DEENA REACHED UNDERNEATH the leather bucket seat and felt for a lever. When she found it, she adjusted her chair so that the back was bone straight and her knees brushed the steering wheel. With a deep breath, she turned and looked at Tak.
“You can’t drive like that.”
Deena frowned. “But I want to be sure I can reach—”
He leaned over and yanked the handle. Her seat shot back.
“I said, you can’t drive like that. It’s too close. Plus, you look ridiculous.”
She pursed her lips. “Fine. But can I at least get close enough to reach the steering wheel?”
“Steering wheel yes, headlights no.”
She rolled her eyes. “You exaggerate, as always.”
“Probably. Now come on. Hands at ten and two.”
Deena swallowed. “Can you give me a sec? I mean, I’m wrestling with nerves here. You’re teaching me to drive in a Ferrari.” She stared at the instrument panel. The car had six speedometers.
“We’ll go slow, I promise. But we’ve got to start to go at all.”
She nodded. “Ok. What first? I’m all yours.”
“Don’t tempt me, Deena Hammond. I’m but a man.”
He smiled at her blush.
“Tell you what. Let’s practice changing gears. Foot on the clutch as you push in shift from first to second.”
Deena nodded, her left foot sliding to the clutch as her right hand found the gear shift.
“Do that up to six, then back down to one a couple of times.”
“But this feels silly.”
“Good. Let me know when it feels natural.”
She sighed.
After absentmindedly whistling ‘Sakura, Sakura’, a song he’d told her was from his childhood, he turned to Deena again. “Put the car in neutral.”
“Am I going to drive now?”
“That’s the plan.” He sat up straighter. “Now push the clutch in, start the car, and slowly take your foot off the clutch.”
She smiled weakly, but stayed planted. There’d been no driver’s ed, no uncle with an old jalopy, and certainly no dad to teach her to drive. In fact, at twenty-four, this was her first time behind the wheel of a car. She just wished it wasn’t a Ferrari.
“It’s okay. I promise, I’ve paid the insurance,” he said.
She knew it wasn’t okay if she wrecked it, and that he was just making her feel better, and she appreciated the effort.
“Okay,” she whispered.
He placed a hand over hers, warm and strong.
“Foot on the clutch?”
“That’s the one on the left, right?”
“That would be it.”
“Then yes.”
A hand over hers, he turned the key in the ignition. She glanced at the hand, larger and lighter, and exhaled at the slight pressure he applied. They were the hands of a painter—nimble, skilled, practiced. His livelihood depended on the preciseness of his touch, the softness or hardness of the pressure he applied, the stroke that he used.
Deena exhaled noisily. That was enough of that kind of thinking.
“Okay now, shift to first then off the clutch. Easy does it.”
She inhaled and her foot inched until it pained with the careful, creaking way she moved it.
“It’s moving! What do I do?”
There was a wide-open parking lot before her and beyond that, a fence.
“Give me a little to the left.” He covered her hand on the steering wheel and used it to turn.
She gripped the ten and two o’clock positions, and attempted to turn the wheel. The result was an awkward twist of the body that made Tak laugh.
“What?” Deena said. But she was smiling. He didn’t laugh at her the way Aunt Caroline or Keisha did. When he laughed at her, it made her want to laugh too.
“You can’t keep your hands there, Dee. It’s just a starting position.”
Dee. He had begun to call her that lately, and she liked it. She’d never had a nickname before.
She glanced at him. “I knew that.”
“Liar.” He turned his attention to the parking lot. “Start turning left. We’re just going to circle this thing until you get the hang of it.”
“And until I can go straight?”
He grinned. “Yeah. That too.”
There was driver’s ed at her high school, but with one teacher and 3,600 students, enrollment was near impossible. Likewise, when she was a teenager, there’d been no one in her family with money enough for a car, let alone private instruction. So here was her first lesson.
After stalling the car three times in a hasty abandonment of the clutch, Deena now inched around the near-empty parking lot of a Miami Beach retirement home to the backdrop of a setting sun. A slung-low chain fence circled the property, accented by a series of low and manicured hedges. Three cars were parked at the front—an old white Chevrolet, a green Ford pickup and a red Toyota Camry. Behind them were six rows of empty spaces—spaces that Deena weaved through pitifully.
“You’re doing great,” Tak said.
She grinned. It wasn’t true, of course, but she couldn’t remember the last time someone had lied to spare her feelings.
“Thank you for that,” she said. “And by ‘that’ I mean the lie.”
“Well, progress is great in my book. And moving is progress.” He patted her knee. “Besides, you’re way too harsh on yourself.”
She concentrated on the asphalt between the front row and the empty spaces. He was right, but his intuition with her was unnerving. “You can’t possibly know that. You don’t even know me.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t believe that. At least not the way you’re saying it.”
He was right again, but he needn’t be so damned confident about it.
“You want to say something?”
He grabbed the wheel and sharpened her turn to avoid a slow collision with the chain link fence. She snatched her foot from the clutch and, again, the Ferrari shut down.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Relax. No harm done. And anyway, it’s just a possession.”
She grew up in a carless family. She knew what it was to need a ride, to miss a bus, to find a place inaccessible because of the public transportation route. A car was not just a possession.
“Spoken like a true rich kid,” she said as she started the car again, foot on the clutch.
“I wasn’t always rich,” he said. “But you’re right, I’ve never been poor. Not even close. Unless you count the time I called my otosan an asshole and he emptied my bank account.”
“What’s an otosan?” Deena asked.
“Hmm? Oh, it means ‘dad.”
“You called Daichi an asshole?” She’d seen his father fire someone for accidentally calling him Mr. Tanala, so she couldn’t imagine he’d have much threshold for profanity.
“Yeah, he took it about as well as you’d expect. Told me he’d show me what an asshole was, and he did.” Tak grinned.
“I can’t believe you have your teeth. Boy, my grandma doesn’t even allow backtalk, let alone cursing at her.”
He glanced at her. She was circling the parking lot again.
“What?”
He shook his head. “I thought you told me your family was kind of rough. Jail, teen pregnancies, that kind of thing.”
Deena nodded. “Yeah? So what?”
“So, I’m thinking, maybe backtalking is the least of her worries.”
Deena burst out laughing. Those were her sentiments exactly.