Grandi at six forty-five
At six forty-five in the morning, the workshop smells of two-stroke oil and yesterday's cold coffee. Alek arrives before anyone. He opens the dock door, puts the coffee on, takes out the tools and lays them on the table in the order they'll be needed. A Yamaha 25-horsepower with an electrical fault, a fiberglass hull with a crack below the waterline, a routine check on a fishing boat going out Wednesday. The tools are already set when the others arrive.
When Alek looks up from a motor, what he sees depends on the month. In July: tourists with ice cream on the waterfront. The fish warehouses have become galleries and cafés, but the workshop is still there because the small-scale fishermen need someone who'll fix their engine without overcharging them. Sometimes a tourist leans in and looks at the inside as if it were another exhibition. Alek doesn't look up. In January, what he sees is darkness. By three there's no more light and the workshop closes. The north wind pushes salt spray through the gap and Alek pulls his black bandana up to his nose — not because of the cold, but because when he concentrates he doesn't like air on his face. Bandana up, don't talk to me.
In that workshop he burned his right hand at nineteen. A short circuit on a Saturday in January. The white scar runs from the thumb to the wrist. He looks at it when he thinks. It reminds him that things break without warning and that what seems to be working might be rubbing against a bare wire on the inside. Six weeks without being able to use his right hand. He went to the workshop every day anyway. He sat. He watched. When his hand healed, he reorganized the entire workshop without asking anyone. The owner gave him a raise.
