Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Can’t say I wasn’t warned.
“You know where I can get another one delivered?” I ask. “Is that parts store on the square still around?”
The man shrugs. “How would I know? I don’t live here. Not permanently anyway. I’m from Scottsbluff, just west of here. My old lady kicked me out. Asked for a break even though she blows up my phone all day and night and begs me to come back. Second I get there, she kicks me out again.”
He takes a long drag, shaking his head.
“Then why keep going back to her?” I ask, though it’s more of a personal remark that I didn’t mean to say out loud.
“Because I love her.” His words are curt and staccato, as if my question insulted him. “I’ll keep going back until she finally tells me not to. That’s what you do when you love someone.”
It’s also what you do when you’re scraping the barrel with your barely existent self-esteem and you live in a town of five hundred residents and romantic prospects are slim pickings.
“She probably just wants me to mow the lawn,” he says, taking another drag. “Last time she wanted me to clean the gutters. At least she fed me that time. Dishes weren’t even washed before she picked a fight about some asinine shit and sent me out the door.”
“You realize how pathetic you look to her, right?”
His face turns pinched, as if the thought had never crossed his mind.
“Have a little respect for yourself,” I say. “Don’t come to her when she snaps her fingers, and don’t go with your tail tucked between your legs every time she swats you with a newspaper for being bad. I’m sorry, but she doesn’t respect you.”
Maybe he hasn’t given her a reason to respect him, but still. There’s a very clear lack of mutual respect happening here, and someone needs to be the one to point it out to him.
The man flicks his cigarette butt on the ground, grinds it under the toe of his sneaker, and stares blankly ahead, as if he’s digesting my words. And I hope for his sake he is. I hope I’ve opened his eyes to an entirely new perspective that will allow him to rebalance the power in the relationship or get off that godforsaken hamster wheel of drama.
“Sorry about your truck, man,” he says when he snaps out of it. “I can drop you off downtown if you’d like? Think there’s a parts store not far from there. They might be able to point you toward the nearest junkyard if they can’t help you. That thing’s pretty . . . ancient.”
“Shit. Yeah. Two secs.” I check and ensure that my catalytic converter is indeed missing—and it is. Then I climb into the passenger side of his smoky Chrysler. He climbs in beside me and starts the engine. “Why’d they take mine and not yours?”
“I put a lock on mine,” he says as we drive away. “Little habit I’ve been practicing most of my life. That’s what happens when you grow up on the shit side of town, my friend.”
He turns up his music—“Peg” by Steely Dan—and taps his fingers against the steering wheel.
Five minutes later, he pulls up to an auto-parts store just south of the main shopping district.
“Thanks for the lift,” I say when I step out. “Hey, I didn’t get your name.”
“Vernon,” he says. His gold wedding band glints in the sun as he grips his steering wheel. “Vernon Mayfield.”
“Good luck with Judith, Vernon.” I point at my eyes, then his. “And don’t forget what I told you.”
He gives me a nod and a wave before taking off.
A half hour later, I’m a hundred dollars lighter, but I have my universal-fit catalytic converter. The only problem now is I need a welder to attach it, which means finding an auto mechanic who can tow it in ASAP and not drain my bank account while they’re at it. Bonus points if they can order me a replacement window, though more than likely it’ll have to be pulled from a junkyard.
That’s what I get for buying the cheapest truck I could find off Craigslist the second my feet touched US soil again.
I check my watch, grab a bite to eat from a food stand, and take a seat on a park bench to kill some time before I walk to my attorney’s office. All around me, locals and tourists dawdle up and down the flower-and-tree-lined streets like they’ve got all the time in the world. A cluster of women passes by, their arms heavy with shopping bags and their eyes lit as they debate on which café to hit up for lunch.
Shoving the last bit of food into my mouth, I wipe my hands and toss the napkin into the nearest trash can. Up ahead is an endless buffet of gift shops, boutiques, and specialty stores—none of which cater to the thirty-year-old-male-grifter-wanderer demographic.