High Gloss, Low Value

A piece of short fiction, from the Clover series. To read parts one and two click here.

Working on something exciting, so this week’s and next week’s fiction will be free.

As always Subscribe for more, and let me know your thoughts.

Leave a comment

I love ya!

K

Jack took his mother’s Subaru after he left treatment. He took the bus down to her house to pick it up. She didn’t need it anymore. He didn’t have a license – it had expired, during heroin – and he wasn’t insured, and it wasn’t his. But he had it – her car – so he drove it. It was quickly covered in seltzer cans, and cigarette butts. Vape juice and spilled Starbucks. The sweat smell that only comes from gripping the wheel too tight. A grip of deep resistance.

When surrender makes you soft.

At first it smelled like Mom - lavender and vanilla. Bergamot and silk - but eventually it was Jack’s. He drove it to the ground, and never got pulled over, until a little later, at least. Again at least. But I’ll get there.

He drove through beach winds, and the canyons, while he visited mom, until he was allowed to go get her. The desert air, and the South cold. At night, anyway. He went to meetings, some, reluctantly. Judging other alcoholics. They weren’t eye level. Feeling for himself. Feeling misunderstood, but also like maybe he knew better.

He hoped, every day, on the way to anywhere, that he would get pulled over. Not like he drove too fast – or at least way too fast. Not like he switched lanes, without his blinker, or that his head was buried in his phone. Not like he wasn’t trying - he was - but just barely. Like he’d get pulled over if he was meant to. Like he hated what he was doing – how he was living. Like he hated himself, still, and that hadn’t changed.

Watching people fail, and die. Halfway houses, and urinalysis. White vans and the lack of a reason to wear more than red flannel pajama bottoms, out. With Bang Energy drinks, or an extra-large iced coffee - cinnamon mocha, with a splash of coconut - and always a vape. Perpetually. Fail and die. Or worse. Just fail and stay. Much worse. Just stay where you are. Stay where they were. Not believe in themselves. Still be afraid of everything, and avoid everything. Still blame everybody, and hide. Think that the best part of your day is the smoke shop and buying sneakers with your parents’ money while you watch a Hemsworth brother on Netflix - it doesn’t matter which.

Action was all you were allowed to watch because anything else might be triggering.

Jack hoped God would stop him – pull him over – and tell him enough already. This is all bullshit - I told you so. I’m begging you. Please stop. You were right. This isn’t real.

She’s still okay.

Jack busied himself with his mother. He distracted himself as best as he could. That’s hardest when you turn the lights off, so limit that time. He didn’t get high, but he felt like he should. He was lucky, he felt, to be in California – he knew no dealers, there – and a few Heinekens, from 7-Eleven, wouldn’t quite be enough. He wanted to be like her – where she was. He wanted the pain to befall him. He wanted to feel like her, and not have to be better. He wanted more than this responsibility. He didn’t think he could do it alone.

Tomorrow it was time to go pick up his mom from treatment. Tonight the sky was empty while he smoked and stood on his mother’s balcony, next to her dead tomato plants. They’d been alive before the coma - she’d always had a green thumb - but not anymore. Well there was one star. Fine. A few stars. But one’s brightness was brightest.

He felt something that felt like when you’re looking for your car in a few-story city parking lot. Jack could never find his car – always lost – but, pressing the horn button on his key fob, at least he could finally hear it. At least he knew it was there.

Jack took his mother’s Subaru to Oxnard the next day to pick her up. It was, as it always was, really, really fun.

***

Eventually Jack got pulled over. He ran a red after buying groceries. He wanted to cook dinner for him and his ma. Two blocks from home, for running a red. He lived in her guest room and would try and prepare her dinner. So he could help her take care of herself. He thought it might make her smile, but he imagined this life couldn’t be forever. So he’d do his best while he was here, because he couldn’t do it forever - he couldn’t do it alone. At some point he’d go back to living his life again. At some point he’d smile past his teeth. But now they swarmed him. Four police. He didn’t have a license, so he thought it was over – thank God. It was finally over. Thank you, God. I always knew I believed in you.

“Do you know what you did here, sir?”

“I do,” sweating. When it was hot he never stopped sweating. “I sped up to get through a yellow?” He looked back out the rear windshield.

“Why are you looking all around you?”

“Because I’m nervous.”

“Why are you nervous?”

“I don’t know. I’m sober, though.”

“Now why would you say that?” More angry, an unexpected response. “I didn’t ask you that.”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry,” he watched the back of his hands grip the wheel and pearl sweat. Then his eyes went back out the window.

“Stop looking around! What are you looking for, exit routes?”

“No. I’m not, I swear…”

“Look forward!”

He found a crack in the windshield to focus on. But nonetheless.

“You’re gonna have to get out of the car, please. Now, please. Now!”

They pulled their weapons on him. He stood in the cold. He left his shallots in the bag on the passenger seat. One of them began to search the hatch.

“So what’s this then, huh?” he asked, pulling a thick, orange, jar of goo from the door. It stuck to him as he held it. “Huh? I’m waiting!”

“I…um…”

“Sound it out!”

“Vape juice,” Jack replied, sheepish. He’d rather them have found drugs, almost.

Almost.

“Oh,” he said. He threw it towards the trash, and slapped his hands together. “Gross.”

“Why don’t you have your license?” The other one asked.

“I just got the car. I have an appointment at the DMV this week.”

“Where was it before that?”

“Century City.”

“Why?”

“It’s my mother’s.”

“Why are you driving before you have your license, then?” he put his hand back on his gun.

“I was in treatment for a while. Now I’m trying to get to a meeting.”

“What kind of meeting?”

“You know, a meeting.”

“No, I don’t actually. Enlighten me.”

“Like a recovery thing?”

“Oh right. I have a cousin. Pain in the ass. Whatever.”

He shook his head.

“Where do you live?”

“Half a block away.”

He waited a little while, at a quiet, otherwise calm intersection in Burbank, near the airport. The officer stood with his arms crossed – he’d holstered his weapon – in the middle of an intersection, once idyllic, now pulled apart, at its fringes, by people like this. Rats. Nest building rats, with no scruples. The officer saw, for just a moment, a perspective above, and the town was like a blanket, with one torn thread. And he kept pulling the thread, and the hole was getting bigger, and worse, and whole, somehow, enveloping its entirety. Antithetical to his understanding. He felt baffled – disgusted by their belief. Most of the time, anyway. Jack reminded him of his daughter. What he was doing wasn’t working. Maybe she is trying? He shook his head. Maybe he’s worth believing.

Maybe I’ll try something new.

“Well drive home, then. And then don’t again ‘til your licensed, k? I don’t want to see your pussy, Demcorat headlights again.”

“Okay, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“I mean it. I don’t wanna see you out here.”

“Of course. I understand. Thank you, sir. Again. Thank you.”

He let him go. Jack drove to a Wal-Mart parking lot, close - but not too close - to home. When his mother was in the coma she stopped paying for her building’s maintenance dues, which included her parking. Jack didn’t, either, because they told him she’d never drive again. And he couldn’t imagine that, for any length of time, he’d be there. He could be shortsighted in his thought.