Nice or Leave” sign after a few too many. Maybe he was crazy, or maybe he’d just become too much of a drunk to remember he wasn’t crazy.
There was even an image from the Zephyrs’ 2007 home opener, when Riley and other esteemed writers from the city were honored after the sixth inning for their “words of comfort and kindness during a time of peril in our city.” Her post-Katrina work had been so good, she’d graduated to some other class of citizen in town, yet she still chose to live the simple life of driving a crappy car and living in a house that cost her nothing. Jeff knew she’d earned her new status just as well as he knew he hadn’t.
She wore a black dress that night that gave men of Jeff’s ilk misconceptions about where a night like that might end up — but it was nowhere on that particular night. No matter how many times he’d undressed her in his mind that night, he didn’t undress her in their bedroom because he’d passed out on the living room sofa.
As he thumbed repeatedly on the button to make the pictures pass by as quickly as possible, he couldn’t help but think she looked less and less happy in each one. Just as that thought began to really bother him, he zipped right past one that made his heart skip a beat.
Now sitting on the hood of his mud-mobile, ice scraper lying next to him, Jeff let out an audible whimper as the frame blinked quickly past him. It went past in strobe-light effect, one still flash in a series of stuttering, hallucinogenic frames which made Jeff drop the phone onto the hood of the car and look away at once. It was a glimpse of Jeff’s life caught on camera, something he could keep forever if he wished, but something he already wished he’d never seen, let alone photographed. He looked nervously around the Elegante parking lot, as if it to brace himself before looking back down at the phone. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to focus on it and absorb all of its details.
But he did, mainly because he already knew there was no way in hell of avoiding it. He inhaled deeply, grabbed the phone off the car and put the instantly recognizable image directly in his face. Eyes locked on the tiny phone screen, Jeff couldn’t help but think of Riley, and of Riley seeing the same thing he was seeing, and how he’d screwed this whole thing up in so many ways.
Just a day or so ago, as all this started to happen to him, whatever it was that had started to happen, it was only him that it was happening to, and that was bad enough. But not now. No, not anymore. Because after he’d seen what he saw, he really had dealt with it the way Riley thought he did.
He’d gotten plowed because he didn’t know any other medicine for coping with it. Out of some instinct, some reflex he was trying to overcome, he’d dialed her number. He’d included her in it and now he not only could hear her voice in his head for the first time in days, he could sense those wheels of hers turning from a thousand miles away.
Jeff sat perfectly still, eyes fixed on the phone. Thoughts crashed back and forth in his mind including, for the first time, the notion that he really had been there, somewhere. He had a picture to prove it and perhaps to haunt him for the rest of his life. For several minutes he kept his eyes locked on the image, allowing their lenses to burn the pixilated photograph onto his brain.
The little girl in the fuzzy, dark image did not appear to notice Jeff when he apparently had the wherewithal to pull out his phone and capture an image of the carnage that must have unfolded right in front of him early that morning. Had anyone noticed him out there in the desert, and if not, why or how hadn’t they? Had he been just sitting in the car at that point, or had he actually somehow been catapulted out of it and onto his own two feet in some other place? Had he been hiding?
The very bottom of the image was masked by some sort of dark brown desert scrub, suggesting maybe he
There was even an image from the Zephyrs’ 2007 home opener, when Riley and other esteemed writers from the city were honored after the sixth inning for their “words of comfort and kindness during a time of peril in our city.” Her post-Katrina work had been so good, she’d graduated to some other class of citizen in town, yet she still chose to live the simple life of driving a crappy car and living in a house that cost her nothing. Jeff knew she’d earned her new status just as well as he knew he hadn’t.
She wore a black dress that night that gave men of Jeff’s ilk misconceptions about where a night like that might end up — but it was nowhere on that particular night. No matter how many times he’d undressed her in his mind that night, he didn’t undress her in their bedroom because he’d passed out on the living room sofa.
As he thumbed repeatedly on the button to make the pictures pass by as quickly as possible, he couldn’t help but think she looked less and less happy in each one. Just as that thought began to really bother him, he zipped right past one that made his heart skip a beat.
Now sitting on the hood of his mud-mobile, ice scraper lying next to him, Jeff let out an audible whimper as the frame blinked quickly past him. It went past in strobe-light effect, one still flash in a series of stuttering, hallucinogenic frames which made Jeff drop the phone onto the hood of the car and look away at once. It was a glimpse of Jeff’s life caught on camera, something he could keep forever if he wished, but something he already wished he’d never seen, let alone photographed. He looked nervously around the Elegante parking lot, as if it to brace himself before looking back down at the phone. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to focus on it and absorb all of its details.
But he did, mainly because he already knew there was no way in hell of avoiding it. He inhaled deeply, grabbed the phone off the car and put the instantly recognizable image directly in his face. Eyes locked on the tiny phone screen, Jeff couldn’t help but think of Riley, and of Riley seeing the same thing he was seeing, and how he’d screwed this whole thing up in so many ways.
Just a day or so ago, as all this started to happen to him, whatever it was that had started to happen, it was only him that it was happening to, and that was bad enough. But not now. No, not anymore. Because after he’d seen what he saw, he really had dealt with it the way Riley thought he did.
He’d gotten plowed because he didn’t know any other medicine for coping with it. Out of some instinct, some reflex he was trying to overcome, he’d dialed her number. He’d included her in it and now he not only could hear her voice in his head for the first time in days, he could sense those wheels of hers turning from a thousand miles away.
Jeff sat perfectly still, eyes fixed on the phone. Thoughts crashed back and forth in his mind including, for the first time, the notion that he really had been there, somewhere. He had a picture to prove it and perhaps to haunt him for the rest of his life. For several minutes he kept his eyes locked on the image, allowing their lenses to burn the pixilated photograph onto his brain.
The little girl in the fuzzy, dark image did not appear to notice Jeff when he apparently had the wherewithal to pull out his phone and capture an image of the carnage that must have unfolded right in front of him early that morning. Had anyone noticed him out there in the desert, and if not, why or how hadn’t they? Had he been just sitting in the car at that point, or had he actually somehow been catapulted out of it and onto his own two feet in some other place? Had he been hiding?
The very bottom of the image was masked by some sort of dark brown desert scrub, suggesting maybe he
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