The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman Page 0,88

separate, of being alone while everyone else clumped together like mold on the inside rim of an old coffee cup. But now she felt lonely.

She leaned forward. “Hey, can I change our destination?”

The driver met her eyes in the mirror. “Sure, but you have to do it in the app.”

“I can’t tell you? You know, verbally?”

He shook his head. “Well, sure, you can tell me, verbally, or in sign language, or on a piece of parchment carried by a pigeon, but for me to alter my course, you also have to change it in the app.” He shrugged, his eyes back on the road. “Despite the fact we’re a scant two feet apart, our relationship requires the intermediation of a computer system housed in a server farm neither of us will ever see. Thus technology further separates us, eroding our trust in one another and leading our species down a path to a future where we only know one another on a screen and can only talk to one another in characters, and where ideas are owned by companies run by algorithms.”

Nina gazed at the back of his head for a moment.

“So . . . on the app then?”

“Yup.”

Twenty-six

In which Nina meets a legendary

Pokémon in human form.

The garage on Cahuenga was part of a larger mechanic’s business, with classic car restoration clearly a specialty. There were several old cars parked outside, including a Mercedes, which was the only hood ornament Nina recognized. She was pretty impressed she even remembered they were called hood ornaments, honestly. Cars all looked more or less the same to her, though she sorted them into broad categories like “fancy” and “regular” or “in her way” or “going too fast in a residential neighborhood.” They all looked the same from the driver’s seat, she reasoned, unless you care about how the people outside the car are looking at you.

The mechanic was an older guy, maybe in his late fifties. Nina couldn’t tell; he was covered in a patina of wrinkles and oil that blurred the edges. She’d tracked him down in his “office,” which appeared to be the car mechanic’s version of the back room at Knight’s. Where they had piles of books, this guy had piles of manuals and little bits and pieces of machines that Nina didn’t recognize. She had introduced herself, and the temperature had gotten noticeably chillier. She felt bad for the topless garage mechanic—well, she was holding a wrench—on the calendar behind him.

“Oh, you’re the new owner?” He looked her over and clearly wasn’t happy. “Do you drive a lot?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Do you know cars?”

“I know they have wheels.”

“Do you understand the inherent beauty of a well-machined engine, the throaty purr of a finely tuned timing?”

Nina frowned at him. “I understand that throaty purr is a cliché, but other than that, no. Look, Mr. . . .”

“Moltres.”

She looked at him. “Moltres?”

“Yes. Moltres. M-o-l-t-r-e-s.”

“Did you know your name is also the name of a legendary Pokémon?” As was so often the case, Nina immediately regretted saying this. Either he already knew, in which case, duh, or he would have no idea what she was talking about and would consider her possibly dangerous. There should be some kind of twelve-step program for people like her, she thought; Non Sequitur’s Anonymous. Then she wondered if maybe that was actually what NSA stood for; they didn’t care about national security at all. Then she realized it hadn’t, strictly speaking, been a non sequitur, it had just been a stupid question, and that her twelve-step program would more appropriately be named Stupid People Anonymous and that it would be a pretty big group and have the acronym SPA. Then she realized Moltres was still talking to her.

He spoke slowly. “Are you here to take the car?” This didn’t help, because now Nina couldn’t tell if he did know about the whole Pokémon thing or not, although he clearly realized she needed careful handling.

She shook her head. “No, if that’s OK. Do you need me to get it out of here quickly? Is the bill for the garaging . . . ?”

Moltres interrupted her quickly. “The bill is paid through the year, actually. Bill was like that, always paid up front. ‘In case I’m hit by a bus,’ he used to say.” Then he looked annoyed, which might have been his way of showing embarrassment. “Do you want to see it?”

Nina followed him out and through some twisty and utterly filthy corridors until they came to a surprisingly