Jan was down on her luck and painfully low on cash, at 62 years of age she hadn't planned to be in this position. Her husband had left her for a younger model 6 years ago and since then, she had plodded through life on auto pilot. She had taken to having a much shorter hair cut and let the grey show though. The only thing she could safely say she'd achieved in that time, was to gain a fuck load of weight. She often remarked at her own reflection that if she didn't have her massive tits she would resemble a little old fat man. So she wasn't happy when her car decided today would be the day to play up. She had only bought it two months ago and now it was backfiring, and the dash was lit up like a Christmas tree with more warning lights than she'd ever seen before.
Jan knew there was a little garage 20 minutes walk from her cottage but she never liked to go there. Everyone looked shifty, and as a lady of matured years with little to no knowledge of how cars actually worked, she always felt like they'd rip her off. Today was different, today she was praying that her shitty little Peugeot would limp a little closer to home. Right now there was nowhere she wanted to be more than on that forecourt. It took the best part of an hour to crawl her motor to the garage, and as she pulled up outside most of the orange warning lights had turned red indicating the problem was not getting better. She could see there were four grease monkeys staring out at her from the gloomy interior of the workshop, but none of them seemed to be coming out to see what she needed. She stepped out of the car and headed in. Jan stepped into what this place called an office ( more of an old shipping container with some chairs and a table) and was instantly hit by the smell of oil and grease. She tried her best not to scrunch her nose up at the smell as the chubby man in glasses spoke.
"Good afternoon, my name is Trevor. How can we be of assistance today?"
Trevor was a short man who looked to be in his 60s clearly going bald but his face seemed friendly enough so Jan recounted her tale of woe and how the car was behaving, Trevor pulled out a grubby looking seat and offered it to her, as she sat Trev shouted into the yard.
"Get that pug up on the ramp and tell me what wrong with it, make it pronto we have a damsel in distress in here."
Jan blushed a little in response to being described as a damsel then inwardly scolded herself for even listening to the bull shit charm of this probable rob dog. She sat and patiently waited in the office as Trevor busied himself with what seemed urgent paperwork, and she was left looking around the room for distraction. There were the usual posters advertising service work they did, a couple of taxi business cards pinned to the wall and a little sign saying.
"I thought i saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just some cunt with a torch bringing me more work."
This made Jan chuckle, the noise made Trevor raise an eyebrow in her direction but he quickly ignored her and carried on with his work. Her eyes carried on searching around the room until she turned her head and was staring straight at a picture of a large lady wearing a racy number that had both breasts exposed. It was one of those dirty calendars that had clearly had some use. Jane was a little startled and let out an audible
"oh my."
Trevor looked over l, stood and walked towards her.
"I'm terribly sorry about that."
Instead of taking it down like she thought he would, he merely flipped the page over and hung it back on the wall.
"It was still showing last month's lady." He chuckled taking a long look at the new photo, this one of two bigger lady's, nude sat in a hot tub.
"That's not what I meant." Jane muttered under her breath.
Trevor went back to his paperwork.
After what felt like an eternity a large black man in his early 30s walked into the office and despite Jan being sat right there spoke to only Trevor about my car, he then handed him a oil stained report card and turned to leave but not before looking at her like a piece of meat. Jane wasn't a racist but her mother had brought her up to never trust a man of colour, secretary she had always wondered what it might be like to be with a black man but that time had long since passed. She was brought back from her thoughts by Trevor's announcement.
"This really isn't good Jan, my boys have given your car the once over and have found quite a few problems."
He went on, explaining how and why her car was overheating, that she had a broken spring, something about a tire. She really wasn't listening, she was waiting for the price tag.
"And with all that put together with the dreaded VAT you're looking at £1500 worth of work."
Jan was flabbergasted, She was expecting the bill to be a little inflated but this was insane.
"How much?" She said a little too loud for the distance between the two of them. "I haven't had it that long, it can't need that much doing."
"We can probably get you back up and running in three days." Trevor replied completely ignoring the lady's grips.
Jane started to panic, three days! Three days! Forget the three days she thought. I haven't got a bean to my name, never mind £1500.
"I haven't got that type cash right now." She said
"We do take card payments now, if that helps?" proudly pointing at the card reader.
"No it's not that, I haven't got the money full stop." she said with a quavering voice.
"Fuck sake, everyone is a fucking time waster nowadays." he growled and started to shout at his team "Get that piece of shit off the ramp."
"Please wait." Jan said and reached out towards Trevor striding towards the door
"I really need your help."
With everything going in her head she wasn't aware that she had reached out and her hand was now brushing across his groin. Trevor stopped looked down at her hand and shouted again
"Leave it on the ramp lads, I think she wants to pay after all."
Jan brain wasn't taking it all in fast enough, she was still in the process of apologising for accidentally touching him there when he said
"You didn't look the type to offer payment in kind, but I'm sure we could work something out."
Jan pulled her hand away.
"That's not what I, wait what do you mean sort something out? I'm not some cheap whore."
"I hope not, this is one hell of a bill. You'd need to make sure all my lads are satisfied every day that your car is here."
Jan's head was in a spin
"I've never been so offended, I should report you for harassment."
"Do whatever you want lady but if you want that car fixing on the house you're, going to have to spend some time on your knees!"
Jan was about to leave then the realisation that she, and her car were very much broke. Turning back to Trevor she said.
