DMV, page 1
DMV
Bentley Little
Cemetery Dance Publications
Baltimore
2023
Copyright © 2023 by Bentley Little
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Cemetery Dance Publications
132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7
Forest Hill, MD 21050
http://www.cemeterydance.com
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-883-7
Front Cover Artwork © 2023 by Elderlemon Design
Digital Design by Dan Hocker
ONE
No one hated him more than his fans.
As he always did after a new book was released, Todd Klein went online to check out reader reviews of the novel. There were only eight at the moment, and, as usual, none of them were kind. One stated simply that Across the Divide was the first and last book of his that the reviewer would ever read. Two lamented that while he had once been a good writer, lately his work had gone precipitously downhill. Three declared that his work was derivative of other, better authors. And two just flat-out trashed him, criticizing not only the new novel but his older ones, for being poorly written with flat characters and unbelievable plots, before announcing that they were no longer going to read any of his books. As in the past, he was tempted to sign in under a fake name and write a great review, contradicting everything that everyone else had said. But he was not really a computer guy and didn’t know how to disguise his identity, and the last thing he wanted was for someone to find out what he’d done and be publicly humiliated.
Todd sighed. Why did he let this online bullshit get to him? His last book had sold a hundred and fifty thousand copies, nearly twice as many as the one before it. That should have made him happy, but the fact that 130 of those 150,000 people had written online reviews, and 70 of those 130 had slammed him, had left Todd feeling depressed. It was a statistically insignificant number of readers, he knew, but that didn’t make any difference. He remembered hearing, years ago, that for every letter a U.S. senator received, it was assumed that a thousand other constituents felt exactly the same way. That was his belief as well. Most people, he figured, were too lazy to make an effort and comment on his work, but he had no doubt that a huge swath of them agreed with the sentiments expressed by those who did.
Rosita walked in on him without warning, before he could toggle out of the screen, and saw immediately what was going on. “Stop reading those,” she said.
“I’m not,” he lied.
“Then what are you doing?” She reached over his shoulder, moved the mouse and closed the tab.
“I was just curious about what people are saying.”
“Online people? You know what they’re saying. The same things they always say.”
Todd didn’t respond.
“Ignore those assholes,” his wife told him. “It got good reviews, it’s selling well. Do you really give a damn what Joe Blow from Kokomo, MO thinks about your book?”
He raised an eyebrow. “‘Joe Blow from Kokomo, MO?’ Where’d you come up with that?”
“You’re not the only creative one in the family.”
He held up his hands. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. I shouldn’t waste my time.”
She waited several seconds for him to continue. “But…?” she prodded.
“But nothing.”
She sighed. “It’s an addiction. That’s what it is. I should just cut off all internet acccess in this house.”
He grinned up at her. “I’d still have my phone.”
“You’re sick,” she told him. “You’re a masochist and you’re sick. Anyway, get ready. It’s time for dinner.”
Todd ordinarily made their meals, since he was the one who worked at home, but when Rosita was off, she liked to cook, and he’d gotten spoiled over the past few weeks. Budget cuts had caused the county library to furlough a third of its workers, and during that time she’d been cooking up a storm. Tonight, she’d made shrimp gumbo from a recipe she’d found in an old Paul Prudhomme cookbook, and Todd was definitely going to miss this level of culinary sophistication when she went back to work next week. They’d probably have enough leftovers for a day or so, but after that it would be back to his usual rotation of spaghetti, tacos, burgers and chili.
They ate, as always, at the dining room table while listening to the national news from the television in the living room.
“I’m going out to lunch with Tori tomorrow, so you’ll be on your own,” Rosita told him during a commercial break.
“That’s fine.”
“You can either heat up the gumbo, or there’s a leftover salmon quesadilla.”
“Or I could make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
She grimaced. “Or that. By the way, what time’s your DMV appointment?”
“Ten,” Todd said, irritated by just the thought of it.
“Think you’ll even be out of there by lunchtime?”
“Who knows?” The very idea of dealing with the DMV aggravated him. Not only had he had to get a smog check for his car earlier in the year, but now he actually had to go down to the office and take the written test in order to renew his license. He hadn’t had to take the test since first moving to the state, back when he started college. Since then, he’d received all of his license renewals through the mail. Unfortunately, he’d had two tickets this year, as well as a small accident, and apparently that was enough to trigger an automatic test requirement. One of those tickets he shouldn’t even have gotten. He’d been halfway through an intersection when a yellow light had turned red, but the cop who pulled him over said that he’d run a red light. He tried arguing his way out of it, to no avail, and had felt so strongly that he was in the right that he declined traffic school and showed up for his court appearance. But the judge—Harold Boorman, and if that name ever came up on a ballot Todd was voting against him—believed the officer’s false story, forcing Todd to pay the fine.
Now he had to take the written test.
It occurred to him that he probably should have looked for practice tests on the DMV website, or even examples of actual tests that people might have posted online. It still wasn’t too late, so he did exactly that after dinner, and found different versions available on several websites. He took all of the tests, missing either zero or a single question on each. As long as he missed less than three on the real test, he would pass, so Todd felt good as he shut off the computer.
In the morning, he awoke with a sense of dread. It was a feeling he remembered well from high school and college: testing anxiety. The concern was irrational—he had always been prepared for exams and had always done well—but he’d experienced it nonetheless, and it had returned today with the prospect of taking the driver’s test.
He shaved, showered and dressed, intending to make himself oatmeal for breakfast, but when he walked out to the kitchen, Rosita was already sliding an omelet from the frying pan onto his plate. “You need some protein,” she said. “Brain food.”
“For what?”
“Your test.”
“I need brain food when I’m writing, not when I’m taking a driver’s test that every half-witted sixteen-year-old passes.”
“I heard you mumbling in your sleep last night.”
He took a bite of the omelet. Delicious.
She sat down across from him. “You seemed stressed.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But I’ll be fine. I drive every day. And I took some practice tests online and passed with flying colors.” He took another bite. “Not that I don’t appreciate the breakfast.”
“I even made coffee.”
“And I thank you.” He got up, pouring himself a cup.
“You’d better go early. Even with an appointment, you’ll still probably have to wait in line.”
“It’s seven o’clock!”
“I’m not saying now. But you’d better get out of here by nine and not wait til the last minute.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said again.
Rosita sipped her own coffee. “Suit yourself.”
He did end up leaving at nine, even though the DMV was only a ten-minute drive from their house. Sure enough, there was a line of people outside, snaking along the sidewalk in front of the building. Since there were no parking spots, he had to drive slowly up and down the aisles several times before finally seeing the taillights of a van that was pulling out and grabbing that vehicle’s space.
Todd assumed, correctly, that the outside line was for those people who had not made appointments. Walking next to the queue and up to the building’s entrance, he passed a diverse group of men and women typing on their phones, filling out forms on the backs of hardcover books, or reading over their copies of the DMV study guide. At the front of the line, an official-looking woman was guarding the glass double doors. He informed her that he had a ten o’clock appointment, showed his confirmation printout, and she opened the door on the left, allowing him to enter.
Inside, lines were everywhere. The gigantic single room that took up most of the building’s interior was split into two sectors by an unbroken counter that used a series of dividers and right angles to differentiate between departments. The area behind the counter was far larger than the area in front of it, and people were queued up before each of the individual sections, where signs suspended from the roof indicated the names of specific departments.
Following instructions from a uniformed guard posted just inside the entrance, Todd moved to the tail end of the longest line, one which snaked around a half-dozen roped stanchions arranged in a zigzag pattern on the filthy tile floor. The Asian woman in front of him was wearing a surgical mask, and Todd thought that was probably a good idea. There were too many people here, shoved too close together, and from the smell of the room, not all of them practiced the best hygiene. The place was a pathogen’s paradise, and when a tall, red-headed, Ichabod Crane-looking guy passed by on his way out, coughing without covering his mouth, Todd held his breath for as long as he could, not breathing until the man was safely out the door.
It had been a long time since he’d been here, and he had forgotten how chaotic and disorganized the experience was. His line, Todd noticed, ended quite a ways up ahead, where a very large, angry-looking, blue-uniformed man blocked anyone from progressing further. As Todd watched, the man looked at the form presented to him by the first woman in line and directed her to the proper window.
As far as he could tell, no one from the non-appointment line outside was getting in the building at all.
Shuffling forward inch by inch, he wished he’d charged his phone or at least picked up a copy of the driver’s test pamphlet so he could study while he waited. Instead, he stood in line, bored. According to a clock on the right wall, it was nine-forty, and as the time slowly passed and the line moved incrementally forward, he began to believe that the only reason the clock was displayed so prominantly was to torture people.
Fifty minutes later, he had finally reached the front of the line. After ignoring him for several minutes, the hostile behemoth blocking his way asked to see his paperwork. Todd handed over his printout, and the uniformed man quickly perused it before passing it back.
“I’m not sure why you’re in this line,” the man said. He pointed to another column of people against the far wall. “You’re supposed to be over there.”
Todd jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The guy back there told me to get in this line.”
“He was wrong.” The man pointed toward the wall. “Over there.”
Not just annoyed now but genuinely angry, Todd proceeded to the far end of the building, getting in place behind an over-sexualized teenage girl who was being held far too familiarly by her rough, heavily muscled father. When this was all over, he was complaining to everyone he could possibly think of, from the manager of this DMV branch all the way up to the governor. This was ridiculous.
The line crept forward. Slowly. Ahead, in the wall to his left, was a door, and when he finally reached it, Todd saw that it led outside. Through the smoked glass, he saw what looked like a fast food outlet’s drive-through lane, packed with a line of vehicles waiting to take their driving tests. A black Nissan Sentra was at the head of the line, and Todd watched as a man with a clipboard spoke to the driver of the Sentra through the car’s open window, then walked to the front of the vehicle, opened the hood and conducted an inspection.
Cliff.
The name popped into his head, though Todd hadn’t thought of it in years. Decades, even.
Cliff was the man who had administered his first driving test. He’d been living in Park Rapids, Minnesota, where he’d been born and raised, and his dad had accompanied him to the Department of Motor Vehicles so he could take the test and get his license. His mom had stayed home, promising him a special meal if he passed.
Passing, Todd figured, should be no problem. Not only had he aced Driver’s Ed in school the previous semester, but his dad had been taking him out on the back roads to practice ever since he was a little boy. Too short to reach the pedals at first, he’d sat on his father’s lap, steering while his dad braked and accelerated for him.
But Cliff had been the DMV employee who’d given him the test.
They encountered Cliff even before reaching the spot where the test was to begin. Sitting in the station wagon, waiting behind three other cars, Todd saw a beefy man wearing mirrored shades, a red baseball cap and a pale green windbreaker stride purposefully past another DMV employee toward the small line of vehicles. He stopped next to the Volkswagon directly in front of them. Todd had shut off the engine while they waited, as his dad had told him to do, and both of their windows were open to let in some fresh air, so he could hear the entire exchange.
There was no preamble. “When you are waiting in line at the DMV, you will turn off your car radio. And you will never play the radio so loud that you will not be able to hear an approaching siren. Do I make myself clear?”
Apparently he did, because the driver of the Volkswagon immediately turned off his radio, which disappointed Todd because he’d enjoyed hearing the music while he waited.
“And shut off your engine,” the man ordered. “You’re wasting gas. When it’s time to advance, turn your engine on, drive forward, then turn it off again. You are off to a bad start, missy, and if you ever hope to pass your test, I suggest you heed my advice.”
He turned and walked back the way he had come.
Todd and his dad looked at each other. His dad was smiling, on the verge of laughing, but Todd didn’t find it all that humorous. He found it even less humorous when the DMV man who walked out to the car ahead of them was a short older fellow, and the guy who approached their station wagon was the beefy man in the red cap and mirrored shades.
“Howdy,” the man said. “My name’s Cliff.”
The confrontation with the Volkswagon driver should have been enough of a warning, but Todd really knew he was in trouble when he heard that Howdy. It was a bad sign, and things only got worse when the man began kicking his tires, then poked his head in the window and said, “Do you really think these tires are road worthy?”
“Yes, we do. Because they are,” Todd’s dad said. “Those are snow tires—”
“Sir?” Cliff said coldly. “Please step out of the vehicle. Your son is the one taking the test, not you. You need to wait inside on the bench.”
Todd was afraid his dad was going to argue and talk back, dooming his chances before he even got out of the parking lot, but his father obviously knew enough not to antagonize the man because he gave Todd a supportive pat on the shoulder and got out of the car without saying a word.
Cliff took his place in the front seat, strapped on his shoulder harness and said, without preamble, “Start the car.”
Todd did so, then made a big deal about checking the placement of the side and rearview mirrors, though both were already at the proper angles. His shoulder harness was already on, but he tugged on it anyway, just to let the examiner know that strapping himself in was a step he usually performed upon getting into the car.
“Put the car into gear, then move forward and pull on to the street whenever it is safe to do so,” Cliff told him. “When you pull on to the street, make a right turn.”
He wished the man wasn’t wearing those mirrored sunglasses; Todd found them intimidating. His hands were sweaty on the steering wheel, and he kept his eyes glued straight ahead, afraid to even glance at his passenger. Through his peripheral vision, he saw that Cliff was writing something on the form attached to his clipboard, and he hoped and assumed he was receiving high marks, since he was pretty sure he was doing everything right.
Once on the street, Todd followed Cliff’s instructions: merging into the left lane, making a U-turn at an intersection, driving into a neighborhood, parallel parking. Then the man said, “Drive back to the office and pull into the lane to the right of the building.”
“How did I do?” Todd ventured to ask.
Cliff did not answer, and they drove the rest of the way back to the DMV in silence.
He pulled behind the Volkswagon on the right side of the DMV and turned off the ignition. The Volkswagon driver was out of his car and grinning as his examiner handed him a form.
