Second Chances by Lincoln Cole

Jason, climbed out of the car
after jarring the driver’s door loose. He was skinny with a short cropped brown
beard and wavy hair.
    Glasses adorned his face, and he looked more like a college
professor than a professionally trained therapist with master’s degrees in both
sociology and psychology. 
    No, he looked more like a college  student  with
that dumb grin.
    He waved at them. “Hey Rick, Hey Deborah.”
    Deborah waved back. “Hi Jason. How are you? How is Rachael?”
    “She’s good. I’m good. Keeping busy. What about you guys?”
    “Great,” she said. “The kids are back in school again so I’m
usually lonely.”
    “More time to yourself,” Jason said with a laugh.  “You
ready to go Rick?”
    Richard was staring at the deathtrap sitting in front of his
curb, not even trying to hide the look of distaste on his face.
    “How about we take my car?” he offered.
    “Nonsense,” Jason scoffed. “I can drive. I’m ready to go.”
    Richard bit back an annoyed sigh. One night. He would only
have to put up with Jason for one lousy night. He hadn’t talked to his little
brother in months, so he could survive one evening of riding in a piece of junk
with him. 
    “Okay,” he said.  He turned and gave Deborah a kiss on
the cheek. “I’ll be back soon. I love you.” 
    “Love you too,” she said, smiling.  “Have fun.”
    Rick smiled back sadly. “Yeah, that isn’t going to happen,”
he muttered. 
    He turned and headed toward the idling car.  The front
bumper was rusted through and might fall off at any moment. The passenger door
panel was collapsed from a long-passed accident. The paint was fading from a
deep orange to a blotchy yellow.
    Yet none of that compared to how bad it reeked on the
inside. It was a cross of manure mixed with body odor and a dash of
marijuana. 
    “Sorry about the smell,” Jason said, quickly rolling down
the windows as Richard climbed in.  “I had to transport some mulch for a
friend and it just sort of…lingers.”
    Richard almost asked about the marijuana and if that
lingered too, and then decided against it. One night. No sense being
undiplomatic.
    Jason put the car into gear and with only modest stuttering
they began rumbling down the road. The smell dissipated as he grew used to
it—though he pushed the thought away that his sense of smell required actual
flakes of material landing on olfactory neurons, which meant smelling fecal
material meant he was basically ingesting fecal matter that was floating in the
air—and he occupied himself instead by thinking about what he could accomplish
after he was done tonight. 
    Or at least he tried to.
    “How is work?” Jason asked.
    “It is well,” Richard replied. “How about yours?”
    “Mine is good,” Jason replied. “Really good actually. Made
it up to seventeen people in the clinic for a while. Turned the place into a
madhouse when everyone got talking at the same time. A few moved out of town
and one fell back off the wagon, so I’m back down to fourteen regulars, but
it’s still a good group.”
    Jason ran an Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous Clinic.
Richard had never really understood why his brother wanted to waste his talents
on something like that; Jason was never actually addicted to alcohol, and in
fact rarely drank.
    He was addicted to some harder drugs when he was younger,
but that still didn’t justify someone dedicating their life to a fruitless
pursuit. Helping people certainly was beneficial, but not its own reward. 
There was always an ulterior motive.
    Even if that motive was only being thought of as a good
person.
    Jason had always been altruistic to a mind-numbing degree.
Richard chocked it up to his brother’s whimsy: Jason would save the world, one
useless drunk at a time.
    He had agreed to go for his mother’s sake, because he knew
she would have wanted them to have a relationship. Now that she was gone, he
felt he had to go to honor her memory.
    Of course, that was before