Chapter 5: Grease and Gears
The grease was a second skin, ground into the whorls of his fingerprints and the lines of his palms. Lucifer wiped his hands on a red shop rag that had long since faded to a grimy pink, the coarse fabric doing little more than rearranging the oil. The scent was everywhere—gasoline, burnt rubber, the tang of old metal. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was honest.
The shop owner, a man in his fifties named Tony with a salt-and-pepper mustache and forearms like knotted rope, leaned against a workbench cluttered with carburetors. He hadn’t stopped eyeing Lucifer since he’d walked in an hour ago asking for work. It wasn’t every day a seven-foot-tall stranger with golden eyes and an outdated haircut wandered into his Sun Valley garage.
“So,” Tony grunted, his voice a dry rasp. “You ever work on a ‘69 Camaro? Not look at one. Work on one.”
Lucifer set the rag down. He’d been carefully cleaning tools, organizing Tony’s chaotic bench into rows of socket wrenches and screwdrivers sorted by size. A silent audition. “Small-block 350? Or the 396?”
A flicker in Tony’s eyes. Interest. “327, actually. Owner’s a purist. Or a masochist. Thing’s been sitting for a decade. Mice in the air filter.”
“Mice mean chewed wires. You’ll need to check the harness behind the dashboard before you even think about turning the key.” Lucifer picked up a timing light, checked its connection. “The rear main seal on those usually weeps. If it’s been sitting, it’ll be a waterfall.”
Tony took a slow sip from his chipped World’s Best Dad mug. “You talk like you’ve rebuilt one.”
“With my grandfather. In New Jersey.” The lie, a prepared one, tasted bland. His nonna’s brother really had owned a garage in Bayonne. The memories were there, vivid and technical, a useful anchor in this unfamiliar year. “I can start with the diagnostics. You don’t pay me if I can’t trace the electrical fault.”
Tony studied him for another long moment, the neon Open sign flickering and buzzing overhead. “Hourly. Under the table. You break it, you bought it, and you can’t afford it. You steal so much as a 10-millimeter socket, I call my nephew. He’s not as nice as me.”
“Understood.”
“Alright, Jersey.” Tony jerked his thumb towards the open bay door, where the shell of a vintage Camaro sat like a sleeping beast. “The mouse mansion is all yours. Try not to loom over it too much, you’ll scare it.”
The work was a relief. It was linear. A problem with a physical solution. Lucifer rolled the creeper under the car’s chassis, the world shrinking to the underbelly of rustproofing and brake lines. The familiar smell of penetrating oil, the satisfying crack of a stubborn bolt loosening, the gritty texture of grime under his nails—it all rooted him to this spot, this moment, in a way nothing else in 1990 had. Here, he wasn’t a temporal anomaly or a confused fan. He was a pair of competent hands.
His mind, however, kept drifting up the 5 freeway, to a hillside overlooking the city. How do you know stuff like that, Lucifer? Robert’s question, asked with that speculative smile, echoed in the clang of his wrench. The terror of involvement he’d felt on the wall had settled into a low-grade hum, a background radiation to every thought. He was interfering. Directly. He’d given specific, tailored advice. He was now a variable in the equation of Robert Downey Jr.’s life, and the math of time travel was not something you could fudge with a notebook metaphor.
He was tracing a frayed wire behind the dash when the shop’s bell jingled. Tony was out front arguing with a parts supplier on the phone. Lucifer heard the customer’s voice before he saw him—light, melodic, with a contained energy.
“...just a click, Tony, I swear it’s possessed. It’s like the spirit of my old drama teacher is in the starter, refusing to let me go on.”
Lucifer froze, his head still inside the Camaro’s footwell.
“Hold on,” Tony barked into the phone, then covered the receiver. “Downey. Your car’s around back where you left it. Battery’s probably deader than my love life. Try a jump before you call an exorcist.”
“I lack cables. And faith.”
That voice. It was like a key turning in a lock deep in Lucifer’s chest. He carefully extracted himself, wiping his hands again as he stood up. He had to duck under the door frame to step out of the bay into the front office.
Robert was leaning on the counter, dressed in faded jeans and a vintage Zeppelin t-shirt with a small hole near the neckline. He was examining a display of keychains with detached amusement. He glanced over as Lucifer’s shadow fell across him.
His eyes widened. The amusement didn’t vanish, it transformed, sharpening into pure, delighted shock. “No way.”
“Way,” Lucifer said, his voice thankfully steady.
“You’re a mechanic?” Robert laughed, a bright, unfiltered sound. “Of course you are. You look like you could lift a car and change its tires without bothering with a jack. This is weird, right? This is a statistically significant level of weird. What are the odds?”
“In this city? Probably higher than you think.” Lucifer came around the counter, conscious of his size, of his grimy coveralls. “Tony says it’s your battery.”
“Tony is a skeptic and a cynic. I think it’s the universe telling me to walk more.” Robert’s gaze was traveling over him, taking in the oil smudges, the name Lucifer stitched over the breast pocket. “So, the mysterious man from the club and the Griffith Park sage also knows his way around a distributor cap. Who are you, really?”
“A guy who needs a job in 1990.” The truth, wrapped in a joke.
Robert held up his hands in surrender. “Fair. No more interrogation. For now.” He nodded towards the back. “Want to give me a second opinion? I’ll trust yours over Tony’s. He still thinks fuel injection is a fad.”
Out back, Robert’s car was a late-80s BMW, sleek and black and currently inert. Lucifer popped the hood. The battery terminals were indeed crusted with white corrosion. “It’s the terminals. They need cleaning. Probably the battery, too.” He found a wire brush on a nearby cart and set to work, scraping the lead posts clean. The action was simple, automatic.
Robert watched, leaning against the fender. The late afternoon sun cut across the dirty lot, highlighting the gold in his brown hair. “The scene worked, by the way,” he said, his tone casual but his attention laser-focused on Lucifer’s reaction. “The director lost his mind. In a good way. Said it was ‘raw but controlled.’ I told him I had a good journalist helping with my notes.”
Lucifer kept scraping. “That’s good.”
“It is. It’s… a different way in. Less drowning, more… swimming with a purpose.” He paused. “You left before I could say thanks.”
“You had a show to do.”
“I did. It was okay. Crowd was loud.” Robert kicked at a loose piece of asphalt. “So, you’re sticking around? In the grease-monkey phase of your mysterious journey?”
“For a while.” Lucifer reattached the positive cable, tightening it firmly. “Try it now.”
Robert slid into the driver’s seat. The engine turned over immediately with a healthy, throaty rumble. He grinned, revving it lightly. “A miracle worker!” He got out, leaving the engine running. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. It took two minutes.”
“Nope. Not how this works.” Robert fished in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty, then a business card—cream-colored, thick stock. He scribbled something on the back with a pen from his glovebox. “Take the twenty for the two minutes. And this,” he said, handing over the card. The front had his agent’s information. On the back, in a sloping script, was a phone number. “That’s my private line. At the Chateau. In case you… I don’t know, diagnose any other philosophical engine trouble.”
He was flirting again, but it was softer now. Curious. An invitation.
Lucifer took both, the paper warm from Robert’s hand. The twenty felt like a lie. The card felt like a threshold.
“I should get back to the mice,” Lucifer said, pocketing them.
“Right. The rodentia await.” Robert climbed back into his car, rolling down the window. He looked up, the setting sun catching the amber in his own eyes. “Hey, Lucifer?”
“Yeah?”
“The drop. You feel it the whole time.” He nodded, as if confirming it to himself. “But it’s nicer not feeling it alone.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He put the car in gear and pulled out of the lot, the sound of the engine fading into the hum of the avenue.
Lucifer stood in the oily twilight, the card a burning weight in his pocket. Tony appeared in the back door, sipping his coffee. “Friend of yours?”
“Something like that.”
“Huh. Fancy friend for a grease monkey.” Tony turned to go back inside. “The Camaro’s not gonna fix itself, Jersey. Those mice are plotting a takeover.”
Lucifer looked at the empty space where Robert’s car had been. The low-grade hum of terror was still there. But now, intertwined with it, was a current of something else—something terrifyingly like hope. He had a job. He had a phone number. He had, against all his intentions, made a connection.
He walked back into the dark, fragrant belly of the garage, towards the problems he could actually solve.