Progressively Progressive
Quinn’s phone dinged.
A charge had been added to his Apple card by Enterprise.
“What the fuck?” he said to himself.
The only thing he could think about was a charge for tolls that he had declined before he realized what it was. A lot of scams had been floating around.
Last year, one of his cards was compromised and had to be replaced. He felt like this was happening every year, whether it was him or someone he knew.
And it wasn’t going to go away.
Which is why he used his credit cards less and less.
Cash was King.
But, more and more retailers were only accepting cards.
Fake money, he said.
Cash was tangible.
It was seen.
Grabbing a 20, a fifty, or a hundred each had different consequences.
20’s could be spent easily.
The 50s had a little more life span.
And hundreds were hard to let go of.
Forty-five minutes later, after speaking with Enterprise and being pushed over to tolls, then to citations, he found out what the charge was.
A moving violation in Virginia caught on camera.
“It says here you were going 42 in a 25-mile-per-hour zone, sir.”
“Who says?”
“It looks like you were caught on camera.”
Quinn laughed.
“Isn’t that a violation of my rights?”
Silence.
“No one physically gave me a ticket. Does that seem right to you?”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s just silly to me that that’s the way we’re going. Getting phantom citations from Big Brother.”
Fahrenheit 451, written in the 50s by Ray Bradbury, portrayed a society policed by Big Brother; the reference flew over the heads of every reader under 40.
Along with Huxley’s A Brave New World.
Surprisingly, a new rendition of Animal Farm returned to theatres 40 years later.
In college, Quinn had read a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron, and laughed because it was a funny take on equality.
And the lack of it.
Which, to Quinn, made sense.
Equality didn’t exist.
And never would, despite the ambitious efforts of high-end officials, goody-to-shoe housewives with nothing better to do but cry about the unfairness of life.
It wasn’t Quinn’s fault that they had to ask their husbands for money as if they were children.
Some people, Quinn thought. They dig their own graves, and what everyone else does to get them out only digs another one, and the cycle repeats.
“Where did this happen? Does it say?”
“Yes, sir. They have a picture of the car in Virginia.”
Virginia?
“Where in Virginia?”
Quinn couldn’t remember stopping in Virginia.
“Harrisonburg, sir.”
“God damn it.”
Now, Quinn remembered.
He had gotten off at an exit for food and gas. He and his daughter had stopped at Jersey Mikes and gassed up at a Sheetz.
“Can you send me a copy of that charge?”
“Of course.”
After he hung up, Quinn saw two black-and-white photographs of the rental he was driving.
Three years ago, he had gotten a similar ticket in New York.
Exactly.
Forty-two in a twenty-five.
It was a school zone infraction on a Sunday.
A Sunday!
Quinn had contested the ticket with a humorous three-page dissertation about human rights and violations.
And how wrong it is to send phantom tickets in the mail.
He hadn’t paid that one.
The college he had been coaching at was still looking for his $50.
Unbelievable, he thought. What’s next? Everyone has a camera on their head, and AI will report it, and a bill will come in the mail for every little infraction that goes unnoticed.
Quinn called it the “Divorce theory.”
Divorced kids played both sides.
Once they found a parental leak, they went after it.
Carrying over to other aspects in life. Once a kid found a weakness, they explored what they could get away with.
Raising questions about accountability.
And advanced repercussions.
The ripple effect.
Friends, influenced by friends without accountability at home, pushed the envelope and caused more problems and more ripples.
Parents’ constant distractions exacerbated the problem.
Keeping up with the Joneses had its own ripple effect.
Mom needs a new car every four years.
Fathers needed to keep their wives happy.
Mom’s also needed new kitchens and the praise from friends that came with it, despite having nothing to do with it, excitedly picking out what they wanted from a catalog.
Reliving that childhood feeling that retailers and companies tapped into.
Their emotional attachment to wants and needs.
“I can’t imagine what life for you guys will be in 10-20 years,” he told students. “The girls have an insatiable need for material objects, and the boys just seem dumb. Like their years behind their age in behavior.”
“You know what I’m going to do,” Quinn said to his father.
“What?”
“I’m going to drive to Harrisonburg and damage $500 to $1000 worth of something in their parks. You fuck with the bull, you get the horns.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
Quinn laughed.
“Too fucking bad. They want to pull this shit; it comes with consequences. You can’t mail out tickets. You have to physically catch the person in the act.”
Quinn wondered if this was an effect of defunding the police across the country.
Everything in life was a mirage.
A parlor trick.
The government created confusion and diversions so they could do what they really wanted when people weren’t looking.
Quinn knew this.
He knew it, because that’s what he would do.
It wasn’t about the phantom $125 bill.
It was about winning and losing.
And not getting your pants pulled down.
“Did I ever tell you about the time John and I flattened this kid’s tires?”
His father rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Back in high school, this kid owed John $300. Today, that’s like 6 or 700. For a high school kid, it’s a game-changer.”
“What kid?”
“Some douche in Palmer. The kid ran a fantasy football league and gambled the money on the Lions against the Redskins in the Conference championship, and lost.”
Quinn smiled.
“John and I drove around Palmer and found his truck. I watched guard while John let the air out of all four tires with a Bic Pen.”
They had sat in Quinn’s car afterward and watched as the kid came back to his truck and had to call a tow.
John had rolled the window down as they drove away.
The look on the fat kid’s face was etched in Quinn’s mind.
“John had gone to his house when the kid wasn’t home. Knocked on the door and walked right by his parents and into his room, and took stuff as payment.”
Quinn couldn’t remember what John grabbed from the kids’ room. Back then, it was probably music tapes and CD’s.
“Imagine if a kid tried to walk into your house and take something from my room,” he said to his father.
“I would have dropped him.”
“I know.”
“You see,” his father said after a few minutes of silence. “It’s sending the message that’s important. You guys didn’t have to pop his tires.”
“Right! We weren’t dumb.”
For the next few minutes, Quinn reminisced and talked about the things he and John did in their youth.
And never got caught.
Pulled over quite a few times.
But, never caught.
“We always had our stories straight before we left the house,” he told his father. “We learned that early on.”
For months, after one of their friends got a license, they went out toilet papering trees in yards, then removing for-sale signs and redistributing them around town.
They were getting careless and carefree until one night, when they were redistributing Quinn’s sister’s bras and underwear in trees and on car windshield wipers, when the blue lights came on. The cops had separated them and gotten multiple stories. One of their friends had given up the others.
A mistake not replicated.
Afterward, John and Quinn had decided that horsing around town was a two-man job.
“I can’t believe he caved and ratted us out.”
They had gone over what they would say had they gotten pulled over. A couple of the guys had been drinking and broke all the fundamentals of not getting caught.
“From now on, it’s just you and me on runs,” John had said.
Years later, after college and during their marriage, Quinn’s wife came home and said there was an area of East Longmeadow experiencing break-ins.
“Who’s the landscapers over there?” Quinn asked.
“Why?” she said.
“If I were a cop, that’s where I’d start. Landscapers have the lay of the land. They know what’s in people’s garages. What’s in their yards, and they know the comings and goings of each neighborhood. And they’re not the brightest bulbs in the bunch.”
“It was probably some neighbor’s kids.”
“No way. No fucking way.”
“You’re always assuming.”
“I don’t assume. I know.”
“What do you know?”
“Smart thieves don’t shit and eat in their neighborhood. The ones who do get caught do.”
And smart thieves don’t shit and eat where they work.
Quinn had driven by the neighborhood in question regularly. There was a cut-through road that connected a couple of busy streets. He had remembered seeing landscaper trucks on a bi-weekly basis. One company in particular had Puerto Ricans.
“It was probably the Puerto Ricans who worked for the landscapers.”
“You always think it was the Puerto Ricans.”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Cuz I used to work and hang out with them.”
His father sat in the recliner.
“I’m not going to do anything,” Quinn said half-heartedly about the Harrisonburg job.
Earlier, he considered using Google Maps to explore the area and get a feel for the layout. Where were the police stations? Where were the cameras? Or at least, where would he think they were? He studied the main streets and the side streets, and played scenarios over in his head, as he did when he was young.
Ring cameras counted too.
Every questionable turn, he pulled himself over and questioned himself and the getaways he chose.
Normal people wouldn’t carry this much weight in their heads.
Normal people would get caught because they didn’t see the other side’s moves ahead of time.
Something he learned from his older brother.
Forsight.
Having a crippled older brother who played chess every day and studied 5, 7, 9, 11 moves ahead had its advantages.
“The odds,” his brother had said. “Evens and Odds. Odds and evens.”
His brother had taught him the weirdness in equations and how they related to life. He had taught him the evens and odds of things that echoed in everything we do.
“Evens and odds,” his brother said, “Are like playing black and white. They are progressive or reactionary.”
He didn’t get to finish Quinn’s training.
After his brother’s funeral, he studied the black and the white.
He studied the dark and the light and floated in both worlds.
The light walked in the even world, where life was symmetrical. Life had order, and life was safe.
In the dark, the world was an oddity; life was disorderly.
Disconnected.
Chaotic.
There was something odd about odd numbers.
Upon learning this, Quinn kept everything in twos.
Two rackets.
Two shaving creams.
Two pens.
Two books.
Two shorts.
Two hoodies.
And added a third every now and then, just to reassure the laws of odds and evens.
No matter how much he pushed the thought away, he had a planning to do for a rainy day.
An opportunity in the mist, just to stay sharp.
“The rod that doesn’t bend breaks,” his father used to say.
And “Iron sharpens iron.”