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A few days earlier Sara had taken her car to the mechanic, and on the day of pickup Grissom offered to drive her.
"Hey, sugar!" The garage manager greeted her upon seeing her.
Grissom didn’t know why he had thought the mechanic was an old man. Perhaps it was that touch of flirtatiousness in Sara's voice when she had told him that the man sometimes gave her discounts because he liked her. A kind of flirtatiousness that was usually used when talking about...a grandfather, an uncle perhaps, who was being nice and affectionately facilitating you. As a matter of fact, Grissom found himself in front of a young man . Young as in the same age as Sara. Or maybe a few years younger, even. At least two inches taller than him, if not three. And anyone on the face of the earth would have said he was a very handsome human being. He might as well have been a model for advertisements of suits smeared with oil and grease. The most troubling thing, though, wasn’t just his charming outward appearance. Against all possible odds, while the model was briefing Sara on the work he had done, Grissom had to admit to himself that it was his whole person that exuded a kind of positive aura, a perpetual joyfulness. He inspired confidence.
Besides, since when did Sara smile so much at a stranger?
Of course, he gave her the discount.
"Do discounts apply to Sara's friends, too?" The words came out of Grissom's mouth, before he could stop them. Despite his best efforts, his voice came out a bit malicious, his smile appeared pulled, his gaze accusatory.
The puzzled look from Sara, who already had the money in her hand, accompanied the amused one from the mechanic.
"Sara's friends are my friends," he replied. He held out his hand, but realized it was dirty. So he raised it in the air as a wave instead. "Husky," he introduced himself.
"Grissom," he replied, repeating the same gesture.
Husky seemed amused. "Cool, like the astronaut!" he commented cheerfully.
Grissom was annoyed that Husky knew anything outside of pistons and spark plugs.
"No, not like the astronaut. And... Husky, like the fourth oldest dog breed in the world?" He gave a smile that came across as sympathetic to no one.
The greasy giant in fact looked at him for a moment with bewildered disorientation.
"With husky-haughty lips, O sea! " he replied, with a composedly smiling face. "Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions."
"Walt Whitman," Grissom replied, with no surprise.
"He’s my mother's favorite poet," the anointed one explained succinctly.
Grissom realized that he was growing curious about the guy. And it unnerved him even more.
He didn't comment further and finally Sara paid. She and Grissom didn't say a word until they reached Sara's car, which was ready in the back of the workshop.
"The fourth oldest breed of dog in the world ?" Sara asked.
Grissom proved to be more focused on a small stain on the hood of Sara's car, which he scratched off with a fingernail. He then turned to her as if he hadn't heard what she said. Sara repeated her question, and Grissom pretended not to understand what she was talking about.
"Do you know Husky?" she then asked.
"Of course not."
"In the criminal sense, I mean. Do you have any information about him that -
"No. I have no idea who that guy is."
"Then what?"
"What?"
"Why did you attack him in that -
"Attacked him? I only said -
"You associated him with a dog breed."
"Well, he associated me with an astronaut. Do I look like an astronaut?"
Sara shrugged. She seemed to abandon the argument and slipped the key into the lock.
"You're…not the jealous type, are you?" she asked point blank, letting go of the door.
Objectively, Grissom didn't think Sara would go that far, and her direct question floored him.
"About what?" he asked.
"I mean...you've seen him, right?"
"It would be impossible not to see him, he's seven feet tall."
"Well, beyond that, Husky is..."
Grissom dropped all coverage. "...happily married?"
"Gay."