Chapter 1
There was a low rumble as the remote control truck ran over the pile of dolls. Kaylee screamed with laughter.
“Daddy’s running over my dolls, mom!”
His wife poked her head out of the kitchen to see what the commotion was about.
“Travis, what message is that sending?”
“It sends the message that no doll is a match for this monster truck. Don’t worry so much, it’s just fun.”
“For who, you or Kaylee?”
“She’s laughing.”
“And tonight I’ll be the one who has to get up when she has a nightmare about it.”
“Oh relax. Here Kaylee, you can drive the truck now.”
He handed the remote control over to his seven-year-old daughter. She rammed the truck into the piano and backed it into the stereo speaker. Then she drove it into a pile of doll clothes in the corner of the room. These quickly wrapped themselves around the wheel and the truck stopped. Travis took the remote control from Kaylee.
“No honey, you can’t keep driving once the wheel gets jammed up like that. You’ll break it.”
He picked up the truck and tried to unwrap the clothes from the wheel. It was wound up tight. Kaylee watched him impatiently.
“Daddy, aren’t you going to get your tools and fix it?”
“Ok sweety, let’s do that.”
She followed him downstairs to his workshop, a small room that doubled as the laundry room. Some tools were hanging on a pegboard; others were arranged carefully in his toolbox. Travis fished a long nose pliers from his toolbox and started working the cloth out from the wheel well. The cloth started to rip a little, but he was finally making progress. Cynthia called down that dinner was ready. Travis gave his daughter a little nudge toward the stairs.
“You go on up or mommy will be angry.”
“What about you?”
“I’m almost done, I’ll be up in a second.”
Cynthia yelled down again and Kaylee scooted up the stairs while Travis continued pulling bits of torn cloth from the truck axle. When he finished that he turned on the truck but the wheel still wasn’t turning properly. He got out a screw driver and took the truck apart, careful to lay out each piece so he would know how to re-assemble it. He removed the axle and saw that the drive gear and been ground down. He would have to replace it somehow. He looked around his workbench, then the shelves above, hoping to find some small plastic wheel or gear he could use. Nothing. Instead he used a small rubber band as a sort of drive belt. This took a while since he had to get the tension just right so it wouldn’t slip, but not so tight that the band would break.
Occasionally he would hear Cynthia calling down for him, but this came less and less frequently until she finally left him alone. Time started flowing by, as it always did when he really got into a project like this. There was nothing more enjoyable than diving head first into solving some problem or puzzle. It was one of the things that had drawn him to become a lawyer. The practice of law was ninety-nine percent drudgery, but there was that one percent when he really got deep into a legal issue or research project, or drafting a complex legal brief. Time would stop completely and simultaneously fly by. It was this deep immersion in his work that he enjoyed. One percent of the time.
Travis tested his rubber band drive-belt. It wasn’t as good as the gear, but it would have to do for now. He carefully reassembled the truck, then drove it around his small work room, navigating around the laundry basket. His wife walked in and watched him for a moment, then sighed.
“Is this what you’re doing all this time, playing with that damned toy?”
“I fixed it, Cynthia.”
“Hooray for you. I fixed dinner, and yours is cold. Enjoy.”
She started to walk out but Travis picked up the truck and followed after her.
“Cynthia, I fixed it so Kaylee could play some more.”
Cynthia stopped on the stairs and turned to look down at him.
“Kaylee is asleep. Do you have any idea how long you’ve been down here goofing around? I’m going to sleep. Your food’s on the table.”
She went up to the second floor while Travis carefully placed the truck on top of the stack of dolls in the living room. He sat down at the dining room table and ate cold spaghetti. He got up and searched the fridge for a beer to wash it down with. There was none. He found an old bottle of red wine in the fridge door, but it tasted like vinegar and he dumped it down the drain. Travis wandered upstairs, careful not to wake Kaylee or Cynthia. He brushed his teeth, washed his face, and got into bed. When his eyes adjusted to the dark he realized Cynthia wasn’t there. She was sleeping in Cynthia’s room again. This was the third night this week. It was passive aggressive bullshit as far as he was concerned. Like he’s such a loser she can’t even bear to sleep in the same bed with him. It was hard enough for him to fall asleep lately, and knowing that she was still pissed off at him just made it harder. His mind worried over what he might have done differently to avoid this, or what he could or should have said. He imagined a million different scenarios. In some he came out the victor. In some he didn’t. None of it mattered. All it accomplished was preventing him from falling asleep.
Travis watched the clock. Time stood still again, but not in a good way. He was exhausted, but sleep would come only in fits and starts. Fragments of strange dreams, punctuated by uneasy wakefulness and repeated glances at the clock. This went on till morning. Soon it was late enough to get up, shower, and start his day, even though he felt like he’d never finished the last one. It had been this way for a while, and the lack of sleep was starting to take its toll.
