He collapsed into the driver’s seat, slamming the door. The sound insulated him from the city traffic, replacing the roar of tires on wet asphalt with the frantic, unsteady sound of his own breathing. The adrenaline dump hit him like a physical blow. His hands, steady just two minutes ago, began to tremble violently. He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white, but the plastic felt alien and distant under his fingertips.
A cold sweat broke out across his forehead, mingling with the rain. His stomach cramped. He leaned over the center console, opening the passenger door just in time to dry heave onto the wet concrete gutter. Nothing came up. He hadn’t eaten since a stale bagel at six in the morning. This was the biological reality of violence. The movies never showed the aftermath, the horrific cocktail of cortisol and epinephrine flooding the nervous system, turning muscles to jelly, and making the mind race with paranoid jagged thoughts.
He had lost control. That was the truth of it. He sat back up, wiping his mouth with the back of his shivering hand, tasting salt and bile. He had let a twenty-something with an inflated ego drag him back into the dark room in his head. “I am a civilian,” he reminded himself, resting his forehead against the cold steering wheel. “I deliver food. I pay rent. I keep my head down.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. It vibrated against his thigh, an angry, persistent insect. He pulled it out, the cracked screen illuminating the dark cabin. New order available. 4.50. He had just potentially fractured a local sports star’s sternum, risked assault charges, and blown his anonymity all for a job that paid less than the cost of a gallon of gas. A hollow, self-deprecating laugh rattled in his chest. He tapped accept.
He turned the key. The Honda’s engine cranked, whining in protest before sputtering to life. The heater blew lukewarm dusty air into his face. He pulled away from the curb, merging into the sluggish artery of city traffic. For the next three hours, Seth became a ghost again. He ferried lukewarm pizza, leaking containers of tom yum soup, and squished fast food burgers to apartment complexes and office buildings. He trudged up concrete stairwells that smelled of weed and bleach. He stood under flickering porch lights handing over brown paper bags to people who never looked him in the eye.
But the silence in his car wasn’t empty anymore. It felt heavy, loaded. At a red light he picked up his phone. He opened a social media app. He didn’t search for his name. He didn’t have a digital footprint to speak of. He searched the name of the gym. It was the first result. A video shot vertically, shaky at first then steadying. The caption read, “Cameron gets folded by the DoorDash guy.”