Page 34 of Her Sloth

Without another word, she grabs it and attaches it. I turn on the full light in the meantime, and then we screw everything off in silence.

Here and there, we ask for a tool, risk a look, or ask if everything is set. We have the motor hanging in under an hour. She dives under the car.

“The oil is definitely leaking,” she says, coming up with rubbing oil grease between her fingers.

“What?” she asks me, and it’s only then that I realize I was staring at her with a half-open mouth. I close it.

“Nothing,” I say and get back to work.

“Not the Hollywood princess you thought I was?”

I say nothing, but grin to myself.

We work on the motor the entire night. I grab a beer from the stack in the other part of the garage and hand it to her.

We talk.

We laugh.

We don’t talk.

We work, lost in thought.

It nice, more than nice, says a voice in me.

10

AUDREY

PLAYLIST: MOCKINBIRD – EMINEM

Morning comes, and it’s only then I clock what I am doing here. Where I am. And how much I missed it. And because I missed it so much, I need to get away from it.

I can’t be here repairing cars and racing while so many people rely on me leading Whitney-Morgan.

“I should go,” I say.

“Inside,” she says and tilts her head to the house.

“No, I need to go back.”

“Back to what?”

“Back to a penthouse suite in the Four Seasons Hotel I hate with every cell of my body to dress up so I don’t get eaten by men who think themselves the main character of everyone’s story,” I say. Just the thought makes me feel sick.

“Why do it then?”

“Because,” I say with a voice shaking as tears flood my eyes again from just thinking about all the responsibility I now hold, “Because there are 750.000 employees who would lose their jobs, somewhat about 5000 companies losing their funding as well as 19-something million private individuals losing their houses. Not to forget 40 million people who rely on the Whitney-Morgan Foundation funds to survive.”

The tears run down my cheeks.

I hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Why am I always fucking crying!

But the pressure, the responsibility⁠—

I just can’t.

I want to work on a motor all night. Not sit in a glass enclosure. I want to roam free, while I am followed everywhere by prying eyes and camera lenses.