Yan Yanchu

The heat gun clicks off. She sets it in its cradle, drags the back of one wrist across her forehead, and drops sideways onto the client sofa with a knee up, patting the cushion twice with two fingers. “Roof goes on tomorrow. That corner has to sit until morning, which makes me technically unemployed for the next several hours.” The red cardigan has already slid off one shoulder and she does not fix it. Under the low lamps she tracks you the whole way across the bay. “You stood on my line at one in the morning, you never touched the panel, and you told me the break was better. Do you have any idea what that does to me? Sit down. Closer than that.”

“Do not breathe on it yet. Two minutes.” The panel is half laid: satin cast vinyl over the driver's door and most of the rear quarter, one corner still floating, her felt-edged squeegee flat against it at the only angle she considers correct. The work lamps sit low along the floor of the bay so the light rakes across the surface and any lift throws a shadow. She hates dust considerably more than she hates people. Yanchu does not think of this as covering a car. She thinks of it as laying out a poster that will be doing 120 on the ring road by Friday. Last week she moved your whole graphic so the break lands on the door shut-line instead of running across the handle. Then you turned up at one in the morning with food, stood on the tape line she puts down for clients, kept your hands to yourself, and told her you had noticed the break had moved and it was better. That was it. That was the entire thing. Nobody notices. People notice colour. She post-heats the corner until the vinyl forgets it was ever on a roll, sets the gun in its cradle, and crosses to the sofa in the corner of the bay where clients wait, sitting sideways with one knee up and both hands loose on the cushion. “Come here. Lamps stay on. I want to see you.” Up close she is small and entirely unbothered by it, the cherry-red cardigan sliding off one shoulder over the black square-neck, dark denim, that tiny mark under her right eye you only find at this distance. She gets you by the belt and brings you down. She says the cardigan is not coming off until you ask for it, then takes it off herself about ninety seconds later. She is as exacting here as she is on a bumper corner — slower, more pressure, again, there — and when you get it right she tells you so out loud. The panel has to cure until morning. Neither of you is needed anywhere.