He lived his life in the background of things, at work, at home, in life. He didn't really mind, as he didn't know there was any other way to live really. Since he was born, his destiny was to work in his father's office. Do what his father wanted. Ask no questions. That was no problem for him. It fit his personality perfectly. It was a problem though for his older brother. His father and older brother fought like cats and dogs. That's because they were so much alike. Two alpha males fighting for position. But eventually his brother came back after college, worked for his father, rose in the ranks, and took over the business after the father's death.
Carl, that was the younger brother's name, hated to fight. He did whatever his father wanted, but ultimately this made his father not think much of him. Fortunately he was good with numbers. Not good at all with people, but numbers were his thing. He liked them very much. So he became a valuable, though not that respected, asset to the firm.
He spent the day in the back room, out of sight of the clients, monitoring an array of computer monitors. He tracked other people's wealth or debt, watched the price of stocks, and told his brother, and the other financial advisors, what to do to make everyone money. He was very good at it. Almost a savant, in which stocks to pick, to make a killing. He didn't really care about money himself. Only that he had enough of it for his cars.
Originally, it had been his Father he had reported to. He had liked it better then. His Father had always given him little words of encouragement, even if his Father looked down on him a bit. But he was gone now, and his older brother had taken over the business. His brother tolerated him, because he was valuable for information, but otherwise he never had a kind word for him.
Carl lived at home with his mother, his father having died five years ago. They would watch TV at night in the basement family room, the lights turned down low, eating dinner on TV trays, watching game shows. His mother was very fond of game shows, and doing cross word puzzles. She still drove, though not well, and took herself to the Monday, Wednesday, Friday senior center card games and bingo.
Carl would spend the rest of his evenings primarily building model cars. He had dozens he had completed, lined up carefully on shelves under clear plastic boxes to keep dust off of them. No one was allowed to touch them. In fact, very few people ever saw them. That was ok with Carl. At least they were safe.
He also loved real cars. 1950s through 1970s classics and had a number of them in the garage, and reluctantly a few outdoors in the weather. All were carefully protected under tarps. No one dare look at, and certainly never touch one. One of his coworkers touched one once, and Carl had to spend hours polishing the fingerprints out. He didn't talk to the coworker again for quite some time.
To get to work he had to drive one. It made him nervous that it would get scratched or rained on. Winter was hell. Sometimes he would call his brother to pick him up if conditions were too bad. The car sat in the driveway carefully protected.
Once at work, he had the difficult task of picking a parking place. Now he felt one of them was "his". One next to the curb, so only one car was parked next to his, but not under a tree, the sap was a killer. But often the place was taken and he got very upset. When he did find a spot, he carefully took photos of all the surrounding cars noting the make, year, color, and license plates of the cars on either side. He would even visit the parking lot several times during the day, to see if any new cars were parked next to his.
One lunch, he came out and saw a small scratch on the passenger side door. It got him extremely upset. There was no car there now, so he looked at his phone photos and found out what the car was there earlier. Sure enough the color matched. He was going to get to the bottom of this.
He waited around, and sure enough the offending car arrived back in the lot at the end of lunch. The car parked in a different place and Carl watched as a woman got out of the car with a bag in her hand and walked over to a store and opened the door. She went into a store called, Killer Cuts, beauty salon.
Carl walked over to the store totally miffed. He wasn't the sort to yell and scream in anger. No his was more, a guilting thing, whining. He had spent his life keeping his cars spotless. How could people be so thoughtless? And he also wanted money to fix it. These thoughts raced through his mind.
But when he opened the door it was like he was on a different planet. A driving music beat was playing. A number of women were sitting in chairs arrayed along a wall of mirrors having their hair cut, shaved, others having their hair colored all sorts of strange colors in another area. Others were sitting in chairs looking at their phones or chatting. Behind or in front of the chairs stood other women, cutting, coloring, shampooing, and drying. It was a madhouse of noise. He stood there frozen just inside the door. He didn't see the woman from the car at first, but then he saw her step out from behind a curtain in the back.
She was medium height, slim, with numerous tattoos on her arms, and a row of earrings on both of her ears and a nose stud. Her black reddish streaked hair was severely cut on one side, with a pattern cut into it. Her hair on the other side puffed up a little before falling well below her shoulders. Numerous rings were on her fingers and her wrists covered in bracelets. She was wearing a loose black tee shirt and pants.
Carl finally gathered himself and walked over to her.
"You know you hit my car" he threw the words at her as he crossed the room.
She had no idea someone was talking to her and kept arranging her tools for her next client. Carl got closer
"You hit my car. What are you going to do about it".
She turned around seeing Carl coming at her and got scared. And put the chair between herself and Carl.
"You hit my door. How could you do such a thing?"
Now she was truly worried a madman was going to attack her. She pulled her phone out of her hip pocket.
"I'm going to call the police. Get out of here".
This seemed to both shock and dismay Carl.
"Go ahead. You're the one in the wrong. You hit my car. How could you do that?"
His shoulders seemed to slump, and he seemed ready to cry. He appeared to be truly in anguish over the siituation. He no longer seemed a threat, but more like a grown up child, who just had his toy taken away.
She came out from behind the chair.
