition system and brakes, an oily system that required surgery like any other. It was a blocky, matte machine and it looked expensive, and Elijah's fingers twitched inside his gloves and he stuffed his free hand into his pocket reflexively as the man moved towards the door.
Body temperature. High or feverish, the basal body temperature had to be ticked high or was it the circulation system in the car? Elijah, who kept the heat on low in the garage because he couldn't afford the difference, breathed an exhale of vapor and looked mistrustfully in the man's direction. And then he opened his mouth and didn't stop talking. Elijah didn't mind conversation, preferably remote and at a safe distance, but he was clocking the way the man moved, the way the man fished for his phone and read off a string of numbers and letters that made complete sense if you understood tires and cars, which clearly the man in his shirtsleeves did not, and the range of expressions the man moved through.
Elijah of course, had no idea how quickly his own face moved through mistrust, dismay, suspicion and alarm at the elbow knocking the corner of the counter. It was damply cold inside the building, with the sense of repression of movement that cold left in its wake and the air soaked everything that was other than truly mundane out of the air along with it.
"Tires," he repeated. Elijah had a soft, odd voice that was faintly jerky in timbre. "Do tires, in a garage." There was a faint, maddening emphasis on the last word that might have been sarcasm, given room.