So picture this. Crossing the bridge in this nearly-new Buick I got from Bobby’s chop shop special order? Windows down, Halloween wind, I’ve got a finger on the button that puts up the windows. You saw the car. Wife used to drive it? Power everything? Fenders like cheerleader thighs? Nobody’s letting me in. I spot an opening up ahead. I floor it. Now I’m in the Sticker Sales lane. Here’s the thing: I’ve got no keys. A screwdriver he gave me, to start it with. I grab a rag and hang it from the wiper handle to hide the ignition. He’s just what you’d expect: stinky black Metallica tee shirt, Mister T starter set jangling around his neck, never calls me anything but Boss. Pulling down two three hundred grand a year tax free, most of it going to I don’t know what, speedballs and paying off the cops. We took two photos for the DMV, one with the fenders and doors removed to document how we “salvaged” it, another with a reset camera date and the parts put back on. But for now I had a Pennsy plate on the back, Jersey on the front until the paperwork would clear. Then last November a sting operation shut that bad boy down for good. They’d been videotaping him. Made the local news. I see the back of my own head on TV one night, taking the door off a Buick. Beautiful car. Wife wouldn’t drive it ‘til I made her something out of a key blank to start it with. But this day when I roll up the windows I see backwards yellow writing on the glass: DNUOPMI. Bobby’s little joke. I floor it back across four lanes to the exact change basket to avoid the toll collector. Funny story.
Copyright © December 15, 2006 David Hodges
Very Short Novels 
3 comments
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December 16, 2006 at 5:38 am
litlove
Do you know the Derridean concept of supplementarity? It’s the way that each little extra turns out to be essential to what went before. I really feel the dynamic of supplementarity at work in this piece, each new sentence adding another dimension of surprise. Dark and intriguing.
I’ve gotten most of my Derrida secondhand, litlove, but I’ve always admired his sympathetic heckler approach and I like what you say about new sentences altering the meanings of the earlier. I think the technique practiced by the narrator of The View from Mars comes closest to what the Derrida I’ve read would describe as supplementarity, enriching a present moment by adding additional points of view to the experience at hand, something I’m always trying to do in my little pieces. As always, thank you for making my stories better than they are.
–David
December 18, 2006 at 11:40 pm
lillianblack
Interesting. Neat, concise little package with a slightly gritty feel to it.
Thanks, Lillian. Gritty works here; greasy too.
–David
January 18, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Paul Burke
“Pennsy plate on the back, Jersey on the front” – Nirvana in some parts of the world …along the Delaware River – thanks for the smile….Paul
Thanks, Paul. Good to know you appreciated the local color. Happy to have you as a reader!
–David