“Your car needs breaks,” I tell him.
It did. His breaks made the worst mixture of nails on chalkboard and metallic whine.
“My car don’t need jack,” He responds, and I laughed,
“The whiskey or the cheese?”
“Shut up, man!” He scolded disinterestedly, tired of saying the phrase. He was tired in general. His body wasn’t tired, but his soul was.
“I’m just saying,” I say, holding my hands up in defense. I feel badly for picking a fight with him.
“Yes, but do you know what you’re saying? Why you’re saying it?” He asks, annoyed.
I was still. I didn’t know how to answer that. Yet.
“I’m just saying your lady might have better teeth if she didn’t have to grind ‘em every time she heard those brakes, man.”
That answer wasn’t good, but it was an answer.
“Ah, she don’t care,” He sighs, resigned, “She knows I’m broke, or broken. One of the two. And now I got broken brakes which I break my back to be less broke so they can be less broken, you dig?”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum in approval, “And yet some things need to stay broken to remind us that were both.”
“Both what?”
“Broke and broken.”
“Why is that?”
“Well,” I explain, “If we don’t have broken things to fix, we have no reason to break our backs at a broken-down factory just make them less broken.”
“True. But what exactly does this have to do with my wife?”
“Your wife ain’t broken,” I explain to him, “But like you, she’s holding on to something broken she don’t have to, in order for her break her back to make it, you, less broken. You are your wife’s car.”
“I’m pretty sure my wife’s car is my wife’s car,” He responds bluntly.
“That may be true,” I grant him, “but you are broken like your wife’s car, and you’re holding onto it because you don’t want to be the one person who couldn’t handle a fixer-upper. You are your wife’s car.”
“I’m still pretty sure I’m not my wife’s car,” He asserts, “I don’t turn myself on and drive myself to work everyday, and then sit in the parking lot waiting for my driver to return to drive me back.”
“Oh, but you are!” I implore him, “Your drive has to come from somewhere, right? And in reality, I mean, you actually do wait in the parking lot for your driver to return. But not your driver, just your drive. You are not driven to work by your own drive, you are driven to work by necessity. You need to find what drives you.”
“You’re saying, if I am my wife’s car, that I need to find my me. My driver.”
“Yep,” I agree, “What does drive you?”
“My car, man,” He responds stupidly. What a smartass.
“Why do you care, anyway?” He asks, “All you do is sit on the couch all day and watch TV.”
“The TV ain’t broken,” I notice. He pulls out his gun, black as night and spews fire, one lead nugget. The TV’s now broken.
“There,” He exclaims with satisfaction, “Now what’re you gonna do?”
“Well,” I stand up angrily to face him, “unlike you, I’m gonna go buy a new TV because I’m not afraid to throw out what’s broken in my life. I’m not stubborn!”
“Then why have we been talking about my stupid brakes for the past five minutes!”
“Because you need new brakes,” I answer stubbornly. Then he raises his gun again, points it at me. We both don’t move.
He takes a breath, and points it at his own head.
“What if a body’s broken, and not just your back?” He asks, a crazy edge to his voice.
“Bodies are weird,” I notice, “You can’t buy another one of those. Bodies, we’re only given one of them, to my understanding. Bodies can be destroyed easily, but never broken entirely. People always try to fix themselves.”
“What if I don’t want to be fixed?” He asks, cocking the gun.
“That’s your choice,” I grant him, “What if your car’s brakes don’t want to be fixed?”
“Yeah,” He turns the gun on me again, “what if they don’t want to be fixed? What if they like being rusty?”
“Then it’s my fault for wanting them to be fixed,” I say. He nods his head in agreement and shoots me in the chest.
I fall back, destroyed but not broken. I was never broken. I was always broken. He was always broken. But no one thing broke him.
We were both broke. We didn’t want to be fixed.
But maybe by destroying me, he fixed himself.
As I die, I don’t care about my one body. I just wonder if he’s now gonna fix his breaks.