I hate April fool's day. It's simply licenced meanness. Granted, my intense dislike for the day springs from any number of high school pranks. I was that boy. That one that was always the good-natured victim of cruel peer pranks. Like the time that Lucy Kennet, my long-time crush asked me out on a date. Corsage and bouquet in place I arrived at the bowling alley as planned only to have my family and friends all shout 'surprise' and remind me it was my birthday that week. You know you are a sucker when your own parents sucker you.
So, this April first, like every other, I give my employees a day off and work alone. I schedule some of the simple tasks like servicing and tyres, so I can attend to those while the mechanic, his apprentice and my office lady enjoy a day with their families.
My only company this day is a radio that reminds me I'm getting old too. Seriously, when your small-town radio station starts sounding good you know it's cause they're still the playing the music you liked twenty years ago. I like the workshop when it's empty. Tools echo in the greasy space as you use them, and I can sing poorly without criticism.
And right now, as I fumble with the oily sump plug in the pit below the beige import imitation of a car, that's what I do. I sing what words I know from The White Buffalo's "I got you" and I hum the bits I don't remember. I think of April, wondering what she's doing while I warble and change oil.
She's the reason I'm not rich. I tell folk I used up all my good fortune finding her. I remember the day she bounced into the garage when my Dad owned it. Strawberry pigtails and freckles, a precocious smile and lighting wit, I loved her from the time her tiny fingers shook mine in introduction. That was twenty years ago now.
"Hello?" I startle and drop the sump plug which splashes into the catch bucket and sprays my face with oil. Wiping black muck from my eyes I wonder who owns this female voice and trespasses in my empty world.
Long white legs announce my visitor. She stands at the top of the stairs that lead down into the pit.
"Hello. Mr Fallon?"
"Hi." My mouth is slow to respond to my instructions to speak. My eyes are not so tardy to explore the form and length of the high heeled legs that disappear beneath a tiny attempt at a skirt.
"Hi, I'm Emily. Mrs Fallon said I'd find you here."
"Yup." She has a cheeky smile. The sort that self-assurred pretty twenty-something year old's flash at you when they know they have your attention. The smile sits on a pretty heart shaped face beneath blue eyes and blonde hair, just above impossibly perky breasts; braless under a too tight t-shirt.
"We are hanging some things in the studio and she'd like a hammer."
Now Mrs April Fallon doesn't share my aversion to pranks and fool's day fun and I'm wary of this temptation in a tutu whose knickers flash above me as she shifts from foot to foot. I'm probably frowning, I have no poker face, as I climb the stairs to fetch a hammer.
"Should be one just somewhere by." Emily doesn't move back enough as I crest the stairs, so I have to say, "Excuse me," and push beside her. Her eyes twinkle and her smirk widens at my awkwardness. I'm forty-three and don't for a second believe she is attracted to me, just a confident young woman who is aware of her sexuality and enjoys using it to distract and disarm.
She accepts the hammer I hold handle first toward her.
"That should do the trick." She stands too closely and tilts her face to look up at me.
"Mrs Fallon said to give you this." A slender hand moves to my hair and pulls my face down until our lips meet. Her tongue flicks along my mouth and my lips open of their own accord. She tastes of bubble-gum and heat.
She giggles as she releases me. "Well, she said on the cheek but whatever." As she walks away, even in my confused state I notice the grimy hand print on the back of her little skirt and hope that April doesn't.
April runs an art school, "Fallon academy of visual arts". She teaches photography primarily and digital arts secondarily. More than a few of the students are performance artists and models. Many like young Emily are not at all difficult for a pervy old man like myself to look at. April likes to tease me about only coming to the studio to visit the 'little' girls.
I lick the last of Emily off my lips and shaking my head, return to scrabble for the sump plug wrist deep in luke warm oil. "That's one for the wank bank." I smile to myself and get on with my day.
....
I love the feel of this stuff. And the smell, I guess. It's citrus scented and has little coarse granules in it that soothe sore hands as I massage the soapy stuff into my greasy hands. Garages hold many simple pleasures. This small ritual of handwashing before meals is one of them. I dry them on the rough cotton towel and can hear Mother's voice, "You leave more dirt on the towel than in the sink." She passed not long after Dad but they still haunt this place in little gestures and memories.
The staff room is on the mezzanine floor above the office. I don't particularly like scones unless they're fresh from the oven, but I like being hungry much less still, so I butter the dry little lumps and put enough honey on them to make them palatable. I can see Dad's grubby cracked hands turn the tea pot first one way then the other and smile as I recognise my own hand mimicking his ritual. I like my tea black. Black with half a sugar and strong.
April has a feature in the newspaper this week and I read through some of the reviews and projects as reported. There is a striking photograph of her with some of the students. She still takes my breath away with her beauty. Why is it that as women age their beauty seems to fit them better, but we men become cartoon versions of ourselves? I can see young Emily in the photo and think of taking it to the bathroom to beat the erection I've half had since she kissed me into submission.
Click, clack, click, click... "For a quiet day, this has been quite busy." I muse wondering whose footsteps interrupt my morning tea.
"Hello. Up here. Be down in a second."
"Oh, hey Mr Fallon. Mrs Fallon wants a screwdriver."
"Hey Nigella." I recognise April's office girl. "Should be one over on the workbench. I'm just having morning tea. Would you like a cuppa?"
"Sure, white and one."
She joins me moments later with a screw driver in hand, "This is a Philips head, right?"
"Yup."
She sits down opposite me and inhales the steam from the cup of tea. "Oh, lovely Mr Fallon, thanks muchly. Mrs Fallon buys really cheap tea for the academy, this is really nice."
"Never was much able to educate April about tea, love. She's a coffee person I guess."
"Not me, I love my cup of tea. Have done since I was a little thing."
"How's David?" Her live-in boyfriend and I have been fishing once or twice.
"Gone to hell I hope."
"Pardon? What's he done?"
"Who's he done?"
"Oh dear."
