Sketches
Decompress Elsewhere
by Yosef Aban
It was cheat day. And since Neil was down 23.4 pounds since his wife bailed, he deserved the cookie dough she forgot in the freezer. Even though it’s a frozen rock, Neil gnawed the ball for shavings, reptile brain in control.
Then me and his son Callan pulled up in Neil’s Prius. The car’s nose and side panel look hammered. Callan grumbles into the house, heated, like, “Dad, it wasn’t my fault. I had the right of way.”
I don’t know what’s true in Indiana. Where the Prius was in the far left lane, which was shrinking, forcing Callan to merge right. His right turn signal worked fine. But the semi in the next lane wasn’t slowing down. The semi cab crunched both doors on one side. Then Callan hit the brakes, tried to correct course forward, but ended up 540. We met eyes in the spin and had a moment like, “Is this It?” It wasn’t. Though we were almost settled in the far right lane when a blue Chevy sedan slammed into our front bumper. The trooper told us the Prius left skid marks.
Anyway, Neil, who hadn't seen the wrecked car yet, didn’t like Callan’s energy. So he tried to soothe his son. “It’s totally fine, man. Calm down. It’s cool. I mean it.”
Which I could tell surprised Callan, Neil’s acceptance of the wrecked car. He told me Neil must’ve mixed his meds again.
Then Neil got upset and ordered Callan and I to decompress elsewhere because the Lakers were on.
Callan said Neil probably took too much gabapentin.
Days later, Neil felt regulated again. Then he saw Callan’s scrunched bumper. And a dangling headlight. At least several thousand dollars worth of damage.
So Neil barged into Callan’s room and shook his hammock bed. “What could you have been thinking? This is completely un-OK!” Neil actually yelled, Callan said.
And Callan was like, “Two days ago you said the car was fine.”
Then Neil basically said, ‘Two days ago your cookie dough almost put me in a coma.’
“Don’t think you don’t owe me for that,” Callan said.
Then Neil told Callan to could deduct the cookie dough from what Callan owed him for the car.
They haven’t spoken in four years.
Yosef Aban has written sparingly for years. He lives in New York City.