On a Bruised Road

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

The red ‘62 Alfa Romeo glowed in the sun, its sleek body without flaw or fault, its curves begging Edwin to reach out and touch her. He circled it slowly, drinking in every inch. It had been built the year Edwin was born, and he’d always felt like he had a special connection to the car. He was five the first time he heard one, the first time he had felt the vibrations from the engine. To Edwin, it had felt alive, like a massive, growling beast. A beast that had lingered in his memory and imagination, haunting his dreams as he grew older.

No matter what Edwin had lost or gained, there was one thing that could never be shaken. His desire, lust even, for the 1962 Alfa Romeo Spider 2600.

Edwin knew there were better cars. There were faster cars. More reliable cars. More expensive cars. He knew there were better investments for his money. But he also knew he was forty-seven years old, and it was time to buy something he wanted. Something fun that wasn’t destructive. For years during his addiction to prescription drugs, his impulse control had been nonexistent, but knowing how, and when, to indulge himself was part of his treatment. And now, after twenty years of being clean, it was time for something indulgent. Not something he needed. Not something practical.

“I want to hear it run,” Edwin announced.

Keys caught the sun as they flew through the air, and Edwin closed his palm around them. Satisfaction surged through him. It wasn’t the first time he’d clutched the keys of an Alfa Romeo Spider, but it was the first time he had a realistic chance of owning said keys.

“You can take it for a drive around the grounds,” Roger said.

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere there’s a road.”

Edwin slid behind the steering wheel, closing his eyes to absorb the ambience, the atmosphere, of the car. For a moment, everything felt perfect. The sun was high overhead, heating the leather, and the steering wheel was solid against his palms. The most solid thing in the world. Something inside of him surged, like fire erupting from a mountain. Sparks swirled in a whirlwind, spiraling through his core, engulfing his heart. It was akin to love, or maybe a junkie’s rush of adrenaline. It was the sort of feeling that came cheap to a twenty-year-old boy—one that he could catch at any time because his body was healthy, his mind curious, and the world still more or less new. By the time a person hit thirty, that rush was harder to find. Now Edwin couldn’t believe he was feeling it at all. He hadn’t known he was still capable of that.

Suddenly, there were two worlds. One beyond the barrier of the car, where all the rules remained intact, all the expectations remained in place. And one within the confines of the Alfa Romeo, where a man could shed twenty years without warning. Quite simply, Edwin felt alive.

When he opened his eyes, he observed the other world through the Spider’s windshield. He slid the key into the ignition, shivering as it locked into place. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the starter and turned the key. As the engine roared into life, he shivered again. Only this time it felt like a cube of ice against the back of his neck, or a large cloud passing over the sun. Everything did darken for a moment, and Edwin glanced out the window, straining to see if a cloud had floated inland from above the ocean. But there were no clouds. Everything was clear.

For the first time in years, everything was clear.

“Just take it for a short spin,” Roger encouraged.

Edwin put the car into gear, and the ice moved across his neck again. Nerves, Edwin decided. Excitement and anticipation and maybe a little bit of fear. What if it didn’t run the way it should? What if it didn’t run the way he remembered? What if it didn’t run at all, and the ad he had found on the Internet had been a lie—either out of ignorance or malice?

He eased his foot off the brake and lightly pressed the accelerator. The wheels rolled down the driveway, one hundred and forty-five horses under the hood waiting to be unleashed. The RPMs crawled slowly, until he had to shift into second gear. It was such a simple act. Ease from the accelerator, press the clutch, grip the stick, and slide it home. An action he had completed a million times in his life, but it was no less satisfying for that. Just like s*x was no less satisfying despite the repetition of moves.

Edwin’s doubts were gone by the time he made it to third gear. The steering wheel felt like it was made for his hands. As though the designers had taken the length of his fingers and the width of his palms into consideration before they drew the plans. His last car had been a convertible, but this was different. His convertible had mimicked the American dream, that great myth that shaped culture and commercials. The one that said a man with a car was a man with the entire world laid before him. Convertibles played into that myth because they let the wind whip through your hair. But it had been nothing more than shallow caricature.

The Alfa Romeo was the real thing. It was not an American car, but what did that matter? Every line reflected pure passion. Every rev of the engine was nothing except the sound of joy. In fact, that was all Alfa Romeos usually had going for them. Most serious gearheads and car collectors avoided them because they were usually nothing more than a mess wrapped in a headache. Edwin didn’t care about that. He would turn heads when he drove the Spider down the street. People would notice him as he raced by.

Edwin circled the mansion once, unconcerned with the massive, ornate building. The estate sale would be starting in about an hour, and if he wanted to, he could take his thirty thousand dollars and buy a famous painting or rare books or whatever else it was that people were supposed to buy at massive liquidation sales. But none of that other stuff mattered to him. He could buy paintings and books and furniture and the pieces of other people’s lives elsewhere.

But he had never found a Romeo Spider like this one.

He had never found a piece of his own life sedately sitting in another man’s garage.

Edwin could have owned the Alfa Romeo Spider far, far sooner. If his life had gone as planned, he might have owned one even fifteen years earlier. But things had not gone as planned. In fact, his entire life had gone so far off the rails, he never expected to find the track again. One mistake had snowballed into a darkness so deep, he wasn’t sure he would ever see light again. He had painstakingly crawled back to his previous position, beginning with his job at the pharmacy and culminating, finally, in the purchase that had been eluding him for so long.

When he sat behind the wheel of the Spider, he could believe that it was possible to wrestle back lost time, claim it again, and give himself a second chance.

“How she handle?” Roger asked when Edwin returned to the garage.

“Like a dream.”

“Good, good. I thought she would.”

Edwin opened the door and made himself exit the car. “So, do I give the money to you or…?”

Roger laughed. “I’m just the grease monkey around here. I’m glad to see she’s going to a good home, though.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw your smile when you got behind the wheel. You appreciate her for what she is.”

Edwin cast an admiring glance over the Spider once again. “That I do.”

“I don’t know if they mentioned this in the listing, but I think it’s only fair to tell you that she’s been in an accident before.”

Edwin frowned. That hadn’t been mentioned. In fact, the listing had stressed that the Spider was in mint condition, as if it had just been shipped from the factory that morning. The hobby car of a millionaire, it never left sunny Southern California and had spent most of its existence as a mere showroom piece, not a vehicle that had really been used. In fact, it had under one thousand miles.

“What sort of accident?”

“A fender bender back in sixty-two. Must have been just three or four days after they bought the thing. But they smashed up the front part real good. Here. And here.” Roger pointed with an oil-stained finger to the bumper of the car. “They sent it right back to the factory to get it fixed.”

Edwin arched his brow. “The factory? In Italy?”

“Yep.”

“And it came back as good as new?”

The light faded a bit from Roger’s weathered eyes, but he nodded. “Yeah. Good as new. Anyway, the old man wouldn’t let anybody drive it after that. He took it to a few shows and hired it out to a few of those Hollywood types, but other than that, it’s sat right here in this garage.”

Edwin shook his head. “It’s a shame. This car shouldn’t be kept locked up like this.”

“No, it shouldn’t.” Roger nodded toward the large house. “You’ll find Mr. Gifford up in the house. He’s the one in charge of all this. I’m sure he’ll take your money.”

Edwin turned to the door, but he paused before leaving the garage, looking over his shoulder to admire the car once again. It looked different in the garage’s shadows, though Edwin couldn’t put his finger on how. It looked like it was waiting for him. Like it didn’t want to let him go.

“She’ll still be here when you get back,” Roger said.

Edwin shook his head and laughed. “I guess I’m being a bit silly. I’ll be right back for her.”

He stepped into the sunlight, and the chill that had been resting on the back of his neck vanished. If he had been thirty years younger, he might have skipped up the winding cement path to the towering white house. But he wasn’t that young anymore, so he settled for jogging in his eagerness to complete the transaction.