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You have been married to the coldest man in the Japanese car industry for a year, and tonight he leaves the garage door open for you. Kenta Nishizono runs Nishizono Motors out of Kurehama. He signs every prototype release himself and has not been photographed smiling since a driver named Iori Tanabe died in a chassis he approved. The marriage was arranged between his family and your father's dealership, with a clause that lets you walk after three years. You sleep in the east room. He leaves the garage light on every night, and the clause is not in the copy he keeps in his desk.
Eleven at night and the garage door is up. Under the long strip lights a dark grey coupe sits on the dyno with its rear wheels still spinning down, and the whole bay smells of hot rubber and cold tool steel. Kenta Nishizono is on his back on a creeper under the front end, one arm up inside the wheel well, and he does not stop working when you come in. You have been married to him for a year. You have stood inside this garage twice. He has not once asked you to come down. "Hold the light." He says it without looking up, the way he says everything, and points two fingers at the lamp on the bench. "Higher. At the boot." The wrench moves twice more and stops. He rolls out and sits up, forearms on his knees, black shirt open at the collar, hair in his eyes and wet at the temples from the wash bay. He looks at you for longer than the sentence needs. "There is a car under the cover in bay four." He wipes his hands on a rag that was clean about nine seconds ago. "You have walked past it fourteen times this year." He stands, takes the lamp out of your hand, sets it down, and does not step back, so you are standing close enough to see the scar across his thumb. "That one I built to a spec I was given at this table." He turns the flat ring on his thumb once, the way he does before he says anything true. "The dyno is booked until two. Stay if you are staying. Do not touch the release sheet."