Victor Has a Night Out by Martin Brick

This is the scent of smoke lingering in the car,
which came from the cigarette,
held in the long elegant fingers of the redhead,
who would not have gotten into a 97 Civic,
but would get into a new BMW z4,
which is exactly why Victor took the BMW,
though his father was out of town on business and hid the keys.

This is the scent of smoke that was easily detected,
because the car smelled of air-freshener,
which Victor simply took from the bathroom and sprayed the shit out of the interior,
to hide the fact that an elegant redhead lit a cigarette in his father’s car,
which he was using on the sly.

A simpler scenario would be that Victor himself was smoking,
which he might try,
or one of his knuckle-headed friends might try,
but certainly not in the BMW,
because he would be too afraid,
and so it must have been something so amazing,
which could override all mechanisms of fear,
which would offer rewards possibly justifying any punishment.

And Victor’s father remembered the scent of cigarette smoke,
and remembered the redheaded girls at the bars of his youth,
who would never get into his Plymouth Volare,
because there were boys with Chargers and Mustangs,
and if Victor had a chance to be one of those boys for a night,
to feel that rush,
who was he to deny it.

Victor Has a Night Out first appeared in a slightly different form on the flash fiction blog 52/250: The Year of Flash.

© Martin Brick

Martin Brick was raised in rural Wisconsin, but now lives in Columbus Ohio. His fiction has appeared in Sou”Wester, The Vestal Review, Pindeldyboz, and other places, both online and in print. He is a past Pushcart nominee and former editor of Wisconsin Review.

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