Gimmick

    Garrett Barron Jr.—headed northbound on Oak Way. The street was thin enough to almost be a back road if not for the spattering of houses on either side. The man was just about the same sort of deal—thin enough to be almost nothing, and only quite something on a technicality. His loose handful of friends called him “Gimmick,” and he supposed that was just about right.

    His first trick, which had earned him the nickname and a target on his back, had been to pick a fight with the dickbag who stole his girl. He remembered the eyes of the other men in the diner, all itching to throw themselves at some action. He had given them what they’d been looking for, and after he laid the guy out, he drove the blushing girl away in his busted-to-shit Mercedes. They rode a few romantic miles before Garrett asked her where she lived, dropped her home, and drove off without so much as a kiss.

    The word passed around that Garrett had never met “his girl” before that night, and didn’t even sleep with her after, and Gimmick was born. Being born was a tricky sort of thing that Gimmick didn’t quite like having to go through twice; just like the first time, being born meant being stuck into something he hadn’t asked for and had little to do with. It beat being bored, he supposed, so he stayed stuck.

    Gimmick kept on coming around to that diner, and the other guy didn’t. Those who had been there the first time recognized him and asked him, by droves, about Janie. It took him a few tries to guess at who Janie might have been, but of course, it was the girl. He shrugged. “Haven’t seen her,” he’d say, and the men cracked up at that invariably. They started to hang around him whenever he was there, and when they invited him down to the bar, he decided to keep up the gig and say sure.

    The bar was something of another gimmick in itself; Garrett had tried a drink ages before, on his twenty-first birthday, and that had been more than enough for him. The stuff was foul, and when rowdy men put small glasses of something-or-another in his hands, he threw them back like water and tipped the glass at them like he couldn’t get enough.

    It became something of a habit, and he kept on drinking whatever they gave him. After a while, he bought his own drinks, and the crowd he’d built around himself cheered him through his pockets. He emptied them, night after night, and he barely noticed when the drinks started to thicken and the crowd started to thin. Once the crowd had thinned to nothing, and it was just Gimmick by himself at a bar, he certainly noticed, but was not so certain that he cared. He could hear himself think again, and he was thinking that another drink would be fine.

    The target was still on his back, if you’ll remember, and without a hoard to cover it. He stepped out of the bar one night, which was a trick in itself, to find his busted-to-shit Mercedes even more busted. The driver’s side door was dented in, and the headlight on that side was smashed. All the damage was so jammed into one spot that Gimmick might have thought it had been an accident if not for the names keyed into the hood: Buster + Janie. “Buster”, he imagined, was the man he had busted at the diner.

    Gimmick stood next to his old car for a moment, running his fingers along the letters on the hood. He sighed, smacking his fist down on top of it, before trying the door. He thought the damage might have made it tricky to open, and sure enough, it didn’t give. He tugged harder, then harder, pushing against the frame of the damned car with his other hand. He gave it one more tug, smacked the car on its top, and then remembered the key in his jacket pocket. Something like shame ate at him as he fished it out, and he wondered just what the fuck he was doing trying to break into his own car in the parking lot of a bar where he had just gotten himself good and drunk, with no one even there to cheer him on.

    He sat behind the wheel for a few minutes, swimming in his brain, and started the car. The engine coughed a little, but it was no worse than it had been for the past two years, so that was okay. He turned on the headlights, and the one on the passenger side came on just fine. The driver’s side—nothing. That was okay, too. Just another thing to fix. He’d add it to the list, sure. He pulled out of the parking lot, drove a ways down the street, and stopped at a red light where the street intersected Oak Way. His house was a right turn, south, and to the left, there was a church that held AA meetings just about all night every night. Gimmick got into the right turn lane, checked his mirrors, and cut across to the left instead.

    Gimmick headed north on Oak Way, blinking quite a bit, aching like a sinner. He was driving to Alcoholics Anonymous—that was his latest trick. He would pull recovery out of his ass, the same way he’d pulled alcoholism out of it. He was driving on a rusty piece of metal with a single headlight, swerving just as much as you please, and he was feeling right as rain.

    Ollie Dennis—headed southbound on Oak Way. He had passed about half a dozen motorcycles on his way down, and by the look of it, he was about to pass another. Its single headlight coasted smoothly down the center of the other lane, edging just toward the center line. He hoped it was a Harley. He would check when it passed him, he decided.