#ghosteh

-x-

Miroku never forgot a car.

Even though this one looked as though it had been driven through a rock tumbler, then involved in a low-speed crash, he immediately recognized the two-toned 1956 Mercury Montclair as Kuranousuke Takeda's. He had helped the man deal with a rusted fender two years before.

The car limped in on four brand-spanking-new whitewall radials that were at odds with how beat-up the rest of the car was.  Miroku took it all in. The headlamps were shattered; the hood was dished in so far that he'd have to check on the engine.

He circled the vehicle. The rear lights were all broken, too. The areas on the doors that weren't dented were scratched all to hell, taking off paint all the way down to bare steel.

Miroku was absorbed enough in the car that he almost caught the driver's door on his hip as it opened suddenly. He gave a low whistle as he saw that even the roof of the car was heavily gouged. It was almost painful to see.

"You're Miroku?" a light voice asked, snapping him out of his concentration.

He turned, surprised to see not Kuranousuke Takeda, but quite possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on.

He took a long second to take her in. The woman was dressed professionally in a bright green skirt that fell to just below her knees and a white, collared button down shirt under a dark pink sweater that accented her figure beautifully.  Her long chestnut hair was tied with a white ribbon between her shoulder blades. But it was her huge brown eyes that took him in. They were bright with an emotion he couldn't quite place: somewhere between grief and fury that made him want to know everything about her.

She stood expectantly in front of him, finally crossing her arms in annoyance before he remembered she had asked him a question.

"Yes. I'm Miroku. This is my body shop. And you're definitely not Takeda."

The woman's face darkened at the name and she whirled around and gave the driver’s door a powerful kick, further denting it.

"No. I. Am. Not," she said with emphasis.

Miroku suddenly twigged onto the situation.  The gorgeous woman in front of him was most definitely responsible for the weirdest car "accident" ever.

He suppressed a smirk and ducked his head to take in the interior. Oh yes. The custom-dyed ostrich leather seats had been attacked with something sharp. Miroku discerned a pattern that might be a name.

"Let me guess: You're Sango?"

She rolled her eyes and recrossed her arms. "Yeah," she said finally.

"So it looks like we'll need to fix these dents, replace the lights, reupholster, check the engine..."

"The engine is fine. I didn't touch the engine."

Hypothesis confirmed.

"Okay," he said carefully. "But there's the matter of cost.  If..." Miroku hesitated in saying Takeda's name again. More dents were more money in his pocket, but seeing this innocent car take a beating tugged at his heart.  "If," he began again, "this car is to be fully restored, it's not going to be cheap."

Sango sighed. "I'm paying for whatever needs to be done to the chassis and the lights. Kuranousuke has the tires, upholstery, paint, and whatever is needed for you to put this car at the front of the line for your attention."

Miroku nodded. He generally didn't like it when people threw money at him to make whatever their problem was his biggest priority, but Sango looked like she needed this all behind her too, and he had a soft spot for beautiful women.

"Oh," Sango said, ducking back into the car for something. "And I'll take care of the windshield, too."

Miroku looked at the windshield again, confused. There wasn't so much as a chip in it.

But then Sango slammed the driver's door and stepped around to the front of the car swinging a baseball bat.  Miroku shielded his eyes just as she brought the bat down and shattered the windshield.

She looked ready to take another swing, so Miroku lunged and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides. The bat clattered to the ground.

"You have to be careful!" Miroku said as he regretfully let go of the most exquisite woman he had ever touched. "Glass!"

Miroku didn't miss that she was trembling. He could almost feel the rage emanating from her in twisted waves. Those beautiful eyes were brimming with tears.

He didn't even need to think before he spoke, "I was just about to close for the day. Let's say I buy you a drink?"

She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve and gave a wry smirk. "Why not?" she answered.

-x-

After the first drink, he got her profession out of her (assistant director for a women's shelter). After two, he got her age where she was from (26 and all the way across the country).

After three, she flushed a becoming pink and her eyes lost that hard edge. She was even more beautiful when she was relaxed. She also seemed way more likely to tell him about herself.

Miroku smiled and leaned in. "I have to ask you, why did you carve your name into the seats. If he had called the police, you might be in trouble."

She didn't smile back. "I wanted him to know it was me. Unlike him, I'm not a liar and I was ready for whatever." She leaned back and looked into her half-empty beer mug. "Besides," she mumbled, "no jury would convict."

Miroku stifled a laugh. "Let me guess. He cheated."

She continued to keep her gaze on her beer, but her eyebrows jumped in assent. "Winner, winner," she said without mirth. "Next drink's on me."

Miroku sized Sango up. She definitely had a temper, that much was obvious, but there was something more. That sustained level of damage to the car would have taken a lot of time and energy. The woman who sat in front of him seemed reserved, even kind. Miroku considered himself an excellent judge of character, and he just didn't see Sango as someone who could be spiteful.

"No offense, but this is a lot of money and a lot of extra time to spend with Takeda. There must be something more to the story.  I would guess it's not just the cheating."

Sango finally looked up and met his gaze, surprised. "You think so?" She set down her beer and pinned him with narrowed her eyes.

Her scrutiny, instead of feeling invasive or hostile, felt great. This was the first time all evening that he felt like she was actually interested in mare than his skills at classic auto-repair.

"Perceptive," she finally said.

"Look, you don't have to tell me. But it might feel good to get off your chest."

Sango sighed and took another sip of her beer, but kept her eyes on Miroku.  There was a new respect there for him.  She set the beer down and sighed again.  She said, "It's not just the humiliation. I mean, I'm humiliated and I have my pride."

Miroku nodded, encouraging her to keep going.

"It's not just because he's a lying liar. Because he is." Her words grew more and more pointed.

"It's because he managed to convince me that this relationship was so important to him, to us, that I needed to make sacrifices for it. So I did. That's what's so hard for me to swallow with this whole thing."

"Sacrifices?"

"My family."

This surprised Miroku.

"You see, six months ago, my brother got sick and needed an operation. My father had to take time off to help him and I wanted to fly back home to take some of the pressure off. I'd have been home for a month, maybe two.  But Kuranousuke had a big case coming up and needed my support. He said with this win under his belt, he'd be the youngest senior partner in the firm and we'd be set. We could start talking more seriously about our future, maybe get married. But if I left, he wasn't sure he could guarantee a real future for us."

Miroku sat back as Sango gave a sardonic laugh.

"Listening to this now, I realize how dumb I am. My family is so important to me and I let the promises of someone I wasn't even sure I loved interfere."  She frowned deeply.

“Then what happened?"

"Three months later, the court case is won, Kuranousuke is a senior partner, my brother recovers, and I still hear nothing about this future I've just sold my family out for."

"Nothing?"

"Zip. Any time I brought it up, I'd get a condescending smile, a mention of another current legal case, and asked where I'd like to go out to dinner."

"I'm definitely seeing where the rage is coming from."

"Well, one morning about a week ago, Kuranousuke left his work cell phone on the bed while taking a shower and it kept going off with messages. I got curious."

"Ooof."

"Apparently, one of his credit cards expired and he forgot to update one of his regular contacts: An escort service."

"What? No way!"

Sango gave another ironic smile. "Oh, I was surprised, too. After he went into work, I checked his files and saw he's been using their services for the past eight months. I also see that half the time he was supposedly working late on a case, there are motel room bills."

Miroku's jaw dropped. "So that whole time you could have been with your family..."

"...I was with a disgusting liar, naively hoping that he might one day deign to marry me."

"So the Mercury got it."

Sango took a long, deep sigh. Miroku could see it was a way to both calm down and to show her frustration. "Yeah," she said, finally.

Miroku shook his head. "You're right. Don't get me wrong, I love cars. Especially classics like the Mercury. But if I was on the jury, no way I'd convict."

Sango looked up and gave Miroku the first real smile he'd seen from her.

"Well, I'm paying for half the work, too. It was his favorite thing, but I'd hate if it was destroyed forever."

"Oh, I'll take care of that. He trusts you to do this on his own?"

"Yeah. Is that ironic considering right now I wouldn't trust him to baby-sit a pet rock? Plus, he says he's busy and that you'll coordinate with him about billing his half. I just want this all over with."

"I understand."

"Can we stop talking about this right now?" Sango asked. With the anger burned off, she just looked tired.

"Absolutely. Let's get you an Uber and you can stop by the shop next week to check on the progress. Next Friday at five?" Miroku secretly was hoping it might turn into another date.

"That will work for me," Sango answered.

-x-

The first thing Miroku did the next Monday was to call Inuyasha in to work. Inuyasha had moved to part-time the previous year to go back to school, but Miroku knew his current workload was too much for him to handle alone.  He had Inuyasha do the finishing touches on the cars he had been working on the previous week while he called Takeda.

As Miroku and Takeda discussed the details of payment, paint, and leather choices, he felt the constant presence of Sango's hurt and disappointment due to Takeda's actions. After about 10 minutes, it was all Miroku could do not to yell, "How could you cheat on a woman like Sango with escorts?!"  He tamped down the temptation and made sure to take notes on the decisions that were made.

Miroku spent the rest of the day talking to his suppliers and making the special orders that Takeda had wanted for his car. Miroku had a meticulous eye for detail and he liked to get things right the first time. He also discovered that he wanted as little contact with Takeda as possible. Talking to him turned his stomach sour.

Tuesday was spent sanding the paint on the entire car all the way down to the metal. Then, he pulled out the interior leather and cushioning. Once that was done, Miroku sent Inuyasha home and worked on the other cars that were waiting for his attention. He ended up staying until almost midnight so that he could keep his promises to his customers about when they would be ready.

On Wednesday, Miroku did his best to pull out the worst dents Sango had made. He could practically feel her rage and passion with every mar he tried to fix. She was the one paying for the chassis work, so she would get perfection. He didn't know what it was about her that was distracting him so much, but he found himself enjoying thinking about her, wondering what she was doing, wanting to know so much more about her.

Thursday and Friday were spent with bondo. The filler smoothed out the pocks and made the panels even and true. Each pass with the bondo blade, made over and over again to restore classic lines of the automobile put Miroku in a Zen-like state of mind. Bondo and sanding, bondo and sanding.  Bringing back the beauty of the Mercury ate up the hours between then and when he would next see Sango.

He had finished about sixty percent of the car by Friday at noon when one of his suppliers called about an issue with the leather for the seat. It seemed that the color Takeda had requested was discontinued, but they'd developed a new color that was similar, but not an exact match.

Miroku braced himself before calling Takeda at work. Even a conversation about leather colors was already putting him in a foul mood.

Takeda's secretary answered in a bright voice, "Tokigawa, Oda, Takeda, and Associates?"

"May I please speak to Kuranousuke Takeda?"

"He is out for the moment. What is this in regards to?"

"This is Miroku calling about repairing his Mercury Montclair."

"Oh, yes! I had heard it was in an accident! I'm so glad no one was hurt!"

Miroku couldn't stop the words. "Accident? Not really."  It had been an honest slip, but something about it satisfied Miroku greatly. He wasn't a lawyer. He wasn't a priest. He wasn't sworn to confidentiality.

"No accident? Then what happened?" the voice asked.

Miroku chose his words carefully. "It's my understanding that it was done intentionally." He crossed his fingers, hoping that the bait he had just laid was too tempting to pass up.

"Who would so such a thing to Mr. Takeda?" she gasped.

Miroku paused to build the tension. "Again, it's my understanding it was his girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend, now."

"That sweet girl, Sango? That's not possible!" Takeda's secretary sounded both scandalized and delighted at the same time.

"Yes. He, um, had contracted the services of... other women... and Sango found out."

Another gasp. Then the voice returned. "Well, I'm sure it's not any of my business..."

"I just need Takeda to call me back at his earliest convenience to discuss an issue that has just arisen. I believe he has my number."

"Of course. I will let him know." The secretary's voice had gone from light to heavy, weighted down by this new information. And rather than clipped and annoyed, it sounded almost happy about the new development. Maybe Takeda wasn't a great boss.

Miroku hung up with a sly grin on his face. The clock told him that Sango would be showing up in less than five hours. He was looking forward to it.

-x-

Sango showed up at five o'clock on the dot.  She looked shocked at the state of the car.

"It... looks so naked!" she breathed.  "I feel almost bad."

Miroku showed her the progress he'd made. "It should be ready for painting next week and then the interior should be here and prepped to install."

"Wow. It's really coming along nicely! And it's only been a week." Sango gave Miroku a genuine smile. It made him feel proud of his work and weak in his knees at the same time. He would do anything if she would smile at him like that all of the time.

Sango circled the car once again and gave a satisfied nod. Then she quirked an eyebrow at Miroku and said, "I believe I owe you a drink. You ready to close up for the night?"

Yes. Yes, Miroku was.

-x-

Sango was a study in contrasts from the previous week to that evening. She actually smiled and made small talk. It seemed as though time was beginning to heal her.

Halfway through the first drink, Sango leaned in and, with an impish smile, asked, "So, 'Miroku's Body Shop: Leave your classic body work to the man with a lover's touch.' Really?"

Miroku's heart did flip flops. Sango was flirting. With him! He gave her a grin. "You heard my ad!"

"I guess I'd heard it for a while, but it didn't register that was you. That ad has always been good for a serious eye-roll.” She laughed. “I actually thought it was a massage parlor for the longest time."

Miroku snorted, then fake-pouted. "Well, I thought it was clever..."

Sango laughed and tipped back more of her drink, keeping eye contact with him. When she was done she asked, "So, Mr. Lover's Touch, how did you get into cars?"

"Through crime."

Sango nearly spit out her drink and Miroku laughed. "Did you say 'crime'?" she sputtered.

"Yeah. My parents died in an accident when I was really young, so I was raised by my uncle. He ran a chop-shop."

"Oh. That's terrible about your parents. I lost my mom young, too."

Miroku nodded. "Well, Uncle Mushin had me taking apart cars before I could read and I was out boosting them before I could even really reach the pedals. I was in an out of juvie for a while, then they caught me red-handed when I was sixteen and threatened to charge me as an adult. Instead, I volunteered for a diversion program and I was matched with a mentor who saw my skills with restoration and encouraged me to finish school and start my own business."

"A criminal-turned-entrepreneur? Hmm." Sango squinted at him, scrutinizing Miroku.

"What?"

"I'm trying to figure out if you're reformed."

"If I'm an honest businessman?"

"Exactly."

Miroku did an internal jig. Obviously, Sango was worried about her ability to judge character in recent weeks. She was curious if she could trust Miroku, which meant that she might be looking for more in him than his professional services.  Miroku cleared his throat and gave her a serious look. "I won't lie if asked a direct question. But I won't deny that there are times when I can conveniently forget some truths."

“Oh?" Sango asked, looking playfully innocent. "Did someone at Kuranousuke's office directly ask you if he had cheated on me with prostitutes?"

It was Miroku's turn to nearly spit out his beer.  He looked back up at Sango, worried he'd crossed a boundary, but her eyes were sparkling with happiness.

"Let's just say I got a call this afternoon from a certain secretary. She eventually hinted that maybe she knew a thing or two about Kuranousuke's extra-curricular activities."

"What did you say?"

"I said we were no longer together. Then, I innocently suggested that the office manager might want to look through his expense reports. Kuranousuke's secretary has never really been one to shy away from good gossip, and I doubt she'll keep a very good lid on this."

Miroku tried not to smile and failed. "Sorry," he managed.

"Well, thanks to you, I come out of this smelling like a rose. Not that it's important, but I appreciate it. But it makes me wonder what kind of man you are."

"Am I the kind of man who would cheat, you mean."

"Maybe that's what I'm asking. Are you?"

"I've never cheated before."

Sango watched him carefully. "Really?" she said in a tone that wasn't quite believing.

"Well, I've never really dated anyone seriously enough that me seeing anyone else would be 'cheating,' you know?"

Sango gave a slow nod. "Did these women you were oh-so-casually dating know that you weren't exclusive?"

Miroku hesitated.

Sango gave wry smile. "Ah ha. This is one of those conveniently-forgotten truths."

"Well," Miroku tried, "to be fair, once I knew she was more serious than I was, I did let her know."

"So why no serious girlfriends? Do you want one?"

"Yes," Miroku said quickly. "I just have to meet the right woman."

Sango ordered another round at the bar, paying for them again.

"I could have gotten this..." Miroku said.

"Nah. I'm celebrating."

"Oh yeah. What are you celebrating?"

"Well, two things. First, I'm happy to say my relationship with Kuranousuke is dead and buried."

"It wasn't before?"

"We hadn't really had the full conversation. He came at me this week trying to tell me that the escort service was a client of the firm's and that's why he had called them so often." Sango smirked. "Then I told him I had his credit card bills. He didn't really have a way to explain those so neatly!" Sango laughed and Miroku joined in.

Miroku was struck at how much he liked and admired Sango. Yes, she was beautiful, but so were most of the women he had dated. But she was smart, and strong, and passionate, and funny. And best of all, she seemed to like him, too.

"What's the other thing you're celebrating?" Miroku asked.

"Oh yeah. Got the call from my doctor today.  Because of what's-his-name, I had to get tested. Found out that things are all clear. It's quite a relief."

Miroku felt stunned. Of course this would be something Sango would have to worry about. "Shit," was all Miroku could muster.

"Shit is right. Cheating is the gift that keeps on serving up more humiliations.  And aside from the whole turning my back on my family situation, I work at a women's shelter and a good number of our clients are escaping sex trafficking. I've gone on and on to Kuranousuke about how it's those who create the demand for sex work who are the ones driving the industry and really the source of the issue, and he was out there doing this! Asshole."

"What I can't get over is he had you right there and went looking for someone else. You're amazing and he's an idiot to have not seen that." 

Miroku surprised himself by saying that, but couldn't deny the truth to his words. Sango blushed and dropped her eyes, but Miroku still caught the smile on her face.

Miroku raised his beer glass. "To new beginnings," he said.

"To new beginnings," Sango agreed, and clinked his glass.

-x-

Kuranousuke's car would have been finished the next week, but Miroku got a little behind on his work. Even Inuyasha started grousing at him.

"You're on that stupid phone every two minutes. Who's so important that you gotta text them eight hundred times a day?"

Miroku didn't answer, just promised Inuyasha overtime to help him catch up with the backlog.  He and Sango weren't even talking about anything important, just whatever they thought was funny or interesting at the time. Every time his phone vibrated, Miroku felt complete happiness surge through him. He'd never experienced anything like this before.

It was the next Wednesday before Miroku gathered the courage to ask Sango out on a real date. She had accepted immediately.

Friday, Miroku finally signed for the shipment of the seat cushioning and leather. It was ready to install and Takeda scheduled his pick-up for the next Monday. Miroku considered the materials before him.

He found a black marker. On the cream foam cushions, he wrote:

You're a fucking idiot and don't deserve Sango. I hope you enjoy your car and that you live your life knowing you could have had the most amazing woman on this Earth and you lost her.

Miroku covered the cushions with the leather. Takeda would never know it was there, but Miroku would.

Miroku smiled and started to whistle as he headed home to get ready for his date.  He promised himself that he would become the kind of man Sango deserved. He would never hurt her by cheating on her.

Plus, he knew better. He liked his cars in one piece.

END.