I sat up. "Okay."
"What's a float bowl?"
I looked at her in the dark. I couldn't see her face, just the shape of her, and the light from the hallway on one side of her hair.
"It's the part on the bottom of the carburetor," I said. "It holds the gas. There's a float in it, like a little boat, and when the gas gets high enough the float goes up and pushes a needle into a hole and shuts it off, so it doesn't overflow. Like a toilet tank. And in the middle there's a jet, it's a little brass tube, and the gas goes up through it into the air, and that's what makes it burn. If the jet's clogged, it won't start. Old gas clogs it. You have to clean it."
"How do you clean it?"
"You soak it. Then you hold it up to the light and look through the hole, and if you can see daylight, it's clear. If you can't, you get the wire." I paused. "Grandpa keeps the wire in a film canister."
"Of course he does." She was quiet. "He used to make me do that. At the shop. When I was your age. I hated it. I'd hold it up to the light and I could never see anything, and he'd take it out of my hand and look through it and say, puiule, it's right there, and I'd want to throw it at him." She laughed, softly, through her nose. "I thought I was bad at it. I think now I just wanted to be out front."
"You were good at the counter," I said. "He said."
"I was good at the counter," she said. "I was really good at the counter." She put her hand on my foot, over the blanket. "He told you about Kansas City."
"Yes."