Chapter 7: A Convenient Migraine

Chapter 7: A Convenient Migraine

The sun was low in the sky by the time Jake returned home, casting long, triumphant shadows across his freshly mown lawn. He had finished the job, the satisfying ache in his muscles a familiar counterpoint to the sharp, exhilarating hum of victory that still echoed in his mind. He parked the F-150, the cab filled with the honest scent of cut grass and sweat, and walked into the house feeling a profound sense of peace. The universe, for the moment, was perfectly balanced.

Sarah was in the kitchen, a frown creasing her brow as she spoke on the phone. She gestured for him to be quiet, her eyes wide with a familiar family-induced stress.

"...No, Grandpa, I don't think Jake would know. His truck is totally different... I know... I know it's a mess. Okay, I'll ask him when he gets in. Love you too. Bye."

She hung up and let out a long, weary sigh, rubbing her temples. "You just missed the fifth call in two hours. It's a full-blown family crisis."

"Let me guess," Jake said, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. "The Cavalier is officially deceased."

"Worse. It's not just dead, it's abandoned. The tow truck Grandpa called couldn't take it to their house, said it was a private company and the car was on a city road, so it had to go to the official impound lot. Now Randy and Billy are having a complete meltdown. Grandpa wants to know if you have any ideas on how to fix it for cheap."

Jake took a long, slow drink of water, the cool liquid a balm to his soul. The impound lot. It was an unexpected bonus, a beautiful escalation he hadn't even planned for. His simple act of mechanical justice was now tangled in a web of municipal bureaucracy and escalating fees. It was magnificent.

"Tell him I'll think about it," Jake said, his voice a carefully modulated mask of neutrality. He knew he wouldn’t have to. Desperation was a homing pigeon, and he knew exactly where it was headed.

The knock on the door came twenty minutes later, just as twilight was bleeding the last of the color from the sky. It wasn't a polite knock; it was a hesitant, desperate rap-rap-rap, the sound of people who had run out of options.

Sarah looked at him, her expression pleading. "Just hear them out?"

"I'll open the door," he said.

He swung the door open, and there they were, bathed in the warm, welcoming glow of his porch light. Randy and Billy Jenkins stood on his doormat like a pair of shipwrecked sailors. Randy’s wiry frame was hunched, his face pale and slick with a greasy sweat. Billy looked like a large, confused child on the verge of tears, his perpetually dull expression now sharpened by raw panic. They smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and failure.

"Hey, uh, Jake," Randy began, his shifty eyes unable to meet Jake's gaze, focusing instead on a point somewhere over his shoulder. "Sorry to bother you. We, uh… we got a problem."

"So I hear," Jake said, his voice flat. He didn't move, didn't invite them in. He made them stand on the threshold, supplicants at the gate.

"Yeah, see, the car… it just stopped," Randy stammered, wringing his hands. "Made a real bad noise, like that time I put diesel in the lawnmower by accident—" He cut himself off, realizing his mistake, his face flushing a blotchy red.

Jake’s expression didn’t change, but inside, a cold, hard diamond of satisfaction formed in his chest. I know, he thought.

"Anyway," Randy continued quickly, "it's dead. And they towed it. Sarah's grandpa said you're a whiz with cars, that you can fix anything. We were hoping… I mean, we'll pay you, of course. When we can. But we were hoping you could just… take a look at it? Maybe get it running so we can get it out of the impound?"

This was the moment. The beautiful, perfect moment he had been waiting for. The culmination of the stolen cans, the eighty dollars, the insolent wave, and the public humiliation on Maple Avenue. They were standing in his doorway, begging him—the man they had stolen from and mocked—to be their savior. To undo the very damage he had so meticulously inflicted. The sheer, uncut irony was intoxicating.

It was time for his performance.

Jake’s face, which had been a stony mask, suddenly slackened. He brought a hand to his temple, his fingers pressing into the skin as if warding off a great pain. He squinted, his eyes narrowing as if the soft glow of his own porch light was a blinding spotlight.

"Aw, man," he groaned, his voice dropping to a low, pained rasp. "You guys have the worst timing."

Sarah, who had been hovering in the hallway behind him, stepped forward. "What's wrong, honey?"

"It's this migraine," Jake said, not looking at her, his pained gaze still fixed on the cousins. "Came on about an hour ago, right when I got home. It's a bad one. The kind where sound feels like nails in your head."

He let the silence hang for a moment, letting them absorb the theatricality of his suffering. Randy’s face fell, the last glimmer of hope in his eyes sputtering out.

"Oh," Randy said, his voice small. "Right. Uh… sorry."

"I wish I could help, guys. I really do," Jake lied, the words smooth as fresh motor oil. "But I can barely stand here. Looking at an engine right now… listenin' to all that noise…" He shook his head, a gesture of profound, regretful helplessness. "I'd be useless to you."

He watched the full weight of their predicament settle upon them. Their last hope was gone. There would be no clever, cheap fix from Jake the handyman. There was only the cold, hard reality of the impound lot.

Randy's shoulders slumped in utter defeat. Billy just stared, his mouth hanging slightly open as he processed the finality of Jake’s refusal. They were adrift, and he had just pulled the last lifeboat from the water.

Then, Jake twisted the knife.

He let the pained "migraine" look soften into one of feigned sympathy. He lowered his hand from his temple. "Listen," he said, his voice still quiet but now laced with the tone of a man offering helpful, practical advice. "You guys need to move fast on that car."

"What do you mean?" Billy mumbled, speaking for the first time.

"The city impound," Jake explained, his voice calm and methodical, the voice of a man who knows how things work. "They charge you for the tow, that's maybe one-fifty, two hundred bucks right there. Then there's an administrative fee, probably another fifty. But the real killer is the storage fee. They charge you by the day. Forty, maybe fifty bucks a day, every single day it sits there. Weekends included."

He let them do the math. He could see the numbers clicking behind Randy’s panicked eyes, the dawning horror spreading across his face.

"You let that car sit there for a week," Jake continued, his tone chillingly helpful, "and you're already lookin' at over six hundred dollars just to get it back. And that's before you even pay a mechanic to look at an engine that sounds like it ate a 'bucket of bolts'." He used Sarah's phrase deliberately, a small, private nod to his own omniscience.

Randy went pale. Billy looked like he was going to be sick right there on the welcome mat. The abstract problem of a "dead car" had just become a terrifying, rapidly accumulating debt. They weren't just losing their ride; they were being financially bled dry by their own stupidity.

"I… we don't have that kind of money," Randy whispered, his voice cracking.

Jake gave a slow, sympathetic shrug, the gesture of a man who understands the harsh realities of the world. "Well," he said, his voice dropping back into a pained whisper as he put his hand back to his head. "I've really gotta go lie down. The light's killing me. Good luck with it, guys."

Without another word, he slowly, gently closed the door in their stunned faces, the click of the latch echoing like a gavel. He leaned against the door for a moment, the solid wood cool against his back. The house was silent. He could hear the faint sound of Sarah’s breathing behind him.

He turned around. The pained grimace was gone, replaced by a calm, placid expression. His migraine had miraculously vanished.

"Poor guys," Sarah said, her voice filled with genuine pity. "They just can't catch a break."

Jake met her gaze. "Nope," he said, the single word carrying the weight of a final verdict. "Some people just make their own luck."

He walked past her into the living room and sat down in his favorite chair. He felt a profound calm, a quiet satisfaction that was deeper and more potent than any burst of anger. He had not laid a hand on them. He had not raised his voice. He had simply built a better trap, and they had walked right into it. And as he sat there in the quiet of his orderly home, he listened to the faint sound of their footsteps shuffling away from his door, the sweet, sputtering symphony of their defeat.