‘This is the deal.’ ‘The deal?’ ‘The deal is this.’ I'm being offered something special in a garage, but since they have my car already and it has clunks and clicks it didn't have before I took it in to be serviced last week, I'm trapped. Dialogue in garages between mechanic and customer looks like ‘ideal speech’ (images of transparent open direct and genuine communication that are described by the German social theorist Jurgen Habermas), but I feel like I'm in a David Mamet play (tales of layers of contricks; think of the films The Water Engine or The Spanish Prisoner, for example). Suddenly I'm lacking something serious, and the person who makes this clear to me is the only one who can put it right. The guy behind the counter is telling me that he wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he let me take the car on the road unsafe. He seems to believe it. He looks at me, reaches for his pen and draws another diagram of ‘tracking levers’ and ‘rear bushes’. Of course, he's not sure if this bit is causing the problem, and he can't guarantee that a new one will stop the noise. He reminds me that I don't want to take my car away from them with noises it didn't have before and that I really don't want to spend my hard-earned money on the car and have things end up worse.