Minor Violations

by Michael Schroeder

The coffee mug was a gift from Kristi Dolores, the Administrative Clerk assigned to his department, Bureau of Traffic Violations, or BTV, and with whom John Delacroix believed he was deeply in love. She had offered it to him several weeks earlier upon her return from a thirty-six hour weekend Vegas jaunt, an extraordinary last hurrah of sister singledom which produced three new tattoos, one arrest for disorderly conduct, and one false positive. Despite evidence to the contrary embedded in her sketchy details, Delacroix wanted to believe that none of the unsavory incidents involved Kristi. He did, however, pine to know where her new Cape Buffalo tattoo was located, but his efforts to inspect her bare skin - and there was plenty of it - were unfruitful and so far had come to naught.

Delacroix finished arranging the flotsam of office life on his worn metal desk. Stapler, check. Rubber stamp, check. Nameplate, check. Gathering the pen and pencil at the base of his keyboard, he placed them business end down in the mug at the upper right-hand corner of the desk next to the sticky notes. He turned it, on which “La$ Vega$” arched in glittering, multi-colored letters, so that the handle pointed ninety degrees to the right for a better view.

In the far left-hand corner of the desk a neat pile of traffic tickets lay stacked in a metal In/Out bin. He pressed his knuckles onto the pile and flipped through the pages with his thumb. The dates were in order, most recent on top. Surveilling his work for several seconds and being very satisfied, he allowed himself to drink the last drops of his Diet Coke in one swift and efficient throw of his head and launched a perfect bank shot into the wastebasket next to the hallway door. “Three, he shoots!...Two, bank!...One, it’s IN!” Sounding a nasal buzzer, “BAAA...” he thrust his arms skyward in triumph. In a loud whisper he hushed, “Waaah! The crowd goes wild!”

The red voicemail light on his phone blinked at a steady and silent pace.

He settled back down into his chair and reached out for the multipurpose coffee mug slash pen holder and traced the sparkly dollar sign “S” in “La$” with his index finger.

On the Thursday after her return from Vegas, Kristi retrieved the photos of the trip from the clutches of a dumbstruck teenager with acne and a boner at the Quikpix one hour photo lab in the Land O'Plenty strip mall across the highway from the government building. Delacroix had offered to buy her lunch next door at India's New Deli in celebration of her safe return.

He ordered for both of them, a Punjab tuna salad sandwich and Diet Coke for himself, and a half-size Indian meatball sub on white with everything (double the onions) and an iced tea for her. His gaze locked onto her as she crossed the parking lot, entered the restaurant, and plopped down in the booth across from him. By the way her breasts bounced he was sure she wasn't wearing a bra.

Delacroix took a sip of his drink and tried to focus on the straw. He said, “In whose honor was this voyage of debauchery anyway?”

“Oh, there was none of that,” she said.

“From what I've heard about Vegas -”

“I don't even know what that means.”

“Immorality, depravity, you know, anything you want to do you can do. No restrictions.”

“No, no, no, don't let your flag drop there Boy Scout, there was plenty of debauchery. I was referring to honor.”

Delacroix cocked his head like a perplexed puppy.

She laughed, lowered her head, glanced to the left and right, checking for undercover secret agents, and looked him straight in the eyes. “So, you wanna see the pictures?”

“I'm not sure. Will I be called as a witness?” Delacroix was eager to see if reality measured up to his imagination or vice versa.

She pooh-poohed him with her hand, “NoooWUH, we weren't that bad. But you can only see them if you promise not to tell anyone what's in them.” She turned her head sideways with a goofy half-smile waiting for a reaction. “I mean no one buster.” She pointed her finger at him.

Blank stare forthcoming, she pulled the packet of photos out of her purse and handed it across the table. “The kid next door was sporting a pup tent when he gave these to me. He's kinda cute, too.” She grinned.

Delacroix picked up the bounty with a careful and deliberate gesture and shifted in his chair from a combination of anticipation and trepidation. He empathized with the innocent young camper at the Quikpix. As if holding ancient and fragile archeological artifacts he extracted the photos from their protective sleeve. His quivering hands slowly slid one picture under another. While gazing upon each successive image his agitation grew more pronounced. Kristi continued to keep watch around the room and scarfed down her sandwich.

There were the normal, touristy pictures one would expect from a trip to Sin City: the girls mugging in front of New York, New York; fake diving into the fountains in front of the Bellagio; a group of guys wearing BYU sweatshirts with small tongues doing a bad KISS imitation; a ninety-year-old toothless taxi driver with a jack-o-lantern grin; her friend Martha getting on the roller coaster at the top of the Stratosphere, followed by a shot of her staggering off the roller coaster with hair full of puke chunks; Kristi hugging a slot machine, and so on.

But as he advanced through the pile they became noticeably more risqué. Before his eyes passed an amalgam of Rubenesque young women wearing too much makeup in various stages of undress and bi-sexual experimentation, girl-to-girl kisses and fondling in hotel rooms and on balconies, exposing breasts and buttocks, gaudy tattoos (is that a Cape Buffalo?), and piercings on body parts that Delacroix had never seen exposed in so many public spaces.

What is it about traveling, he thought, that makes people do things they wouldn't ordinarily do? Do they do this in their own homes?

He held up a somewhat blurry close-up shot of a long white object with a rounded end. Dildo? The top was the color of bright red lipstick and two eyes and a smiley mouth were drawn below.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s Wilson. You know, like in the Tom Hanks movie.”

Once again Delacroix's imagination had fallen short.

Confidante and sympathetic ear, he had always listened to the woes and joys of this young, capricious, and reckless woman, this Lolita, more than fifteen years younger than he of a post-music-video MTV-degenerate game show generation. Unlike the memories of his own youth during the Reagan years when MTV actually played music videos and girls wore oversize college sweatshirts, ankle warmers, and just said “No,” the younger generation he knew vicariously through Kristi's stories - and now photos - wore tight spaghetti-string halter tops with bare midriffs and low-ride jeans in hip seventies retro style that made plumber's crack and tramp stamps fashionable. Only nowadays her generation was highly accessorized digitally with cell phones and personal electronic gadgets for high bandwidth encounters from saying “Yes.”

He never offered any hint of critical disparagement or encouragement in response to her lifestyle revelations. This was, he suspected, a window into a world to which not many guys his age and in his professional position were privy. He had never dared seek her companionship outside of work, nor did he desire to disclose her peccadilloes to anyone else. Not only was that playing Russian roulette with office politics, but it would also mean sharing her stories - and her - with someone else. As far as he knew, outside of normal work interactions, she didn't talk much to anyone else in the office.

As for her, she appreciated the time he took to pay attention to her, this elder compadre, much like she thought her busy father should, albeit without the sex-starved lap dog act. Though she wasn't so naïve as to misunderstand why he paid so much attention to her, especially on her “fleshy” days, as she liked to call them - hot, muggy summer days when the office air conditioning couldn't keep up and her only respite was to wear as little clothing as possible within office rules - she never saw Delacroix as a legitimate suitor or, on the other hand, a significant threat. He was just too...philosophical, in an on-the-fence non-declarative manner. To her this was the weenie, unmasculine way with which sensitive and thoughtful men often repelled her particular subclass of the female species. She didn't know what he believed in, unlike her father. He believed in money. Delacroix fawned.

Bartholomew Delores, her father and local well-known corporate litigator, considered it fortunate circumstance to have a brother on the State Supreme Court, her cloistering in the BTV the only nepotistic bauble he had ever sought. “She'll end up in court one way or another,” he had explained in a fishing boat, two brother lawyers alone at dawn, two loons nearby witnessing their agreement. “She's been to four colleges already; kicked out of two of them for low grades, one for screwing her advisor, and I have my suspicions about the last one, too, no matter what she says.” The loons stared at them for several more moments before diving under the surface of the gray water. “Not to mention my career couldn't take another visit to Planned Parenthood. Most of my clients are Republicans for Chrissake!” The good Judge Delores, her uncle, saw what he could do and did, exercising an old favor, the quid from one pro to another that lubricated the gears of the legal system.

At first, Kristi was assigned the task of entering the day's paper ticket haul into the database, but she proved so adept at finishing her work and calming the upset constituency in such a disarming fashion, particularly the male portion, that Rita, Court Operations Supervisor, promoted her to the counter.

Delacroix did most of the listening, but Kristi also knew a little about him. He grew up on a farm somewhere in Iowa as the only child in a broken family. He never knew his biological father. His step-father Randy beat the crap out of him and his mother on a regular basis and when he was fifteen they escaped to the big city. He worked his way through community college, graduating in three years with a two-year degree in Criminal Justice.

Kristi figured there were some deep waters surrounding his relationship with his step-father but she didn't care to swim into them. His idea of fun was nailing recalcitrant speeders to the wall — often the type of guys she was attracted to; daring, allergic to authority, and rough around the edges — and pounding their tickets with his ubiquitous stamp that said “PAID” in big red letters.

And so, because she, despite of or due to her efficacy, had a job that bored her to death - about which she had no choice if she was to keep daddy happy and the purse strings open - and Delacroix took his so seriously, she often pushed the limits of what was appropriate office interaction in a politically correct age.

She noticed his increasing inability to sit still as he plowed through the photos. She stopped looking around the restaurant, leaned across the table, and whispered, “You're not offended by these are you, John?” He stuffed the photos back into their protective sleeve and stared at the television in the corner above the cashier where a news organization was ginning up support for war in the Middle East. 

“Helloooo?”

He shook his head. “No, no, no. Kristi, I, I...don't think you'd better show these to anyone else in the office.”

“I just told you that. Whattaya think I need? A reputation?” She cackled, then caught herself and covered her mouth, and again looked around for spies. Seeing none, relieved, she tugged the photo packet out of Delacroix's hand and stuffed it back into her large wicker purse. Her hand hesitated. She pulled out the souvenir mug she had been saving for her new bonsai plant and offered it to him as a gesture of conciliation, a pact not to bring some sort of bizarre sexual harassment suit against her. He took the mug and turned it over in his hands, examining it for traces of the Vegas experience he had just witnessed.

Later that day, while Kristi was on a smoke break behind the building, Delacroix stepped into her cubicle, rifled through her things, found his prize and spirited away. A few minutes later he returned and carefully placed the photo packet back into its secure and upright position in Kristi's purse.

That evening in his apartment alone, naked, photocopies and knees splayed before him praying to the Onkyo gods of sound, he masturbated fiercely during the first two stanzas of Sweet Child O'Mine by Guns N'Roses.

The tightness in his pants stirred Delacroix out of his trance. He glanced up at the clock. Eleven forty-two. Almost lunch time. As a hearing officer he had specific guidelines from county prosecutors to negotiate so citizens disputing minor traffic violations didn't clog up the courts. If accused offenders didn't like what he said, they could walk away and still hire a lawyer or represent themselves.

He debated seeing another one, another poor sap who wasn't doing anything wrong or breaking any laws or had a perfectly valid explanation for what happened. Delacroix had been yelled at, threatened, cried to, pleaded with, begged, bribed, sexually propositioned, and even - sometimes - politely reasoned with, all in the name of getting out of a traffic ticket. He'd heard it all. There was no excuse or human behavior that surprised him anymore. Telling the lies from the truths used to be easy, but he was too numbed by it all to make the effort anymore. Now he couldn't tell what the truth was. Sometimes he suspected he didn't want to know the truth.

In the beginning, more than a decade earlier, this parade of malcontents was sometimes amusing and he enjoyed some of the stories, the excuses, the process of interrogation. He at one point started to record some of the more flagrant pleas on a small handheld tape recorder - borderline illegal but maybe good material for a book someday, he thought - but stopped after it all became too pathetic. He became inured.

“I was putting lipstick on in my car and that pervert cop pulled me over to get his rocks off.” 

“It's spring. The plates must have fallen off when I went over a pothole.” 

“As a matter of fact I was just heading to the garage to have the rear window installed when the officer pulled me over.” 

“Couldn't see the stop sign. Gonna sue the city for not trimming the trees.” 

Fake pregnancies, instant life threatening illnesses, mentally induced vomiting or diarrhea (what a trick!), seduction, cash; people abased themselves to astonishing depths with more creativity than a Hollywood screenwriter.

He and the police officers traded stories and, when they could, compared notes on offenders.

A defendant might proclaim, “I didn't use the left turn lane because the paint was wore off.”

The officer didn’t care because, “He cut three people off from the right lane.”

Or if someone rationalized, “I've been turning right on that one way street for years and no one's ever said anything.”

An officer would conclude that, “It's about time she got caught.”

And finally, a common entreaty, “I had to get to a bathroom quick,” was occasionally the truth, because, “He shit his pants in my squad car.”

The fun stopped several years ago when a man who had over fifteen hundred dollars in parking fines threw Delacroix against the wall and threatened to stuff his neck with the paper tickets, “After,” he roared, “I rip your fucking head off!” The man's throat was puffed up like a bullfrog's with veins bulging out in rivers of purple lightning. Delacroix's eyes felt like they were about to pop out of his skull from the man's python-like grip.

Luckily for everyone involved, young Travis “Burly” Sandstrom, Junior Bailiff and all-around courtroom tough guy with a heart of gold, was nearby, and, hearing the commotion, promptly extracted the man from Delacroix's office with his elbows twisted up behind him somewhere near his ears. Delacroix never admitted to anyone the satisfaction he garnished from the sound of the man's shoulders popping out of joint. He managed to finish the sentence he had started just before he was throttled. “- it easy buddy. Pay your fi –” was all he could gasp before collapsing to the floor in a heap gagging for air.

The raging bullfrog got a three month suspended sentence for aggravated assault. Delacroix was grateful to Burly for saving his life, or at least saving him from great undue bodily harm, and soon afterwards he procured a small handgun, a Springfield 9mm, in case things really got out of hand. He went with Burly to the shooting range several times to practice. Burly's big, thick hands seem to cradle his own .45 like a toy and hardly flinched when he fired it. Delacroix's hands seemed to explode with every report.

Nevertheless, fear and loathing set in soon thereafter and Delacroix became borderline despondent. The demons of his abusive step-father had been dragged up from the depths of his subconscious that day. He thought he had buried them by going into a profession where he could rectify, in a way, what he couldn't for his mother: the character flaw, or to be more precise, the condition his step-father had which has no official medical term but the layman can diagnose in seconds when observed; assholery, that of being an asshole. Randy was a mean drunk, buddies with the local hick sheriff who gave him rides home instead of rides to jail. Fortunately, he never killed anyone with his car, or his fists for that matter, but Delacroix figured it was only a matter of time. Years after moving away he ran into a high school acquaintance and heard that Randy was still alive and still a raging drunk, living off the land farming government subsidies. Delacroix's mother had died three days after his twenty-second birthday, a life-long smoker gasping all the way to the grave with emphysema. There was no one else to whom he was close. He'd had a few girlfriends, tried a prostitute once, but the closest he got to other people in his life was listening to their excuses, pleas, and lies on the other side of his desk.

He took up smoking, something he vowed he’d never do - almost two packs a day at one point, sometimes two cigarettes between each violator. Although good commiseration was found among the few smokers left in the government building at the time, exiled to a nook out back by the employee's entrance, Delacroix often felt alone in his quest for justice, or revenge, or whatever it was, even if it was only traffic tickets.

“Joanie, didja get that lipstick ya wanted?” Rita said one day as the clan of smokers huddled in the corner, each with one arm holding the torso tight, the other arm propping up a cigarette, trying to escape a cold autumn wind.

“The Ready Rouge?” Joanie, from licensing, replied.

Rita nodded and Joanie took a deep drag, savored it for a few seconds, exhaled and said, “Yeah, but the woman only had one left. I wanted the dirty dozen special.”

Delacroix chimed in, “I think I gave her a continuance for dismissal the other day on a speeding ticket. The woman at the Pretty Palace in the mall, right?”

“That figures,” sighed Pat, an old warhorse if there ever was one. She had worked in one capacity or another for the county for thirty-three years. At one point she acted as Head Bailiff upstairs for several months while a replacement was sought for long-time bailiff Jimmy Holstatter, who dropped dead of congestive heart failure at the door to the judge's chambers as a renowned cardiologist testified at his own malpractice trial. The good doctor's attempts to revive Jimmy were unsuccessful, as were those of his lawyers at reviving the doctor's career. Pat used a full-nelson to remove the doctor from the courtroom when he lunged at the patient's widow immediately after the verdict was read.

“Yup,” Rita and Joanie said in unison.

“What figures?” said Delacroix.

“Fake tits,” said Pat.

When winter came he couldn't stand the frequent forays into the sub-zero temperatures. He started chewing tobacco instead. This was a nadir of sorts for him. Randy had never been without a pinch between the cheek and gum.

Delacroix quit tobacco for good when, after falling asleep on his couch one night, a cup full of saliva containing stringy, suspended bits of chewed tobacco perched on his chest tumbled, spewing its contents all over his face.

The colony of three remaining smokers eventually evaporated when Rita quit to take care of her husband dying of lung cancer, Pat semi-retired, filling in as a part-time security guard when needed, and Joanie got herself transferred to the county jail building where the smoking population was much more robust.

One hot, late spring day not long afterwards, Kristi appeared in the office. He'd heard the rumors about how she got the job, but as far as scandals went in county government it was a non-event. What she was wearing, however, caused him to re-think the definition of the word scandal. Studded belly button slightly exposed, she wore a sleeveless tight cotton tee-shirt with a plunging v-neck and faded hip-hugger capri jeans and flat leather Jesus sandals. Delacroix noticed the large bright blue Ulysses Swallowtail butterfly, kissing the top of her intergluteal cleft, tattooed on her lower back. He decided on the spot not to see a therapist and to keep the gun in his car instead of his desk, a felony in a government office building in any case.

He clenched his teeth into the tip of his tongue for about thirty seconds, not hard enough for any real pain, but the conscious decision to do it and counting the seconds on the wall clock provided sufficient distraction so that he was able to walk upright. He got up and went through the side door of his office and down the hall to the Office of the County Clerk reception desk, a large room filled with gray file cabinets, gray metal desks, gray computer equipment and, perched precariously on the beige cubicle dividers, a sprinkling of potted plants in varying shades of light green to dark brown. Along one side and opening to the lobby was a counter for traffic offenders to obtain a number to see a hearing officer and/or pay their fine. Kristi sat at the open half-cubicle closest to the counter.

Today she was wearing a loose pink tank top and her dishwater blond hair was a loose bundle of hot mess on top of her head, exposing the nape of her well-tanned neck. The color reminded him of toffee and he wondered what it would taste like if he licked it. She was engrossed in a People magazine; on the cover was a telephoto shot of the mangled wreck of Dodi Al Fayed's Mercedes in the dirty yellow light of the Alma Marceau tunnel. In the headlines conspiracy was even more rampant despite several years having passed since Princess Di’s abrupt end.

“What are we up to, Kristi?” He leaned forward on her desk.

Kristi felt herself tensing up. “Number seven, parking ticket,” she said without raising her head. I wonder if he's looking down my shirt, she thought. She didn't want to bust him though - it made it easier to act disinterested. She wanted to gauge his mood today.

After a few moments of gazing deep into her bosom, Delacroix glanced around for eavesdroppers and stood up. “Still want to go to Paris?” he said.

Kristi briefly looked up. “You're never gonna give that up, are you?” She relaxed a little. This was an old routine. “You know, I would lay the biggest bouquet of roses I could find at the entrance of that tunnel. I’ve heard it’s become sort of a shrine.”

He smiled and whispered, “Come away with me tomorrow! We'll take the three o'clock flight and be there by morning Paris time. I'll take you there first thing. I've been studying maps of the Metro lines.”

“You. Are. A dork.” She looked back down at her magazine, tense again. “Keep dreaming that dream county drudge — but come back to me when you get your settlement check. I might consider it then. You owe me big time for that anyway. I don't stay in fleabag hotels, either, you know.” She snapped the piece of gum that she was chewing with her tongue.

Slightly embarrassed that she brought up the rope bridge incident, he muttered, “Thanks, Kristi.” She was back to Princess Di’s assassins so he decided to slay another traffic violator before lunch. Parking, he thought, that's the ticket. He chuckled softly at his internal thought pun and wheeled around into the hall.

Kristi looked over at the now empty doorway. “What's so funny?” she asked anyone in earshot, which was no one. Moments later she watched him appear in the lobby. He had on his gray short-sleeved button down shirt, black Dockers, and all black leather Nike tennis shoes, like an NBA referee might wear. Sometimes, he wore a white short-sleeved button down shirt with khakis, but mostly he rotated through the predictable gray, dark blue, and yellow short-sleeved shirts with black pants combinations. She noticed he was nibbling on his tongue again and wondered if someday he wasn't going to bite the damn thing off. Maybe it was some sort of special diet trick. He was awfully thin, she thought, and he always eats fast food from the mall across the street. And he never talks about doing any sort of exercise like all those fat cops do. The one time she invited him to the employee gym during lunch, she remembered, he almost crushed his windpipe attempting a one hundred twenty pound bench press. He was lucky she was there to lift it off.

Kristi shook her head as she recalled the taxpayer-funded two-day field trip the entire Bureau undertook as a team building exercise the previous autumn. Delacroix thought he had almost been killed falling off the rope bridge on the trail leading to Camp Trust, only thirty minutes removed from the bus. It happened during the first test of teamwork as they each had to cross the flimsy but sturdy knotted series of ropes, one at a time, while two co-workers each held opposite ends of the rope to steady the sway. Delacroix had made sure to follow right behind her as they set off on their hike; she wore old-fashioned cutoffs with tantalizing frays at the horizontal creases of her butt cheeks, even though it was a cool overcast day. On his turn to cross and after holding the rope for her, she held the far end of the rope bridge for him. Kristi knew trepidation and fear when she saw it; his bug eyes and clenches-of-death fists told her all she needed to know. She smiled in slow motion, then feigned a sudden jerk of the rope. He squealed a little. Whether in anticipation of her movements or outright maladroitness, Delacroix leaned too far to his right and lost his balance. It was only then that Kristi acted on her deviate impulses and nudged the rope for real. No one seemed to notice her role in the affair, probably due to the gyrating oscillations enveloping his whole body for the infinite few seconds just before he fell five feet into the rivulet below.

He was transported to County General with hypothermia and a neck brace, which he had made the paramedics put on before he would get into the ambulance. At his urging in the ER complete body x-rays were done which revealed a sprained toe and what appeared to be a tumor the size of an orange in his lungs, according to the radiology intern. Over the next several days they poked and prodded him some more but further tests found nothing. The blotch turned out to be an expired x-ray sheet that had somehow been left too close to the microwave in the radiology break room. Delacroix looked for God in the hours and days following the revelation but when he learned that the x-ray was bogus he started looking for a lawyer instead.

During the few days while they were testing for cancer he milked the situation for all it was worth with Kristi, insisting that she may have saved his life by causing his fall, leading to the x-ray. After he returned to normal health, so to speak, he felt awkward about the whole situation and clammed up. Kristi felt a sensation that she later recognized as guilt, so she sweet-talked her father into taking his case.

Although Delacroix rarely spoke to her or anyone else about the lawsuit and settlement negotiations over the blatant cancer misdiagnosis, not just Kristi but the entire office knew all the details: a hush money arrangement from the hospital was imminent, said to be somewhere between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars at last rumor.

Kristi could see Burly Sandstrom at the traffic courtroom door assisting an elderly woman inside. He nodded with a big grin in her direction and rolled his eyes. Kristi gave him a smile and a wave and glanced at Delacroix who was surveying the waiting room. She lowered her head and went back to the article in the Success section profiling the ex-drug addict circus dwarf who married an ex-supermodel whose career caused, blossomed from, and then was ravaged by bulimia. They were now both highly paid motivational speakers.

Delacroix called out, “Number seven!” To his right a woman digging through her purse gave a startled jump. A man next to her in a rumpled business suit looked up from a book he was reading titled Find a Career Job in 60 Days. Really! He sprung from his chair and stuffed the book under his armpit. “That's me.” He extended his free hand but Delacroix had already pivoted away with pseudo-military precision and was walking down the corridor. “Follow me please!” Number Seven looked around for witnesses to the affront and, seeing none, hurried after him.

By the time Number Seven poked his head into his office, Delacroix was already sitting down. “Please come in and have a seat,” he said, sweeping a stiff arm, game show host style, toward the two tan burlap upholstered metal chairs on the other side of his desk.

“Thank you, uh...thank you.” Number Seven eased into the closest chair.

“Do you have your ticket with you, sir?”

“Yes, yes, right here.” He extracted the ticket from his front coat pocket and handed it to Delacroix. “I had just gone to get change when -“

“Is that your correct address here, sir?” Delacroix held up the ticket between them, blocking the view of his face.

“Yes, yes it is.”

Delacroix set down the ticket and started typing on the keyboard. Frustrated, Number Seven looked around the office. It was confining, no larger than eight or ten feet square, he guessed, and barren. Behind Delacroix, starting at about five feet from the floor and extending to the ceiling was a half window running the width of the room. It would have let in more light but there was a wall of dirt several feet beyond the window covered by an expansive tangle of small roots. It seemed the entire building had been set down into a freshly excavated hole, the top of which was much higher than the building itself - or at least this floor. There were two fluorescent lights overhead but one was off or needed to be changed. There was a small closet to the left and a second doorway opposite the one he had entered, but nothing else broke the continuity of the beige walls except for a constellation of splatters just above the waste basket to his left.

Number Seven grimaced and turned his attention to the contents of the desk. Not much there either. A keyboard, a monitor, some forms stacked neatly in the corner, a nameplate, a kitsch coffee mug holding some pens and pencils, and a rubber stamp resting on an open pad of red ink. “Do you mind if I...?” He held forth his book. Delacroix was busy, squinting or humming every third or fourth stroke. Lacking any further visual stimulation and irked by the monotonous pecking, Number Seven placed the book on the desk and blurted, “Can I explain why I even bothered to come here to contest a twenty dollar parking ticket?”

Delacroix stopped typing and leaned into the monitor as if discerning hieroglyphics in a long lost tomb. “Mr. Sylvester, let's take a look at your history, which, hold on...it's coming...right...there we go. A couple of speeding tickets a few years ago, one parking ticket last year. I think -“

“Circumstance. That’s why I'm here.” 

“That’s why we’re all here Mr. Sylvester.”

Mr. Sylvester paused, but forged ahead. “It was a Saturday. Downtown was empty. I parked in front of a coffee shop across from this twenty-four hour copy place that’s hiring, had no change and ran into the coffee shop to get some.” Mr. Sylvester bounced his index finger on the edge of the desk for emphasis. Delacroix's eyes followed it. “On my way back I see a meter maid writing up the ticket. I wasn't gone longer than two minutes. I showed her the change but she wouldn't believe me.”

Now Delacroix shifted his gaze and seemed to be looking off into the distance, almost imperceptibly, through the middle of Mr. Sylvester's forehead. Mr. Sylvester's eyes darted from left to right with a severe case of perplexion. What the hell is he doing? Recognition nibbled at his brain.

Coming back from wherever he had gone, Delacroix looked back at Mr. Sylvester's eyes and said, “Do you have a receipt?”

“What?”

“A little piece of paper with numbers on it that proves you bought something.”

“I didn't buy anything. In fact I can hardly afford to buy anything right now. That’s what I’m talking about. My job...life circumstances have been altered. I just got change for a dollar.” 

Mr. Sylvester pleaded now, “Can't you just erase the ticket, or dismiss it or whatever you do? I mean, my record's relatively clean. You could...”

His voice trailed off. Again Delacroix's gaze drifted to the space above his eyes. Suddenly, an unscheduled train of thought arrived at the station. His ex-wife used to do the exact same thing!

He shot his wrist up to look at his watch with such a jerk that Delacroix flinched. Mr. Sylvester ran his hand through his hair and sighed.

“Sir?” said Delacroix.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, yes, of course Mr. Sylvester. Continue, please.”

“I was going to pay the meter. It was Saturday. Who the hell checks the meters on a Saturday anyway?”

“Budget cuts necessitate alternate revenue streams, Mr. Sylvester.” Delacroix looked back at the screen. “I can reduce the fine from twenty to ten. Anything else you gotta see a judge.”

Mr. Sylvester's jaw clenched. His forehead grew crimson. This guy doesn't give a shit. Mr. Sylvester checked his watch again, defeated. “Ten bucks. For a God damn...lousy...idiotic...” His mumbling faded off.

“Look Mr. Sylvester, I realize that from your perspective it seems like a raw deal, but you can schedule a time before the judge and explain it to him.”

“No, forget it. Sometimes life, people, just do that to you. It's not worth my time at this point.”

Again, key clatter punctuated by hums. A final punch. “All set. You can pay Kristi at the desk.” He wrote “$10” on the ticket, circled and initialed it so the paid ticket would find its way back to him for stamping. He peeled off the defendant's pink copy and held it out.

Mr. Sylvester grabbed it, and got up to leave. As he stood he noticed the background picture on Delacroix's computer monitor. He recognized the painting. He had seen the original at the Louvre several years earlier during better times while on vacation to Paris. La Liberté Guidant le Peuple by Eugene Delacroix. A classically sturdy Lady Liberty, bayonet and tricolor French flag in hand, leads the all-male populace, and, Liberty, in a uniquely French way, topless, extolling them to march in revolution through the smoke, barricades, and corpses to defend their freedom. It filled the entire screen.

Recalling the nameplate he said, “Are you related?”

“Who knows,” replied Delacroix. For the first time he smiled. “I've always been fascinated by it since I saw a picture of it in an art history book in college. Of course, having the same last name intrigues me, too. I hope someday soon to see the real thing.”

Mr. Sylvester stared at Delacroix's enraptured face and with an air of satisfaction said, “Yes, it's quite magnificent in real life.”

What an asshole, Mr. Sylvester thought, as he picked up his book off the desk, turned, exited the office, and headed down the hall.

After inhaling an unsatisfying curry meatball sandwich from the New Deli by himself - Kristi was nowhere to be found - Delacroix returned to his office and found an eight-and-a-half by eleven inch manila envelope on his chair. Sent by courier. His handwritten name in large looping letters precipitated a surge of adrenalin through his body. The scrawl of his lawyer's admin, Carolyn. Delacroix's bowels contorted and he fought their sudden urge to evacuate. He hadn't heard a peep from the lawyer assigned to his case, Ramon DeLeon, stud junior partner at the law firm Delores, Bennett, & Hamm, since the latest deposition by a phalanx of hospital and insurance lawyers in discount suits from Haber’s Dashingly. Incredulously, they had tried to coax from him an admission of complicity in the matter.

“So, Mr. Delacroix, have you ever smoked cigarettes on a regular basis?” asked the first lawyer, a balding redhead with a bad case of psoriasis smack dab in the middle of his forehead.

“Yes, but I stopped a couple of years ago,” said Delacroix.

A second lawyer, chubby, red-faced, and sweaty, chimed in. “How many cigarettes did you smoke per day, Mr. Delacroix?”

“Oh, about a pack. Sometimes less, sometimes more.”

The first lawyer again. “Why did you stop, Mr. Delacroix?”

“I'm not real sure. I guess it just fell out of favor with me. Other things came along.”

All the lawyers looked at each other. “'Other things?' Like what?” the first one asked.

“Not what you're thinking. I just didn't feel that smoking suited me anymore.”

“So you stopped smoking?” A third lawyer now got into the act — a dead ringer for the farmer in Whistler's American Gothic.

“Uh...yes.”

The fourth, and last one’s turn. He couldn't have been older than his late twenties. “Cold turkey?”

“Well, more or less...”

“Because?”

“Smoking causes -“

DeLeon held up his hand and bowed his head, “John,” he paused for effect, “my esteemed colleagues, let me interject. Can I ask what the question is, specifically, that you would like my client to answer?”

“Yes, of course, Ramon,” said the first lawyer, “Mr. Delacroix, do you believe that smoking causes cancer?”

Delacroix said, “Well, I'm certainly not a doctor, but I think it's pretty common knowledge these days that smoking isn't exactly good for you. Yes, I believe that smoking causes cancer. Yes.”

“Even when you smoked a pack a day — your words — did you know this?” the first lawyer again.

“Yes.”

“What are you getting at, counselor?” said DeLeon.

The first lawyer continued, “Is it possible, Mr. Delacroix, that your preconceived notions of the ill-effects caused by smoking led you to believe, or should I say, you expected, that an x-ray of your lungs might come back with positive indications of something negative?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you want to, or even send subliminal messages, via your body language or through careful - but unconscious - wording to the doctor that you fully expected to see proof of lung cancer? Because you knew -“

“What the - ?!” Delacroix looked to his lawyer for help.

DeLeon held up his hand again. If he had a whistle he would have called a penalty. “Whether Mr. Delacroix believed that he had a tumor or not before he had the x-ray is not only irrelevant, but ludicrous! The truth is HE HAD NO TUMOR! The radiologist intern told him he had six weeks to live. Well over six months ago! And subsequent, thorough examinations by COMPETENT health professionals have shown that he is in good health. No tumor. He's alive and well and the diagnosis was wrong. Damages are due pursuant to the pain and suffering Mr. Delacroix has experienced as a result of your client's actions.”

The first lawyer nodded his head and glanced at his colleagues. “Alright, let's be frank here.”

The colleagues all glanced at each other.

“Look, mistakes happen,” said the first lawyer.

The colleagues dropped their heads into their hands in unison.

Desperation crept into the first lawyer’s voice. “We can go back to the company that produced the film -“

DeLeon, a short man in any culture, was on his toes, hands a mere three feet above the table, like a traffic cop stopping all lanes. “Gentlemen, this deposition is over.” His hands came down, snapped shut his briefcase, and he took Delacroix by the arm. Smiling over his shoulder as they left the room, he said, “Give me call next week and we'll get a final number.”

Delacroix laid the envelope on his desk. He sat down, paused, and opened the upper left-hand drawer, thrusting his hand through office detritus and pulled from its depths an unopened but crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes.

He placed them next to the envelope.

The red voicemail light on his phone blinked at a steady and silent pace.

From the lower left-hand drawer he pulled out his handheld tape recorder. He pressed record but said nothing. No one else was in the room. He looked around the room imagining a small audience and began speaking.

“Chapter X, or Conclusion. Life...is a series of choices. No more, no less. There is no fate. To do or not to do,” he paused and chuckled. “Think about all the possibilities. Imagine how life would be if you did this or that, one way or the other. But until you act, those possibilities are not real. They don't happen. Only by doing something does truth occur. Only kinetic energy matters; physicality. Atoms colliding with other atoms, molecules against molecules, cells upon cells...skin upon skin. Oh, we try to create our own truths through our thoughts, but the fact of 'matter'...hah!...is that IT ultimately dictates reality. We can only choose which direction to apply our actions. Whether it's specific words or behavior or pushing a button that deletes a violation. Or stopping for a red light. Telling someone how you feel. Truth is not what I'm scared of. It's the fantasies, the dreams...the imagination that scares me. Because ultimately, it drives the choices we make. And then truth is created and that...is how we control our destiny.”

He pressed “Stop” and put the tape recorder next to the cigarettes.

This time he reached into the upper right-hand drawer and rummaged around. “Goddammit, where is it?” After several seconds he found what he was looking for and held it up in his right hand. With his left hand he picked up the envelope and tore it open with his right middle finger. He poured out the contents of the envelope onto his desk. A single large cashier's check. He picked it up by one corner and eyeballed it. Pay to the order of: John Delacroix. $75,000 and 00 cents. “Hmmph.” His eyes got big. Then they squinted. Then bigger. Then squintier. Big. Squint.

He ripped open the pack of cigarettes and placed a Lucky Strike between his lips. With a nick of his thumb Delacroix lit the lighter in his right hand and brought the flame to the end of the cigarette. He sucked in with a deep breath and the tip of the cigarette flared bright orange. He flipped the lighter onto the desk.

He exhaled and took another long, deep draw.

Looking at the blinking red voicemail light he picked up the receiver. He pressed the voicemail button and punched in his personal code. A woman's pleasant voice informed him that he had two, new, messages. He pressed “3” to play them.

Message one: “John, hey, congratulations! We got the bastards. Seventy five thou plus baby! Well, more than that but I already subtracted my fee. Anyways, you should be getting an envelope -“ Delacroix pressed “6” to skip to the next message.

Message two: “Hi, John. This is Kristi. I just wanted to let you know, to tell you something, before you heard it from anyone else, you know. I saw you this morning looking down my shirt again - not a big deal, you know - but I thought it was time to tell you...well, it just happened. Not right now, like, this instant, but about a month-and-a-half ago. Like that, you know. Oh, I can't believe it. Travis, er, Burly, and I are getting married! Dad- and judge-approved even! Can you fucking believe it? That's what Vegas was for, John. For me by the girls. I wanted to tell you but Trav wouldn't let me. Well, screw him. OK, wrong choice of words maybe but...it's all been on the down-low, you know, and I've wanted to tell you. Office romance and all. Oh my God, I am so rambling. Hey, I'll see you later, I guess. I’ll tell you all about it then.”

Delacroix walked out the employee's entrance in the back of the government building by the old smoker's nook where a new colony, younger and still fit, had re-formed like an anthill in a crack on a busy summer sidewalk. Kristi was not there. He followed the path crammed between the brick wall and bare dirt embankment rife with exposed roots and stones, and headed for the parking lot.

Getting into his beige Toyota Corolla on the passenger’s side he slammed the door shut and jerked open the glove compartment. After rifling around for a few frustrating seconds his hand grasped the Springfield 9mm. He saw himself return to the building, walk up to the third floor break room where Burly would be yucking it up with the rest of the guards talking about which judge didn't wear pants under his or her robe or which firing range had the most realistic looking targets and he would walk right up to Burly and jam the barrel as hard as he could against his skull so at least he would feel that the cold hard steel of the barrel was just like a cold hard heart for a long brief moment before he blew his fucking brains all over the candy machine.

Tap, tap, tap.

He looked up and saw Pat, the semi-retired part-time security guard, the old warhorse, peering through a smudge on the passenger window where her pudgy finger with closely trimmed fingernails had punctured his vision. “Hey, John, are you all right?” An unlit cigarette bobbed up and down from her lips when she spoke.

He let go of the gun and quickly closed the glove compartment.

He rolled down the window. “Hey, Pat. What are you doing out here?”

“Getting a light.” Her head and eyes motioned to the red F-150 behind her. “That what you’re doing?” She gave him a look of disapproval. “I thought you quit.”

“I did. I did.” He could say nothing else and his eyes darted back and forth from Pat to the glove compartment.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. I just needed some fresh air.”

“I hear you there, John. Sometimes you just gotta get away from your circumstances for a while or so. ‘Cause if you don’t change ‘em, they’ll change you, that’s for sure.”

Delacroix’s eyes stayed on Pat for several seconds. Her right hand was by reflex caressing the handle of her holstered gun.

Then she leaned forward, keeping her hand near the gun. Delacroix slowly placed his fingers under the glove compartment latch.

Pat spoke. “Say, before you open that can you do me a favor?”

Delacroix didn’t respond, frozen with a blank stare, frozen over his entire being.

“John?”

His mind was drowning in incoherent thoughts that didn’t piece together but came at him in machine-gun hot flashes that he could barely glimpse, couldn’t escape from, and couldn’t act on.

“John?”

“Pat?” 

“Can you pop your lighter there as long as you’re here? Mine doesn’t work like it should and it sure would save me some trouble.”

With his free hand Delacroix pushed the car’s cigarette lighter in and kept his finger on the knob. His other hand still grasped the glove compartment handle.

Pat straightened up and took the cigarette out of her mouth. “Can you light this for me? Looks like you need a drag or two.”

He didn’t move. He waited. He looked at the cigarette in her outstretched hand and said, “No thanks, I really have quit.” He hoped she couldn’t smell the Lucky Strike he had just smoked.

She held the cigarette in the window opening, her hand unmoving.

After a few more seconds the cigarette lighter popped.

Delacroix quickly handed it to Pat across his body. She removed her right hand from the gun and took the lighter. She placed the cigarette in her mouth and held the lighter against its end and sucked in the sweet nicotine.

She handed the lighter back to Delacroix. “Now that’s better!”

He looked at her without saying a word.

“John, I’m going to visit the new crew over there and make sure they’re not causing any trouble. You don’t need me dirtying up your fresh air anyway. You take care.” She punctuated the air with her cigarette as she said this and walked away.

When he was sure she was really heading back to the government building he snapped open the glove compartment and plunged his hand into it. He tossed the gun onto the floor and pulled out an open envelope marked “Faraway Travel”.

From the envelope he pulled out two open dated tickets to Paris and looked at them for a long time, not caring that his crumbling hands were creasing the name Kristi Delores illegible on the pink passenger copy.

The End