Characters. Every country has them. Heck, every town in every country has them. Be it a small town, a large city, even just a teeny tiny community village; all of them always has at least one character. In olden days, they were usually called the village idiot - more often than not because there was something not right with them. In modern times, where everyone and their grandma gets exaggeratedly triggered and offended by even a cute word like 'derpy', such terms are no longer used. Is a town's character not entirely right in the brain, they are called 'special needs'. Is a town's character filthy rich, they are just called 'eccentric'. But regardless of the terms used, every town still has one or more characters.
Birch Brook, in the southern half of Minnaluna, between the large city of Easton and the huge city of Bunny Meadows, was such a town. A small town, a quiet town, an agricultural town as it was right in the middle of a string of farming enterprises and small community villages. Calm, almost sedate, the picture perfect example of a small rural town, yet just large enough to have its own city hall, a small hospital, a bank or two, a couple of post offices and police stations, even an attorney's office. It more or less served as the hub for all the surrounding farms and communities and tiny villages. Each village had their own corner stores to provide services to the inhabitants of the tiny villages, and at least one store that doubled as a post office, but should the people have a need for more extensive shopping or services, they could travel to Birch Brook.
Its Main Street ran from one end of the town to the other. On the southwestern side of town, it changed into Brookrun Road; so called because the road used to follow the run of the creek called Birch Brook, however over time the name started making less and less sense as development of the land and the laws of nature gradually changed the direction of the creek bed. Eventually, Birch Brook no longer ran close to the road that was named after it but made a wide turn towards the south just outside of the town, yet the road retained its name.
The double plot of land a good half mile outside the western edge of the town, numbered 18 and 20, contained what used to be a small local garage, but which had grown quite a deal after it had been taken over by the niece of the proprietor. Monique Winters, a bright orange and white vixen with clear blue skin and hair; the brother of her grandfather had established the garage in the early 1950s, his son, Monique's uncle, had taken over, and eventually the garage was passed on to Monique. With hard work, perseverance and a good deal of fox-like shrewdness, she had slowly expanded the garage, doing everything from the most common oil changes and brake jobs on the cars of the people of Birch Brook to complete refurbishments, as well as repairs on the vehicles, equipment and implements of the many farmers in the area. More often than not, she was accompanied by her best friend Doto van der Vyver, a light sand-colored serval woman with liver-colored spots, who hung out in the garage almost daily to watch Monique work.
Both of them were characters in their own right. Monique a hard-working fox woman who had shown her unusual sense of humor by naming the garage Fox Body Garage, with the quirk of often doing her work in the nude. Doto was even more of a character; an army base brat who had lived most of her life in South Africa before moving to the country of Minnaluna, getting a degree in biology, meeting Monique in the huge city of Bunny Meadows and following her to the calm little town of Birch Brook when Monique finally got the chance to do so. And despite her degree in biology, and living right smack dab in the middle of a large agricultural area, she just couldn't seem to manage to find a job - and didn't do much of an effort either as she preferred hanging out in Monique's garage. But as much as they both were characters, they weren't the only unusual characters in Birch Brook.
March had passed by, and April was well underway. Easter had already come and gone, and the country was ready for the annual hurricane season. Even if only the very west coast saw any actual hurricanes, the foul and violent weather was funneled across the middle of the country by the wind tunnel formed by the Fangle Mountain Range just below the middle and the Sawtooth Mountain Range and the Dino Mountain Range along the north. There could be days upon days of continuous rain, heavy wind, thunderstorms and hail, but also day after day of warm, calm spring weather. A storm had recently passed over the country, bringing almost a week of rain which Monique had utilized to wash all the lavender-colored vehicles in her company fleet, helped by Doto and doing it in the nude as even the wet spring storms still had such pleasant temperatures and the rain was lukewarm enough that the nudist lifestyle found throughout the entire country could be very comfortably maintained.
Monique's company fleet was as unusual as she was herself. For one, all the vehicles were painted in a soft pastel lavender color, with over that the large orange logo of her garage. For another, the vehicles were wildly varied. For starters, there was the 1956 Ford F100 tow truck, which had been in the garage's service since new; Monique's great-uncle had bought it new and modified it into a tow truck, and it was still going strong. Even though Monique had updated it when she took over the garage, painting it lavender and putting her new company logo on it, she had also retained some of the original features, such as the scuffed and faded diagonal yellow and black hazard stripe stickers over the sides of the bulbous rear fenders and the simple towing hook and cable on the boom - although she had a cradle of chains with protective rubber matting to attach to it.
There was the 1963 VW Type 2 Doka split-screen crewcab shortbed pickup truck, which really was not of much use due to its small 51HP air-cooled engine in the rear under the high bed, but Monique loved it because it was so absolutely adorable - and it was a decent enough runner to transport loads of old tires to the Agricultural Co-operation in town. There was the 1971 Ford F100 pickup truck which was mainly used as a junkyard and parts runner. And because the cab and load capacity of that truck were limited, there was the 1988 GMC Vandura panel van that Monique had bought to be able to transport much larger loads in more comfort. She did have another pickup truck in the fleet, but that one was by far the most eccentric of all vehicles; a 1966 right-hand-drive, pug-nosed Bedford CA that was converted into a service truck, having a flat bed behind the cab which held rows of metal cabinets along both sides, an open area in the middle of the bed containing an air compressor and welder powered by the engine, a heavy-duty winch at the very back and even a small collapsible stinger attached under the rear bumper to lift and tow small disabled vehicles.
She even had two classic station wagon-based delivery vehicles; a 1952 Ford Courier and a 1958 Chevrolet Apache Panel Van - those were mostly for show, but they were used to transport smaller loads, such as when Monique had to make a quick run to a parts store in town to pick up a part she needed for a customer repair. And of course, there was a large recovery truck, which had been conventional initially, but Monique had made it quirky; it was a cab-over style 2005 MAN rollback truck, of which Monique had swapped the cabin with the cab of a 1957 Lancia Esatau A forward-control truck because she just had to do things different and had to stand out. As if the pastel lavender company color didn't already stand out enough.
As there were so many vehicles in the fleet - way more than was necessary for a small-town garage, even one as comparatively large as Fox Body Garage - and some of the vehicles were so large, it had in fact taken the entire rainy week to wash them all. And while happy to help as it alleviated her usual boredom, the serval woman Doto had questioned the need to wash each and every one of the fleet vehicles, especially in the rain. Monique had explained that cleverly by saying that she needed to keep her company vehicles in good condition and looking representative, and as there were so many and so large vehicles, doing it in the rain simply saved a massive amount of water. Her explanation for why she did it naked was that it saved on laundry. Doto cheerfully scoffed at that, but didn't complain as it really was a very nice sight to see the naked and soaking wet vixen leaning over into many unusual and provocative positions while washing the vehicles.
Fortunately for the children of Birch Brook, the rain passed over and the sun came out bright and cheerful just in time for the Easter holiday. It also marked a bit of a strange time of the season; April was one of the busiest months of the spring season, with all the farms working around the clock to get their fields cultivated and fertilized and their spring crops planted - but while Monique serviced lots of farm vehicles, during the spring planting season the work at the garage fell into a lull. In a way that was logical; while the farming equipment was in full use for days and days on end and would often experience minor breakdowns, the farmers simply did quick repairs in the field as they needed the equipment to be up and running immediately. That did give Monique some time to catch her breath from the March rush, when many farmers came to her garage or had her coming to their farm to service or repair their equipment in preparation for the spring planting.
Having just finished a coolant flush on the car of a gray squirrel man who had pulled into the garage forecourt on his way to Easton with an overheating engine, Monique took a short break to sit on a bench in front of the garage and smoke a cigarette, unzipping the top part of her full-body coveralls to let her breasts out. Of course Doto teased her about that and called the vixen a shameless exhibitionist again, but the serval woman happily enjoyed the view as she joined Monique on the bench and lit up one of her sharply-smelling clove cigarettes.
"So what're you gonna do when another customer shows up, huh?" she said with a cheerful smirk.
"Say hello and ask what the problem is so I can fix it, what did you think?" Monique chortled.
"And what if they say, hey, your tits are out?" Doto guffawed.
"I'll say sure they are, gotta give the puppies some fresh air and let them run free from time to time, otherwise they get antsy and restless and may fight," Monique said with another chortle, flicking the ash of her cigarette into an old paint can partially filled with sand. "But I seriously doubt any customer showing up would say anything like that, because for one, the people here are much more polite than that, and for another, as I have told you many times before and you have seen and experienced many times before, it's totally and absolutely normal and natural to sit around and do your work in the nude in this country and all of my customers are used to seeing me like that by now."
"I can't tell if you're just that confident, or if you're just nuts," Doto sniggered.
"Then I'm doing it right," Monique chortled. She did zip her coveralls back up, however, when a dark maroon-colored 1986 Volvo 244 GL four-door sedan approached the garage with the left turn signal indicating its intention of pulling onto the premises. "And sit up, kitty, here comes an esteemed client now."
"Must be someone special, if you put your boobs away for them," Doto teased.
She leaned back on the bench a bit to watch Monique getting up and tossing the end of her cigarette into the paint can. The dark maroon sedan indeed pulled into the garage forecourt and came to a stop in one of the customer parking spots. Monique reached out her arms at an elderly Wood mouse woman with light brown fur and a band of yellow-ish tan fur separating the brown color from her off-white ventral fur, a long thin tail and silvergray hair done up in a topknot, dressed in an immaculate dark blue pleated dress, stepping out of the car.
"Missus Tenderson, how nice to see you. How are you doing on this fine day, and how can I be of service to you?" she smiled widely.
"Good day, miss Winters," the elderly mouse woman said with an evenly wide smile and a slightly raspy yet high-pitched voice, her eyes twinkling from behind her small elliptic glasses. "It is very nice to see you as well. I was checking the maintenance schedule just yesterday, and I noticed my car is about due for its oil change and tire rotation." The twinkle in her eyes grew even brighter. "Also, I have noticed recently the brakes seem to be a tad slow to react and there is a bit of an irregularity in the running of the motor under load. Would you please be so good as to take my car out on your test track to check for these problems?"
"By all means, missus Tenderson, by all means," Monique smiled. "Give me just a moment to retrieve my data logging equipment, and I shall be right with you."
"Of course, of course, and thank you, dear," the elderly mouse woman smiled brightly, turning to Doto as Monique walked into the garage. "Good day to you as well, miss van der Vyver, it's very nice to see you as well. You are here a lot, aren't you, yet I never see your car being worked on, so is there perhaps another reason why you are here so often?"
"Hello missus Tenderson. Yes, Monique is my best friend, so I visit her a lot and help her out a bit sometimes," Doto nodded with a smile. "It actually helps me as well, because I get very bored sitting at home on my own with nothing to do."
"I see, I see, that is very nice," Mrs. Tenderson smiled, looking up with another twinkle in her eyes when Monique stepped back out of the garage with an old laptop and cable. "Ah, are we ready?"
"We're ready to commence the test, missus Tenderson," Monique nodded. "Do you object to my friend here joining us?"
"Not at all, not at all!" Mrs. Tenderson smiled brightly.
"Then let us begin," Monique smiled, sending Doto a quick little wink. "You can ride in the back, sweetheart, and do buckle up and hang on."
Doto quirked an eyebrow quizzically, but she did get into the old Volvo sedan, sitting in the middle of the backseat and putting on the middle seatbelt. Monique got behind the wheel of the maroon car, flipped open the laptop and set it on the center console behind the shift lever, and plugged the cable into the cigarette lighter, smiling at the elderly mouse woman getting in on the passenger side and putting on the seatbelt with a cheerful smile and a bright twinkle in her eyes. Holding one paw on the steering wheel and leaning over a bit, Monique perked and rotated her ears as she started the car and revved the engine in short bursts. She gave a short nod of her head, depressed the clutch and moved the shift lever through all five gears and the reverse gear slowly, giving another short nod of her head.
After quite a show of checking all the functionalities in the dashboard, the vixen shifted the car into reverse again and calmly backed out of the parking spot, turned around and drove the car across the road. Directly opposite the garage was a very large area paved with large concrete slabs, stretching almost three-quarters of a mile into the field from the road. Off to one side was a sizeable warehouse building, to the side and behind which Monique had laid out a small track with traffic cones and concrete barriers; it started behind the warehouse building with a slalom section running from left to right, followed by a section behind that in which low, narrow speed bumps painted with diagonal yellow and black stripes were laid out in staggered rows next to each other forming a washboard section, also running from left to right. From that section a sharp curve led onto a straight section of a bit over half a mile long running almost all the way towards the back, where a wide, shallow curve of 180 degrees swooped all the way around to lead back to the front into a large braking box sectioned off with traffic cones. That box had initially been sectioned off with low concrete barriers, but Monique had removed those and put down traffic cones instead after two times of the brakes on a customer's car not stopping the car in time so it crunched into the barriers at the end of the brake test.
As Monique steered the car between two concrete barriers painted lavender with dark orange lettering painted on them reading "Start" on the left one and "Here" on the right one, switched on the laptop and tapped a bit on the keyboard to call a window with gauges onto the screen, the elderly mouse woman let out a cheery squeak and started wringing her paws in anticipation, while Doto quirked both her eyebrows this time as she leaned one paw on the back of the passenger's seat and one paw on the driver's seat and looked between the seats to look at the laptop screen. Monique looked aside, smiling at Mrs. Tenderson and sending Doto a cheery grin.
"Better sit back a bit and hang on, honey. Are you ready, missus Tenderson?"
The elderly mouse woman nodded happily, grabbing a hold of the passenger door armrest with her right paw and the seatbelt across her chest with her left paw.
"I am so ready, miss Winters."
"Then here we go!" Monique chortled.
She put both paws on the steering wheel, slowly revved up the engine, then suddenly let the car dart forwards with a short squeal of the tires. Bringing the speed up to almost thirty miles per hour, the vixen started swinging the car left and right between the traffic cones of the slalom section. Doto quickly grabbed a firm hold of the headrests of both front seats, and in the passenger's seat Mrs. Tenderson held on tight to the armrest and her seatbelt while giggling like a little girl as she was tossed left and right, and letting out a cheer as Monique reached the end of the slalom section, sped up even more and threw the car all the way around in a screeching power slide so she could run the slalom section another time, from right to left this time.
"Wheeeee! Hee hee hee! Whoo! Ee hee hee! Whoohooooo!"
Back at the beginning of the slalom section, Monique threw the car around in a squealing power slide again and hit the gas to bring the car up to a bit over forty miles per hour as she approached the washboard section. Bumping and shuddering over the rows of speed bumps, the vixen held the steering wheel in a tight grip, while in the backseat Doto braced herself hard on both front seats and blinked, and in the passenger's seat Mrs. Tenderson brought her left paw up to her face to hold her glasses in place as she bounced and vibrated around in the seat, giggling louder and holding her mouth slightly open to let her voice come out in a stream of gleeful stutters.
"Hee hee hee! Ee-ee-ee-a-a-a-uh-uh-ee-ee-oh-oh-oh-ee-uh-oo-oo-ah-ee! Ee heeeee!"
Another fairly sharp curve at the right end of the washboard section put them in line for the long straight section. Doto almost let out a squeak of her own, and Mrs. Tenderson gave a gleeful cheer as Monique put the pedal to the metal, basically doing a half-mile drag race and running the engine all the way up to 6000RPM each time before shifting gears.
"Whooooo! Hee hee! Punch it, miss Winters! Wheeeee!"
Reaching ninety-eight miles per hour by the end of the straight section, Monique let off the accelerator and cranked the steering wheel to the left, then counter-steering to the right with one paw and hitting the gas again as she pretty much drifted the old Volvo sedan through the long, wide, shallow curve. As the car straightened back out, the vixen put the pedal to the metal again and sped towards the coned-off box, grabbing the steering wheel firmly with both paws and stretching out her arms while she planted both feet hard on the clutch pedal and the brake pedal to bring the car to a screeching and smoking stop in the braking box with its front bumper an inch away from the row of cones at the end. Doto had to put both her paws against the backs of the front seats to not dive headlong forwards between the front seats, and Mrs. Tenderson grabbed a hold of her seatbelt with both paws, giggling like a school girl with a crush while her glasses flew off her face.
"Wheeeeeeee! Hee hee hee! Well done, miss Winters! Hee hee!" she giggled gleefully, leaning over to pick up her glasses from the footwell and putting them back on.
"Thank you, missus Tenderson," Monique chortled. "I thi-i-ink I may know what the trouble with your car's brakes is. Let's go back to the garage and I'll put her on the lift, alright?"
The elderly mouse woman merely nodded while brushing a few stray hairs out of her face and still giggling like a little girl. Monique let out another chortle and calmly drove the old Volvo sedan around the warehouse building and across the road again, pulling into the garage building and stopping just in front of one of the car lifts so they could open the doors to get out of the car. Doto exited quite quickly, pulling in deep breaths through dilated nostrils, while Mrs. Tenderson leaned on the right front fender with her left paw and held her right paw on her chest, her smile as bright as the twinkles in her eyes and her long thin tail giving continuous cheery twitches and flicks. On the driver's side, Monique also got out of the car and put the old laptop in the office before returning and leaning a paw on the roof of the old car and smiling at Mrs. Tenderson who smiled back at her brightly.
"Eehee, eehee, hee, oh my, hee hee, eehee, oh my, hee hee heeeee. You did, eehee hee... you did well, miss Winters. Hee hee heeeee. Do please allow me to... eehee, hee, make use of your facilities," the elderly wood mouse woman giggled.
"By all means, missus Tenderson, you know the way," Monique smiled with a chortle.
Mrs. Tenderson nodded and pattered off towards the washroom on the side of the office, all the while giggling like a little girl and lightly twitching and flicking her long thin tail. Monique opened the driver door and leaned into the car to shift it into neutral so she could push it further between the posts of the car lift, her lips curling into a cheery grin as she swung the arms of the lift into place and started lifting the car up into the air, because Doto looked at her with fairly wide round eyes.
"What the hell was that all about? What did you even record with that laptop? I looked at the screen every now and then, and it didn't look like it was doing anything at all."
"Of course not," Monique grinned as she let the car lift clack through the first stop, then let it back down to rest on the stop so she could unbolt the front left wheel. "This car is so old it doesn't have an OBD port, so I can't connect any actual data logging equipment. I just plug that laptop into the cig lighter for show, and what you saw on the screen was a looped animated engine test screen."
"So you were deceiving that little old lady?" Doto smirked. "And what were you even thinking, being so violent with the car? Yeesh! I was being flung around in the back like a ragdoll!"
"I told you to buckle up and hang on, didn't I?" Monique chortled, walking around the car with the impact gun to also unbolt the rear right wheel. "And I don't have to think, with missus Tenderson I know." She stood back upright after taking off the right rear wheel, glanced at the washroom for a moment and turned back to Doto with a smile. "I grew up here, sweetheart, so I know very well what a character missus Tenderson is. She could care less whether or not I actually log any data on her car, she's just in it for the joy of me blasting her car down the test track; it's like a thrill ride for her."
"You mean to tell me she does this for fun?!" Doto said, shaking her head.
"Every three months, sweetheart," Monique nodded with a laugh, rolling the right rear wheel to the left front corner of the car and the left front tire to the right rear corner before lifting the car further up into the air, just high enough so she could still reach over the front fender. "Every three months she comes in for an oil change and to have the tires rotated, and every time she will have come up with some kind of vague pseudo-problem she says she thinks her car has developed so I will take it down the test track."
"That's nuts!" Doto smirked.
"No it's not, it's fun," Monique chortled. "C'mon sweetheart, do you really think an eighty-two year-old woman would do something like that if she didn't enjoy it? Like I said, I grew up here so I know a lot of the history of this place and the people living here that you missed out on. Missus Tenderson used to be a very rapid mouse lady, you know. For instance, did you know that she and her husband raced bubble cars and Minis on the Fairy Ring track in the fifties and sixties? She still has a collection of Messerschmitts, Isettas and some Fuldamobils from the fifties and a few Minis from the sixties, and even a nineteen seventy-five Sbarro BMW Three twenty-eight Baby."
Doto shook her head again, her lips still curled into a smirk.
"What the hell even is that?"
Monique smiled while she opened the hood of the car, took off the cap of the fluid reservoir on the brake booster and filled both chambers to the very top with brake fluid. Then she took a brake bleeding device, put a small spanner on the bleed nipple of the left front brake caliper and pushed the tube of the bleeding device over the nipple, repeatedly squeezing the trigger to pull a vacuum before cracking open the bleed nipple to let the brake fluid be pulled into the small tank of the bleeding device.
"You know those small pedal cars for kids? Well, Sbarro is a small car company in Switzerland which specialized in building very high-end replicas of sports cars, and they built pedal car versions of them as well, super high-end and with an actual combustion engine in them. Some of them were as expensive as a full-size luxury car. The Three twenty-eight Baby is a miniature replica of the BMW Three twenty-eight, with a two and a half horsepower Sachs motor and a two-speed automatic transmission with optional reverse. It could only do about twenty-one, twenty-two miles per hour at most, but it's exactly similar to the full-size BMW Three twenty-eight down to the last detail and about as expensive. Missus Tenderson and her husband used it as a pit lane runner during their later racing seasons in the eighties and early nineties if you can believe that."
"No, I can not believe that," Doto said with another shake of her head.
"You better believe it, dear," sounded the slightly raspy, high-pitched voice of the elderly wood mouse woman from behind Monique cheerfully, as Mrs. Tenderson had returned from the washroom with all the stray hairs neatly tucked back into the topknot. "My dear Bert picked it up in Switzerland himself in nineteen seventy-eight, and as he was very small in stature, as am I, we both could fit in it perfectly and it was a very handy little runabout for in the pit lane."
"I am sorry, ma'am, I did not mean to cast any doubt on it, it just sounded a bit... well, kind of too fantastical to be true," Doto said, dipping her small ears.
"That is quite alright, dear," Mrs. Tenderson smiled brightly, turning to Monique. "Have you found the problem with the brakes, miss Winters?"
"Yes, there is a little bit of air in the lines," Monique nodded with a smile. "I'm pulling all the old fluid through the system to make sure all the air will be removed, and that way the old fluid will also be flushed out and replaced with fresh new fluid."
"Very good, very good, thank you," Mrs. Tenderson smiled. "Do you think you know what might be causing the irregularity in the running of the motor?"
"I did not detect any obvious irregularity in the acceleration test, but just to be sure, I will add some motor honey in with the oil change," Monique smiled. "That will help the pistons and piston rings to seal a bit better and eliminate any possible irregularities."
"Excellent, excellent," the elderly mouse woman smiled, looking down at the wheel leaning against the post of the car lift and tilting her head a bit. "Do you perhaps think it might be time for new tires, miss Winters? This will be the fifth time they have been rotated, has it not?"
"I think there's plenty of miles left on these tires, missus Tenderson," Monique smiled with her cheek pressed against the left front fender of the car as she was continuously topping up the brake fluid reservoirs while simultaneously pumping the trigger of the bleeding device to suck out all the old, slightly dark brake fluid. "But I shall do a thread check on them just to be sure, to see if the thread depth is still adequate, and let you know my assessment."
"Excellent, very good, thank you so much, miss Winters," Mrs. Tenderson nodded with a bright smile. "Do you mind if I sit down for a bit?"
"Oh no, please, do make yourself comfortable," Monique smiled. "In fact, Doto, be a doll and get missus Tenderson a cup of tea, would you please?"
"Of course," Doto nodded. "Do you take anything in your tea, missus Tenderson?"
"Ah, that is very friendly of you, thank you," Mrs. Tenderson smiled. "Yes please, two sugars and a drop of milk if you could."
Doto nodded again and stepped into the small kitchenette on the other side of the office, while Mrs. Tenderson stepped over to a padded bench against the front wall of the office and sat down, resting her purse in her lap and her paws on her purse and looking at the work Monique was doing. The vixen closed the bleed nipple of the left front brake caliper and took off the hose to push it over the bleed nipple of the rear right brake caliper and pulling a vacuum again to suck the old brake fluid out of the line running the length of the car. Doto returned with a cup of tea she handed to Mrs. Tenderson and stepped up to the car to take the bottle of brake fluid and top up the chambers of the fluid reservoir by Monique's request as the vixen kept pumping the trigger of the bleeding device and every now and then tapped the metal brake line with a spanner.
Once she was done with bleeding the brakes, Monique put the left front wheel on the right rear hub and the right rear wheel on the front left hub, then removed and swapped over the right front wheel and the rear left wheel after also bleeding those two brake calipers. Taking a small thread gauge from a drawer of a tool chest, the vixen spun all four of the wheels one by one and measured the depth of the thread on the tires at several positions. After that, she wheeled an oil drain canister under the car and unscrewed the drain plug in the oil pan to let the old oil drain out, holding her left index finger in the stream of dark brown oil and rubbing her left thumb and index finger together, even sniffing at them for a moment. The old oil filter also was taken off, and Monique stuck her finger in it to catch some of the oil so she could rub it all over the O-ring of the new oil filter before screwing that into place.
Lowering the car back down, the vixen took a jug of diesel motor oil and a flat bottle of which the label actually read Motor Honey, with a red bar reading High Mileage Oil Treatment. She took off the oil fill cap on the Volvo's engine and stuck a funnel in the opening, pouring in about half of the jug of fresh oil, then emptying the bottle of thick, goopy Motor Honey into the jug of oil and shaking it to mix it before emptying the jug into the car's engine. She pulled out the dipstick, wiped it on a rag, stuck it back in and pulled it back out to check it, giving a nod of her head while once more sticking the dipstick back in. She even took a little time to wiggle all the belts and top up the reservoir of windshield washer fluid before closing the hood, wiping her oily fingerprints off it with a rag and wiping her paws with the same rag while turning to smile at the elderly mouse woman.
"You're all set, missus Tenderson. There's still plenty of thread on your tires, so those don't need to be replaced yet. I would advice to have them replaced after another five to seven thousand miles; I'll put a note of that on your work order and in my computer so I can make sure to have fresh tires in stock for you."
"Excellent, dear, very good, thank you so much," Mrs. Tenderson smiled brightly. "I shall see you in three months then?"
"Yes indeed, although of course you can come any time sooner than that if you notice anything amiss," Monique nodded with a smile. "I would keep an ear out to check if you can hear the engine running irregularly still, and also check for excessive smoke from the exhaust under load. I don't think there will be any, but feel free to call or stop by any time you think there is anything out of the ordinary."
"I certainly will, miss Winters, thank you," Mrs. Tenderson smiled.
She followed Monique into the office to pay for the work and accept the receipt and a copy of the work order the vixen printed out for her. Getting into her car, she slowly and carefully backed out of the garage and waved merrily at Monique and Doto before turning the old Volvo sedan around and driving off the premises. Monique washed her paws and her face at a small sink while Doto took two bottles of spring water from a display refrigerator, bringing the bottles outside with her where she and Monique sat back down on the bench in front of the building. Of course Monique unzipped her coveralls again to let her breasts out, and Doto gave her head an amused shake at that as she handed the vixen one of the bottles.
"So that dear little old lady really makes up problems she thinks her car has just so she can ride shotgun as you blast her car across that test track?" the serval woman said with a chortle after a few calm sips of spring water.
"Oh yes, like I said, it's like a thrill ride for her," Monique nodded. "You saw how she was acting like an excited kid during that test, didn't you? She loves it, brings her back to her racing days." She let go a short laugh. "It's become as much a ritual as a play between the two of us, because she knows darn well that laptop doesn't log any data in her car, and even if here is a problem with her car, she has way plenty knowledge from her racing days to fix it herself. Hell, she could probably fix small problems herself even better than I could do it. But we humor each other, because we both enjoy the ritual. She and her husband were good friends with my uncle and great-uncle and already came here regularly when they were still running this place, and she's without a doubt my best and most loyal customer. I mean, come on, do you really think oil needs changing and tires need rotating every three months? Hell no! But she'd come by for that every other week if I didn't stop her to not waste her money. And that advice I gave her for getting the tires replaced after five to seven thousand miles? She'll drive all the way over to Bunny Meadows and all around Bunny Meadows six or seven times, and then back to here via Easton to rack up those five thousand miles in a week or two just so she can come back sooner, and you can count on it that she will have noticed several more vague 'problems' with her car in that time so we'll need to do a run down the test track again."
"Jeez," Doto said, shaking her head again. "You'd never think that if you look at her. She looks like such a frail and small old woman."
"She's a wood mouse, honey, and she's eighty-two years old, come on now!" Monique laughed. "Of course she looks small and frail! But looks are very much deceiving in her case, believe you me! Mention her to any of the old-timers in town, and they'll tell you all about the racing history of her and her husband. She was a demon on that dirt track back in the day, I'll tell you what!"
"Man, that's so hard to believe from the way she looks," Doto said after another sip of water. "She looks like such a sweet little granny, I'd sooner picture her knitting or playing cards in the community centre and handing out sweets to the kids."
"As I said, looks are deceiving," Monique chortled. "I've visited her house, sweetheart, and I can tell you, there's sure no framed needlepoint works on the walls or delicate flower-print china cups in the cabinets. No, there's framed pictures of race cars and their drivers on the walls, many of them her husband and herself, and instead of china cabinets, there's shelves full of trophies. Hell, she's advised me on a baffled fuel cell and a fuel pressure regulator for my Mustang race car to prevent the carburetor and the fuel pump from starving under heavy cornering."
"Wow, unbelievable," Doto said with a shake of her head. "I guess you just never know what even a small town might hold in unexpected celebrities, huh?"
"You can say that again, sweetheart," Monique nodded with a cheerful laugh. "Folks might say you and I are unusual characters, but golly gee wickers, missus Tenderson, now she is a character, and one of the most prominent in the whole of Birch Brook and surroundings!"
Doto shook her head again and leaned back on the bench, lapsing into silence while she and Monique finished their bottles of spring water. She would have never thought a small old lady pulling into the garage for service would have such a wild history, but she couldn't do anything but believe it from the way Monique talked about it.
Characters. Every town has them.
