THE WINDOW TO MY SOUL IS TINTED by Jason Hardung

My old pill dealer was always waiting on a settlement from a car crash she was in twenty years ago. She watched too much day time TV with the commercials of shady lawyers pointing their finger at the camera sternly and saying, “Are you a victim? You could be compensated.” “As soon as I get my settlement I’ll be rolling on new 22’s. I’ll get my son out of jail. I’ll take you out to eat at Chilis and we’ll even get appetizers. I’ll probably go to beauty school,” she’d say. “I like the spinach dip,” I’d say back to her. “Go on vacation. See the ocean. I’ve always wanted to ride a dolphin,” she’d add. Everybody needs a way out of their shitty lives, some sort of hope. Some people believe in God to get them through hard times and others wait on a settlement. It’s all the same. It’s all light in a dark world. It gives you a reason to keep going. Pray hard, wish harder. The windows to her soul were tinted just like her 1985 Cutlass Supreme. I didn’t have the heart to look into them and to tell her that the settlement was never going to come. Or that dolphins don’t like to be ridden—it’s just a myth of reality TV. So I’d sit there with her on the porch, watching for the mail man and talking about all the ways she could change her life with the money –wishing and hoping she was going to come off just one more pill.