Chapter 5: Adjustments
Back at the junkyard, the silver BMW sat under the flat afternoon sun like a beached fish. Essie parked and grabbed the bag from WorkWear, heading for the trailer. Inside, the close, familiar gloom was a shock after the bright day. It smelled of old coffee and dust, Jed’s smells.
She stripped off Jez’s beautiful dress, hanging it carefully on the hook on the back of the door. For a moment she stood there, naked in the dim light, her flawless skin prickling in the stale air. She looked at her hands. No grease. No nicks. Alien.
The new coveralls were stiff, a heavy charcoal canvas. She stepped into them, shimmying the fabric up over her hips. The fit was a different kind of revelation. The chest was snug, the waist nipped in, the legs tapering just right. They weren’t meant to be flattering, but on her they were. They felt like armor. Purposeful armor. She zipped up the front, the sound loud in the quiet. The embroidered ESSIE over her heart was a declaration. She looked in the small, speckled mirror. A beautiful woman in work clothes. A beautiful contradiction. Jed’s ghost would have snorted.
She laced up the new boots, their soles virginal, and headed out.
The BMW was a mess. Front end concertinaed, airbags deployed like deflated ghosts, glitter from a shattered windshield speckling the seats. She popped the hood, the metal groaning. The engine was a write-off. She began the methodical work of identification, her hands moving with Jed’s old knowledge: checking the VIN, cataloguing salvageable parts. The sun beat down. A fine sheen of sweat formed on her brow, under her arms. It felt good. Real.
She was elbow-deep, assessing the radiator support, when a familiar white sedan crunched up the gravel drive. Erin.
The insurance adjuster got out, clipboard in hand, sunglasses pushed up into her short, practical hair. She was maybe forty, with the calm, tired eyes of someone who’d seen every kind of wreck. She squinted toward the BMW, then did a double-take, her steps slowing.
“Hello?” Erin called, approaching cautiously. “I’m looking for Jed? He’s expecting me.”
Essie straightened up, wiping her hands on a rag. “Hey there. You must be Erin.”
Erin stopped a few feet away, her eyes traveling from Essie’s face down the fitted coveralls and back up. A slow blink. “I… yes. I am. And you are…?”
“Essie. Jed’s cousin.” The lie came out smooth, practiced now. “He, uh… he noped out a few days back.”
“Noped out?”
“Took off. Said something about seeing the Pacific Ocean before he got too old. Might retire out there. Might not come back at all.” Essie shrugged, leaning a hip against the fender. “Left me minding the shop while he’s gone. Figure I might clean the place up a bit. Maybe even turn a profit. Get rid of some of these yard queens.” She gestured at the rusting hulks surrounding them.
Erin absorbed this, her expression shifting from surprise to a soft, genuine smile. “Well, I’ll be. Good for him.” She shook her head, a laugh escaping her. “I really liked that gruff old coot. He’d grumble about my estimates, call the paperwork bureaucratic nonsense… but he was fair. Honest. I always left this yard happier than when I got here.”
The words landed in Essie’s chest with a strange, hollow weight. Happier? Jed had just been… Jed. Muttering, practical, invisible. The idea that his presence had been a positive thing to someone, that it was remembered with fondness, was a concept so foreign it felt like a physical ache. Essie had no idea.
“He never mentioned that,” Essie said, her voice softer.
“He wouldn’t,” Erin said, smiling. She pulled her sunglasses down, looking at the BMW. “Alright, let’s see the damage.”
They worked for the next hour, a professional duet. Erin pointed, Essie explained what was salvageable, what was bent beyond repair. Erin’s energy was different from Luke’s or Jez’s. There was no lustful haze, no predatory curiosity. It was clean, efficient. Only once, when Essie reached high to point at a crumpled seam and her coveralls strained, did Essie catch a faint, quick pulse of something from Erin—a sharp, assessing glance at the tactical cleavage, a flicker of something that wasn’t desire, but a kind of weary envy. It was gone in a second, replaced by professional focus.
“So you’re holding the fort,” Erin said later, leaning against her car as Essie signed the forms. “Big change for you?”
“You could say that,” Essie said, handing the clipboard back.
Erin pulled out her phone, swiping. “I’ve got a little one at home. Makes you rethink everything, you know?” She turned the screen. A chubby-faced baby grinned, covered in what looked like pureed carrots.
Essie remembered. Months ago, Erin had come out, very pregnant, to assess a totalled minivan. Jed had just nodded, handed her a bottle of water, and pointed to the only shady spot. He’d never asked about the baby. Not once.
“She’s beautiful,” Essie said, and meant it. The words triggered a cascade in her mind, a sudden, vertiginous thought. Can I even have kids?
The question wasn’t intellectual. It was a visceral, bodily unknown. This form, this perfect, manufactured skin and bone and curve… did it have that function? Was there a womb in this seamless hollow? The idea was terrifying. A profound loneliness, colder than any she’d felt yet, washed over her. She stared at the happy, messy baby, and felt like a ghost looking at a feast.
Erin saw it. The smile fading from Essie’s face, the distant, frozen look in her eyes. The adjuster had seen a lot of loss. She recognized the shape of it, even when it was unfamiliar.
“Oh, honey,” Erin said quietly. She put her phone away. Her professional demeanor softened, replaced by a simple, human concern. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”
“It’s not…” Essie started, but her throat tightened. She looked away, blinking hard.
Erin didn’t ask. She just stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Essie in a firm, brief hug. It was matter-of-fact, a gesture of shared weight. “It’s a lot,” she murmured.
The contact was electric. The only person that had ever hugged Jed was his mother, decades ago, a memory so faded it was textureless. For Essie, it was a bolt of pure, undiluted human warmth. It bypassed the spider-sense, the lust-feed, everything. It just was. Essie felt her eyes burn. She gave a stiff, awkward pat to Erin’s back.
“I’m gonna…” Essie mumbled, pulling away, gesturing vaguely toward the trailer. “I’ll be right back.”
“Take your time,” Erin said, her voice kind. “Paperwork’s all done.”
Essie walked to the trailer, her boots scuffing the gravel. Inside, she closed the door and leaned against it, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. No tears fell. Just a hot, confused pressure. She splashed water on her face from the small sink, staring at the stranger in the mirror—flawless, distraught, in perfect work clothes.
By the time she composed herself and stepped back out, the white sedan was gone. The yard was silent, the only movement the heat shimmer rising from the BMW’s crumpled hood. A completed form sat neatly on the driver’s seat, held down by a rock. Erin had left without a goodbye.
Essie stood alone in the vast, rusting quiet. The hug lingered on her skin like a phantom imprint. It felt more real than anything else that had happened to her all day.
The phantom warmth of Erin’s hug lingered on her arms, a fragile counterpoint to the hard reality of the yard. Essie took a deep breath, pushing the confusing swell of feelings down into a place labeled later. Work waited. The light was wasting.
She walked to the garage bench where Jed’s old gear hung. His gloves, heavy leather monstrosities stained with years of grime and grit, sat curled like dead animals. She picked one up. It was massive. She pulled it onto her right hand.
It swallowed her. The fingers extended a good two inches past her own, the palm a cavern of empty leather. She made a fist and the whole thing collapsed comically. She looked like a child playing dress-up, or a cartoon character with absurd, flopping paws. Mickey Mouse hands. She wiggled the fingers and snorted a laugh. Useless.
“Guess those days are over,” she said to the empty garage, her voice flat. She tossed the gloves back onto the bench. They landed with a soft, definitive thud.
For the next two hours, she worked without them. The new coveralls quickly lost their store-bought stiffness, acquiring a film of dust and a streak of grime along her thigh. She moved with a methodical rhythm bred from decades of habit, her smaller, nimble hands a surprising advantage in the cramped spaces of the BMW’s wrecked interior. She pulled the undamaged tail lights, the rearview mirror, the good front caliper. She catalogued each part on Jed’s old clipboard, her handwriting looping and unfamiliar.
The real challenge was the accordioned front end. Twisted metal snarled around the engine block, sharp edges hidden in the shadows of crumpled panels. She used a crowbar for leverage, her new boots braced against the frame. She pried at a bent section of the radiator support, muscles in her shoulders and back coiling tight.
The metal gave way all at once with a sharp shriek of protest.
A jagged, razor-edge she hadn’t seen snapped free. It lashed across the back of her left hand and up her forearm in one swift, bright line.
“Ah! Goddammit!”
She dropped the crowbar, clattering. She stumbled back, clutching her arm. A deep, Burning slice opened up, welling blood that was shockingly red against her flawless skin. She hissed through her teeth, vision sparking at the edges. Beneath the blood, she saw the pale, glistening hint of subcutaneous fat. It was a bad cut. A stitches cut.
Frantically, she looked for a rag. Pressure. She needed pressure. She grabbed a clean-ish cloth from her back pocket and pressed it hard against the wound, cursing softly. The pain was a brilliant, focused throb. She waited for the deep ache to set in.
It didn’t.
The searing, electric pain began to fade, not over minutes, but over seconds. It dulled to a warm tingle. Puzzled, she pulled the rag away.
The blood was already clotting, turning dark. As she watched, the long, ugly gash seemed to pull itself together from the sides. The edges knit, the redness fading to a pink seam, then to a faint, silvery line. Within a minute, all that remained was a thin, pale scar. Another thirty seconds, and even that smoothed away into perfect, unbroken skin.
She turned her arm over, staring. No bruise. No mark. Nothing.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
A wild, giddy laugh bubbled up in her throat. She held her arm up to the dying sun, rotating it. Flawless. She pressed her thumb hard into the spot where the cut had been. Nothing. Not even tenderness.
This just keeps getting better.
The realization crashed over her like a wave. The seamless skin, the lack of freckles or marks… it wasn't just cosmetic. She was… engineered. Improved. She thought of the comics Jed used to read, tucked under the workbench. Healing factor. Like Wolverine. Or X-23.
On impulse, she clenched her fist tight, concentrating on her knuckles. She willed something, anything, to happen. A bone claw? A retractable nail? She strained, her face screwing up with effort.
Nothing. Her knuckles remained smooth, unbroken.
“Worth a shot,” she muttered, relaxing. The slight disappointment was washed away by sheer, elated wonder. She flexed her hand, the memory of the injury already feeling like a dream. She was functional. Durable. A thrill, cold and sharp, shot through her. The world suddenly felt less dangerous.
She wanted to tell someone. Immediately. Earl’s grizzled, skeptical face swam in her mind. She imagined walking up, showing him the unscathed arm, explaining. The look of utter bewilderment that would break across his features. The idea was irresistibly sweet.
She glanced at the sky. The sun was bleeding orange over the ridge, but a good hour of usable light remained. The BMW’s rear differential still needed pulling. The cataloguing was only half done.
The Jed in her, that ingrained, stubborn ghost, kicked in. Can’t rest while there’s light in the sky. Work first. Marvel later.
She shoved the bloody rag in her pocket, picked up the crowbar, and got back to work. She was less careful now, moving with a new, reckless confidence. She manhandled sharp pieces, shoved her bare hands into tight spaces without hesitation. A bolt scratched her knuckle; it sealed before she could even blink. A heavy bracket fell, clipping her thigh; a bruise bloomed purple then faded to yellow and vanished in the space of two breaths.
Each incident was a quiet, private celebration.
By the time true dusk settled, the BMW was a skeletal husk. All valuable parts were sorted and tagged on the inventory rack. Her new coveralls were smudged with grease and dust, a badge of real work. She felt a profound, weary satisfaction deeper than any hunger for attention.
At the trailer’s outdoor spigot, she washed her hands and face. The cold water on her skin was a tonic. She scrubbed the grime from her nails, watching the dirt swirl away. No cuts lingered. No aches remained. She unzipped the coveralls to her waist, splashed water on her neck, letting it drip down her chest. She left the coveralls on, zipped back up. The outfit was part of the story now.
She looked toward the farmhouse down the street, its windows glowing warm yellow in the deep blue twilight. Earl was home.
She didn’t change. She just started walking, the gravel crunching under her new boots, the embroidered ESSIE over her heart a declaration in the dark.