A Novel Approach – Intervention the Novel, FIRST DRAFT, please feel free to give feedback.

Jane Jordan finished locking down the convertible top of the candy apple red, 1957, classic Corvette and fit her lithe, aerobically perfect, body into the pristine leather seats of the car’s cockpit as she struggled to avoid thinking about her husband Dick.  She cranked Van Halen rock and roll at old school volumes and scanned the road for cops and then for drivers she might be able to push into their own road rage.  The distraction was welcome. If she allowed her thoughts to focus on him her mind spun into a complex interlacing group of reasons for hating him and the spin was hard to control, especially when she felt so tantalizing close to being rid of him.  

The irony wasn’t lost on Jane that Dick angered her even more than losing control — even while he was usually the sole reason she lost that control.  She had learned that it was more effective to only have a slightly out of focus thoughts about him because that fueled her desire to take the necessary, but unsavory, steps that were necessary for her to take care of her future.  Of course she never lacked reasons, small and large, for hating Dick.  That he was so god damned nice and hard to hate only made her hate him more; irony at every turn.  

She wiped conflict from her mind and focused on the hatred, on the fact that he was screwing with the personal Zen she had paid thousands of dollars and several months trying to learn to bring by simple willpower.  Her yoga instructor, who Jane only listened to because of his perfect abs and killer ass, had been insisting that personal Zen could simply not be forced.  She knew that was bullshit, every worthwhile act was simply a manifestation of will.  As it to prove her point, Jane manifested her intention on the convertible by muscling it into a torturous axel-grinding corner out of the office parking lot.  Her eyes glanced for traffic, dismissed any small approaching danger, and focused on extracting the most visceral pleasure possible from the car.

She stomped the accelerator like an angry dominatrix going after a cheating husbands testicles. Smoke spun away from the tires as the car launched into traffic.  Having the white top down made it easier for her to hear the shrieks as the Corvette’s tires, stereo, and startled drivers screamed at various decibels and degrees of surprise as Jane aimed the classic car through traffic.  

Jane glared at other drivers and used the ‘Vette like a highway projectile.  Fueled with the gnawing anticipation of the upcoming battle with Dick, she whipsawed the ‘Vette through head snapping lane changes and across multiple lanes. Jane stretched her body up to get her short cropped hair more fully into the surge of wind that invisibly painted the air jetting over her racing convertible.  

She drove like a Hollywood stuntman on crack.  It didn’t matter that this was her third ‘Vette in five years.  The first transmission had not been up to the task of Jane’s shifting abuse and the clutch died in a blistering seizure under her forceful boot.  The second car’s undercarriage gave up after she repeatedly forced the car to crest hills at speeds that generated metal crushing air-time.  The dealer who sold the classic cars to Jane at a premium price, had, just today said this was his last sale to her.  He whined that he “could not justify allowing her to continue to destroy great American automotive artworks of metal.”   Jane didn’t even bother to argue, she could always find another car dealer, but it had to be a man who loved the cars he sold even as he could be bought by a little extra profit. Whoring the thing he loves for a few extra bucks.  Not for the first time, she thought, “Cars and men, so much alike, something to be used until depleted and replaced with a better model.”  

The smell of smoldering tires assaulted Jane as she wondered if her plan to upgrade her husband to a new model would work.  The doubt the question expressed in her mind was short lived.  Jane Jordan didn’t allow doubt in herself, her employees, her friends or even her mentally disturbed patients.  Even not allowing for doubt, she couldn’t resist a flash of concern about her co-conspirator at the facility; the one person Jane had not been able to dominate — so many risks necessary to complete an audacious plan and to have a potential scapegoat.  She only had one person who fit the profile Jane needed to shift blame from herself. Horns blasted Jane’s mind back to the traffic as the tires of the ‘Vette curbed hard from the drift in Jane’s mind.  Jane manhandled the steering of the car back into line. She would simply have to will things into place, even with the scapegoat.

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