Foster Trecost ~ Two Flash Fictions

The Pretenders

The book land­ed some­where between bad and unbear­able. I sus­pect­ed it from the start, but kept read­ing any­way. Maybe to beat back bore­dom. Maybe to look lit­er­ary. Probably a lit­tle of both. But after two chap­ters, nobody had done any­thing, at least noth­ing worth men­tion­ing, so I closed it on a fin­ger and stared out the win­dow. Fields flat­tened by win­ter, white with snow. Not much more than that.

The man next to me sat with fold­ed arms. He wore a gray coat zipped over a maroon scarf. The eye I could see was closed, but I could tell he wasn’t sleep­ing. Every few min­utes he adjust­ed him­self with a pre­ci­sion reserved for the con­scious. Perhaps he wasn’t inter­est­ed in con­ver­sa­tion and thought sleep was a lie I would­n’t chal­lenge. Fair enough—who wakes a stranger just to ask a ques­tion? But since he was­n’t sleep­ing, I fig­ured I could get away with it.

“You cold?”

The eye opened. I’m guess­ing the oth­er one, too. He aimed it at my book. “Waste of time,” he said. “Tried to read it. Didn’t get far.” Okay, we had the same taste in books. Or at least the same dis­taste. “No,” he added. “I’m not cold. I’m com­fort­able.” His eye, the one I could see, closed again.

The vents above blew air, but not warm air. Words came to mind. Comfortable wasn’t one of them. Maybe he only meant com­fort­able enough. I liked the way that sound­ed. It fit. I was com­fort­able enough, too, and went back to my book. It wasn’t any bet­ter. Again, I stopped read­ing, but this time left it open. I stared at a para­graph, a word, a sin­gle let­ter. To any­one walk­ing down the aisle, it looked like I was read­ing. But I was­n’t. I was only read­ing enough.

The train rocked gen­tly, mark­ing its progress with an occa­sion­al whis­tle. I looked at the man pre­tend­ing to sleep, then at the page I was pre­tend­ing to read. I’m not sure how I missed it. I closed the book but did­n’t mark my place. There was no need. I stayed where I was until com­fort­able enough stopped being enough. It did­n’t take long.

Somewhere there was a bar car. I got up to go look for it.

~

Not Fast Enough / Too Fast

There was the time my father’s car wouldn’t go fast enough. 

“My dad almost killed you.” I tried to lessen the grav­i­ty with a hint of play­ful nos­tal­gia, but failed to cap­ture her atten­tion. She respond­ed with a mild­ly per­plexed expres­sion, like she was curi­ous about what might come next, but not des­per­ate to find out. “His car,” I con­tin­ued, and went on to explain it hadn’t been built to get some­where fast—just even­tu­al­ly. “The doc­tor said anoth­er five min­utes and we’d have lost you.”

“Sounds about right,” she said. “He nev­er liked me.” It’s true, he nev­er did, though nei­ther of us knew why. What she said next proved more dif­fi­cult to believe: “Besides, it’s worth a lot of money.”

The car was rid­den with, the seats ripped and sag­ging. It looked ready to be retired. But if she thought oth­er­wise, it wasn’t with­out good rea­son. I respond­ed with a per­plexed expres­sion of my own, one that car­ried an impa­tience miss­ing from hers.

“One day,” she said, “I need­ed the car, so I drove you to work.” After she got back home, some­one knocked on the door, an old­er man wear­ing a check­ered suit. He stead­ied his gait with a cane. “That cane was about as fan­cy as any I’d ever seen. He wasn’t from here, that’s for sure. He was from the city. I don’t know which one, but a big one.” He asked her if she owned the car out front, then asked if she’d con­sid­er sell­ing it. “Can you believe that? He just knocked on the door to see if he could buy our car. Said it’s worth a lot of mon­ey.” She won­dered how much, but fig­ured a lot of mon­ey to some­one like him was even more to peo­ple like us.

I asked why she kept this from me. “Because,” she said, “mon­ey like that changes things.” And she liked things the way they were. She rea­soned that if he was will­ing to buy the car, if it real­ly was worth some­thing, we could find some­one else if we ever got in a jam.

Made sense to me. I nod­ded in agreement.

I like that mem­o­ry. Years lat­er, my father’s car went too fast. I don’t like that one at all.

Wintry weath­er blend­ed sky and land­scape, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to set them apart. A motor­cade wound through town, front­ed by a dark car. I fol­lowed in my father’s car, and a line of cars fol­lowed me. We had our head­lights on, but not because we need­ed them. The dark car set the pace at a notch bare­ly above not mov­ing, like he was ahead of sched­ule with time to kill. But as slow as we went, a delib­er­ate crawl toward a place I didn’t want to go, it was still too fast.

And while the morn­ing had been cold, the after­noon felt even colder.

~

Foster Trecost writes sto­ries that are most­ly made up. They tend to fol­low his atten­tion span: some­times short, some­times very short. Recent work appears in Bright Flash Literary Review, Across the Margin, and Halfway Down the Stairs. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.