While I am not easily spooked, I will confess a creeping dread set in—not regarding a thief, as that never crossed my mind, but concerning my own faculties. I thought, this is it, Frank. This is how it begins. First you forget the gas, then where you parked, eventually forgetting your own son’s name.
I spent that week tossing and turning.
Ultimately, I concluded the rational step was visiting a mechanic. If the fuel was genuinely evaporating, a mechanical flaw had to exist—a fractured tank, a ruptured fuel line, something tangible. Discovering a mechanical issue meant my mind remained intact, which paradoxically counted as good news.
I brought it over to Dave’s Auto on Cranston. Dave has maintained my vehicles for twenty years, a stocky, taciturn man with motor oil embedded so deeply into his skin it will never wash out.
“What’s the trouble, Frank?” he inquired, wiping his palms on a shop rag.
“My gasoline keeps vanishing,” I explained. “I top it off, barely drive, and days later it’s half gone. I suspect a leak.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Half gone? That’s a serious leak. You’d smell fumes or spot puddles.”
“I smell nothing and see nothing, Dave. But it’s disappearing. I’ve logged every mile.”
He nodded slowly. “Understood. Leave it here. I’ll hoist it up and inspect the undercarriage.”
I left the vehicle behind while Walt picked me up. The entire day dragged by in a haze of anxiety, imagining Dave reporting a rusted-out tank—or worse, declaring the truck flawless, leaving the problem residing strictly between my ears.
He phoned around four o’clock.
“Frank,” he said, “I’ve gone over this machine inside and out. Pressure-tested the tank, examined every line, every gasket, every connection. Zero leaks. This truck is in better condition than models half its age.”
Standing in my kitchen clutching the receiver, I asked, “No leaks at all?”
