Eric Vernan

They boarded up the windows again. Riots were becoming a weekly occurrence. The mayor spoke about the benefits of preparing for the worst while also saying it was likely nothing would happen at all. The stores looked strange and deserted.

Downtown they were lining up garbage trucks and deploying extra police. The reality was that if there was going to be unrest it could not be prevented or deterred. The city had plundered itself over the years, for both positive and negative reasons. It did not matter, sometimes the emotions had to be uncorked.

"You try too hard," she said.

"Is that a thing?" Eric asked.

"You're 120% and everyone else is seventy or maybe eighty percent on a good day."

He sat there, eyes on the veins surfacing on his hands, mind on the way things had gone. The rejection he felt.

"Yeah. You can't recover from failure for one. But also that kind of effort scares people."

"I scare people?"

"I'd say so, yes." She downed a shot of tequila and grimaced.

"So try less?"

The car sputtered on the road, calling out to be sold for scrap. Eric loved his car: a 1992 Toyota Corolla, dark tan inside and out. It was the first and only car he had every purchased in late 1991. There had been two marriages come and gone, and three children grown during that time. Technically the car probably could not be considered the same one during all that time. Everything had been replaced once or twice, and many things many more times.

He called her Patricia (never Pat or Patty). She had been to both the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic a number of times. Once she made the drive in three days, when Eric was young and pushed himself to the limit. Lately she would only go to the grocery and doctor's appointments.