Nurse the Hate: The New Used Cadillac

The difficulty of driving the car became more pronounced when the cold medicine took effect.  In retrospect, it was a mistake to combine the three different types of medicine, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  His head was crushed by sinus pressure and aches behind his eyeballs suggested enormous tumors growing behind the sockets.  He needed decisive action.  He approached it like he was a member of the Alice Cooper Group in the mid-1970s.  He combined over the counter meds and a healthy slug of Bullet Rye Whiskey.  The Benadryl would take care of the sinus with the Mucinex adding some oomph to the cough.  The Dayquil would offer a warm comforting hand, but the addition of the caffeine would keep it all moving.  The late winter sun shone through the driver’s side warming his face.  He felt disconnected and warmly uncaring.  Things had improved.

The car was an older model Cadillac he had bought used from a charity operation with a confusing matrix of relationships with community efforts.  The more he asked the representative about it, the more confused he had become.  The salesperson kept repeating the phrase “doing well by doing good”.  The flier the salesman left behind when the finance officer inspected how to ram his deal though with his sketchy credit showed smiling “disadvantaged” people.  Well, if he could help those folks while buying himself a new used Caddie, then all the dots connected.  You’ve got yourself a deal sir!  Handshakes all around. 

The car was big and floated across the road.  The combination of the smooshy ride and velvet curtain of cold medicine made him feel like he was driving an overstuffed couch 85 mph down the highway.  He felt the warmth of the heated seat on his back and turned up Neil Young’s “Tonight’s The Night”.  The air conditioning was on the highest setting and blew his hair back.  He squinted into the sun and drifted over to the passing lane.  He passed an Acura missing a fender leaving a plastic tank of fluid exposed.  The driver of the car, a worn laborer, looked over to him and nodded his approval as if he heard the Neil Young.  “Tonight’s the night…”

His phone rang and he pressed a button on the lit dash to enable the car’s Bluetooth.  “Hey man… What’s going on?”  Brake lights flashed in front of him.  He considered slowing the big car.  He didn’t allow the caller to respond.  “You think it would be fucked up if I called my ex and asked her if she saw that news story about the guy that got lost in the woods and wound up living in that igloo for a week?  She was the first one I thought of when I saw that.”  The caller responded.  “Well… She did put out a restraining order on you after you showed up at her work thing in that gorilla costume a couple years ago.  Is that still active?  If so, I wouldn’t recommend it…” 

He crested a small hill and felt his head lift off him like a balloon as the car smoothly motored on.  “I gotta go.  I’ll call you later if this Benadryl shit wears off.”  Click.  Neil Young came back across the sound system with authority.  He weaved to the right to pass a slow-moving panel van.  He knew a woman named Celeste that liked to refer to those trucks as “rape vans”.  Celeste told him a story about how she had printed out a crude sign she made at work proclaiming “Free Candy!” with balloon graphics that she taped to the side of her brother’s beat up white panel van.  He was pissed when he finally saw it and realized why he had been getting all those looks at stoplights.  “He’s always leaving his rape van in the driveway.  Fuck him.”  Celeste was not particularly close with her brother. 

Traffic slowed as drivers overreacted to the setting sun.  He slowed the car for stop-and-go.  It was an out of body experience.  He watched himself drive the Cadillac.  The sun felt good on his face.  The heated seats spread their warmth.  Without question he had “done well by doing good”.  He briefly thought about how he had helped those poor disadvantaged children as he commanded the stately vehicle.  There was no doubt about it.  “Cadillac, you’ve arrived.”  Traffic began to open back up.  He quietly accelerated and settled back in.