The chill of the wind in the slash pines marked the season, November had begun to build a forward momentum and was trying its best to let everything from the migrating birds to the busier-than-normal residents of Kaylant, Florida breathe its energy. In this modest Florida city of 26,000, second jobs are commonplace, even among professionals, and unless you bring in six figures, your weekend wasn't spent at the beach, but at the local BP working a double. This Thursday afternoon heralded the beginning of a three-day weekend, and a spell of silence indented that vital first sentence of this particular working gear's weekend sabbatical.
"Uh..."
Dan stood in a trance, he had to make a careful choice. Brad was a friend, he wouldn't want to make a fool decision. Even if he did, it wouldn't make a big difference, but it would probably matter in some small, perhaps inconsequential way. But he used to do this too, he remembers what it was like. They were all so similar, yet the difference lies in subtlety. Which one? Which one?
"Which one, sir?" Inquired a man roughly eye-level with Dan. He was older, but his hardened gaze told Dan he'd been doing this for a very long time. Pulling himself together, Dan focused on the task at hand, put all of his energy into making the best decision not only for himself, but for his friend too. His mind flew through a cloud of possibility, breaking past all of the barriers, approaching the pinnacle of mentality where the truth waited for him to arrive. Closer, slower, the end was nigh, the train was coming to a stop. Dan peered out of the window, and saw the truth waiting for him like a child with a big red balloon. His mouth wet, his tongue extended, and he spoke...
"That one, above the grey and gold one." A nod accented the statement. "The 27s?" Inquired the clerk. Daniel looked at the package with a limited intensity, "uh huh." The clerk took a package of cigarettes from the rack and turned around, scanning the UPC. "$6.80, will that be cash or credit?" The clerk's eyes deflected from the computer screen to his customer, who pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket.
"Cash," Daniel's word coincided with the moment his middle and forefinger pinned the note to the counter top, he slid it to the clerk and grabbed his cigarettes. The clerk gave him his change and gestured kindly as left the convenience store. "Come again."
Outside, Dan stepped to the side of the door and examined the cigarettes. He unwrapped the cellophane and opened the top of the pack. He placed his thumb on the filter of a cigarette and pulled it upwards, but he stopped himself from taking the plunge. Pushing it back into the pack, Dan reminded himself that he gave that up. Cocking his head upwards, he quickly scanned the parking lot and walked around to the side of the convenience store to Brad's car. Dan was met with a flash of sunlight as he rounded the corner and walked around the back of the silver Outlook and homed in on passenger seat door.
Dan climbed in through the door and held the cigarettes up to his friend, "Here's your payment for coming to get me," Dan said in a contrived tone. Smiling a boyish grin Brad removed them from Dan's grasp with a slow, right hook-motion, "you've really quit haven't you?" Brad said to Dan, referencing the broken seal of cellophane and full pack of cigarettes. Dan looked over to his friend, "I've been keeping it that way, it's never been easy, you know." Brad nodded in compassion while Dan fastened his seat belt. Brad lit his cigarette with the car lighter, and took the first puff, "that's good, I'm happy to hear you're sticking with it," Brad stated as smoke rolled out of his nose and mouth. "Did you have enough in that joke-of-a-bank-account of yours?" Brad said as he chuckled to himself. Dan replied, self-assuredly, "Sure did." Dan reached for the cash in his pocket. "Once I get old Betty out of jail we're going out for a night on the town." A slowly-intensifying smile crept across Brad's face and he chimed in, "Old Betty huh? You have a date with another senior citizen? And she's a convict?" Dan sat there for a second before smirking and facing the window. "First of all, she wasn't over 55, second, you know I'm talking about my car, and third, it was an interview, not a date." Brad decided to muse himself a little, "all I'm saying is that if an attractive, recently-divorced editor of a nationally-recognized publication wanted to interview me at a four-star restaurant that's more than well-known for their champagne, age wouldn't make a difference at this point. Hell, we're old men practically." Dan rubbed his chin to hide a smile, "Age is a state of mind, my friend. If you feel you're better suited to prowling the nursing home, I've got your back," Dan responded without missing a beat. Brad sounded off with an accented "Fuuuck you," before starting the engine of his proud locomotive. He backed around the corner of the convenience store, causing apparent concern for a couple walking just outside the store. The boyfriend started walking toward the SUV shouting something harsh from behind his Oakley knockoffs, but not before Brad threw the car into gear, sporting a one-fingered salute as he drove off the lot.
Half an hour passed and Dan and Brad reached the impound after an extended series of U-turns, illegal rights, failures to signal, and illegal lane changes. They had reached their destination, the words "Kaylant Auto Park" painted in blue over a long banner made from intersecting sheets of plywood signaled the end of their journey. Brad took the right into the impound but stopped in front of the makeshift banner. With cold eyes from behind the shaded glass of his aviators, he did the only thing that could complete his 1980's Top Gun facade, he lit another cigarette and stared down the motionless banner as if it were a sworn enemy. Brad's intensity was broken as a mother with her teenage daughter in a brown suburban blew her horn to his rear. He broke off his stare and drove into the lot.
Brad grimaced at the broken-down vulgarity of the impound, "good move getting cash, I don't think they accept credit or debit." Dan admitted to himself having the same impression of the Kaylant Auto Park, he expected to find a pitbull tied to a fencepost every time he could see around a new corner. Brad pulled his silver beast into a parking spot to the left and put it in park. Dan unbuckled his seat belt and stepped out, walking to the left to reach the stairs leading to the main office. "I'll just wait out here," Brad said matter-of-factly. Dan passed by the driver's side window, looked in, and walked up the stairs. He reached the door and turned door knob only to realize it wouldn't turn. Looking down at it sharply, he jabbed it briskly left and right a few times before it opened, and he walked into the office.
Once inside, Dan noticed the one-hundred-and-eighty degrees of difference from the outside of the office. Painted walls, the average-looking waiting room chairs, the fact there was carpet; had it not been for only a single, half-functioning fluorescent light lighting the office with a dull shade of despair, the inside of the office could almost be considered... normal for this city. His remained focused and walked towards the man sitting at the desk bathing in lifeless illumination. That man, he remained virtually motionless, breathing his necessary breaths, but none more. He stared listlessly at a blank claims form, making no effort to populate it. For all Dan knew, this man could be dead, which would probably be appropriate, given the mood of the office.
Daniel approached the desk, at which moment the mannequin of a man snapped a curve in his neck and looked at Daniel. "Good afternoon sir," this mannequin-man spoke, his bark-black hair, sagging face, grayish-blue eyes, and subdued vocal tone told Daniel that this man was as lifeless as the light that could manage no more than to ward off the darkness that would surely consume him from all sides. Daniel managed to break himself from his current train of thought, "hi," he managed to sputter, "I need to get my car out of here." The man, identified by his name tag as "Tyler" breathed a heavy breath inward as he reached behind him to grab a clipboard hanging on the wall, "was your car towed within the last 24 hours?" Daniel replied with a 'yes' and Tyler flipped over a single page on his clipboard. "What's the tag number?" Daniel shot back, "H-zero-one, eight, V, I" Tyler looked at the page for a second, "Yep, we've got her, that'll be $187.50 from you sir," Tyler muttered in a deadened tone. "Cash or charge?" Daniel reached for the money in his left pocket. "Cash," Daniel pulled out $193 from his pocket, pulled off the three single-dollar bills, and handed them over to Tyler, who opened a drawer, put the cash in, and handed Daniel back a dollar bill and six quarters and shot him a quick look, "I'll be right back." He signed off with a smile and headed to the back room. Checking his cell phone, it was 4:36 and the sun was bright, but it wouldn't be for much longer.
Meanwhile, Bradley sat outside in his car, admiring the dump he was in the midst of, smoking another cigarette, when he noticed a short, stocky, balding man of roughly 40-or-so years and Hispanic or Indian descent walking next to a light-skinned man of average height speaking Spanish. The Spanish man spoke for a while, but then paused and said something seemingly removed from his established rhythm, and the short man's eyes lit up like a fire. He immediately turned to the Spanish man and began yelling up at him in extended bursts, his downwards-flying forearms accented with the trademark tightly-clenched fists of a tiny raging man took the Spanish man by surprise, throwing him on the defensive, taking a step backwards, frightened. Bradley chuckled and smirked at the ordeal, watching amusedly from the car window. The Spanish man paused and looked at Bradley for a second, then slowly back to the short man, who had paused his yelling for the duration of the Spanish man's diverted attention, and then continued with a short lunge and a shout, scaring the Spanish man again, and resumed his yelling. Brad, thoroughly satisfied by this display of aggression, turned to face the building once more while taking another puff of his cigarette to witness Dan emerging from the office as he made his way down the stairs.
Brad looked towards Dan, who had turned to look at the building and resorted to walking backwards to do so, "They found the drugs, didn't they?" Dan whipped his neck towards Brad once in disbelief, then once again in confusion, then it dawned on him that this was his friend's way of joking around. "They found them all right," Dan said indifferently, still looking at the building, putting his arm on Brad's roof. "Funny thing, too, they say that someone, probably a friend, was using my car as a stashing place. They also found a significant amount of dark curly hair on the bags, he said they looked consistent with that of a Jew-fro. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Brad scratched his head, "What about YOUR car? Isn't it fixed yet?"
Dan briefly recalled the incident from two weeks ago that left his car in the shop. A fruit-vendor was walking between cars during the red light at a busy intersection peddling bananas, when two men began yelling at him from across the street. The man began arguing with them, yelling something back to them whenever they yelled something at him. Even after the light turned green and he drove off Dan saw the fruit man yelling furiously across the street from his rear view window. He turned his attention back to the road ahead of him. Having just gotten off work and being Friday, Dan's first stop was Street Cle@n, a poorly-named dry cleaning business in a plaza on Rusty Pkwy. He stopped, went, turned, and even made an illegal U-turn, but he eventually made it to the dry cleaners often mistaken for a computer repair store.
Dan parked facing the road, squealing his front-left tire as he turned the corner. He popped his trunk, walked into the cleaners, and took his spot in line. Outside, a few children ran around, yelling and screaming as they do, throwing those little firecrackers at each other that snap when they hit something. One kid screamed as he was hit by one on the cheek. Looking to the right, a young blonde girl from the salon two suites down was stood outside. She gave a sort of laugh and watched them run around. Dan turned his attention back to the line in front of him, which had shortened to only two people standing in front of him. Waiting half-patiently, his eyes darted around the suite, reading the little posters detailing garment-cleaning prices and employee safety, observing the yellowed faux-silk wallpaper, he looked at his cell phone for the time, and finally put his hands in his pockets as the guy in front of him moved to the front of line. He watched the young Latina girl running the register as she took the clothes from the man in front of him. He took another look outside to see two kids hiding behind a dumpster while an elderly man walked towards them at a slow pace, the kids seemed to be holding something in their hands, but it didn't matter, Dan took another look over to where the girl had been, but she was gone.
Dan stood facing forward again at the dry cleaners, looking up at the ceiling every so often. He might have been next in line, but the guy in front of him seemed to be taking longer than the two people before him. He looked outside again to find a dump truck approaching from the far end of the plaza, and the two kids hiding behind the dumpster jumped out and both threw a hand full of their firecrackers at the old man who was very much taken by surprise. Some of the firecrackers hit him on the chest and face and snapped audibly. The old man's temper sweltered as the two brats ran off, and he took chase to them as best he could. Walking as if his suspenders held the seat of his pants far too high for comfort, the elderly man hobbled as fast as he could towards the inner walk of the plaza, "you little rascals!" He yelled as he pushed his glasses back on to his face by the bridge and breathed heavily while his right arm ran in opposition to his legs.
As Dan watched the scene, the girl at the register called for him. He stepped forward and put his clothes on the stretch of counter. Pressed, starched, and done by Tuesday at the latest, as usual. "Will that be cash or charge?" He was asked, "charge." He pulled out his card and before she could take it, the sound of two very heavy objects colliding with one another with a loud THUD shook the glass and everybody inside turned around.
Everybody turned to see a garbage truck with a caved-in front end and the dumpster that it struck running away from it's attacker. It arched around towards the plaza before the slope of the concrete threw it on its right-side wheels and it arched away. Dan looked to see where it was going, and he soon saw the dumpster's designated target. "Oh, shit!" Dan immediately dropped his card and wallet and collided with and pushed everybody out of the way as he threw himself with all his might out the front door and into the parking lot. Within an arm's length of the dumpster from Dan, it struck the back of his car and sent it flying out into the middle of the street, while the dumpster exited on the far end of the plaza. Those drivers erring on the side of caution saw the hurdling dumpster and immediately stopped to avoid the collision, while two drivers, apparently braver than the rest, sped up to avoid it. What they didn't notice was the blue sedan slowly stretching across the very three lanes they were driving on. The first car struck the front of Dan's car, sending the back end flying, while the second received the full impact of the rear end of a sedan being thrown into their gunmetal, hemi-powered 4x4.
Dan ran into the middle of the street, where a young boy, no older than 14, climbed out of the 4x4's passenger door, who, being unable to contain his excitement ran around the front of the 4x4 to look at the car they just hit. A second man, somewhere between 35 and 40, got out of the same passenger-side door and looked over at Dan, the man's face screamed of anger control issues, and they didn't look like they were going away on this particular day either.
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