The desert doesn’t care about your plans. This was the first lesson Jack Write learned when he traded his graduate thesis on Kierkegaard’s concept of despair for a tool belt and a 1998 Ford F-150 with questionable AC. The second lesson: heat warps everything—glass, metal, morals.
Palm Springs at 3:17 PM was a study in thermal violence. Jack’s mobile home in Cathedral City (where the landscapers drove the same trucks as their clients, just twenty years older) currently held at 83 degrees—a technical victory over the 122°F baking the parking lot asphalt into a black mirror. His ceiling fan performed its Sisyphean duty, moving air that had given up on being cool hours ago.
The physics of it fascinated him—how the fan’s motor generated its own heat, how the blade friction created microcurrents of warmer air. Like most things in Jack’s life, the solution was also the problem. He took a pull from his Coors Light, condensation dripping onto the unpaid PG&E bill beneath it. The envelope’s transparent window showed numbers in red—$387.63, or roughly one window replacement job after materials.
His phone buzzed against the dinette table where Margaret Jones’ senior portrait still lived beneath the cracked glass. 1998. Back when AP Physics felt like the future instead of a museum exhibit. The caller ID said UNKNOWN, which in the Coachella Valley usually meant either a spa timeshare pitch or another marriage collapsing behind stucco walls.
“Jack’s Handyman Service.” He pitched his voice younger, the way people do when pretending their best years aren’t behind them.
A woman’s exhale—part relief, part nicotine. “The front window… there’s glass everywhere.”
Jack pictured the radial fractures before she described them. In ten years of fixing rich people’s mistakes, he’d learned:
- Sliding doors shatter in concentric circles
- Fists leave starburst patterns
- Lies have clean edges
“I can be there at five,” he said. “When the thermal mass stops trying to kill us.”
The House on Via Escuela
The rental property smelled like new money and poor decisions—lemon-scented cleaner over stale champagne. Jacklyn Song answered the door in a Reformation sundress (yellow, size 2, $348 retail) that clung to her hips like a secret. Her manicure said Yale but the nervous tic—right thumb worrying the space between her left index and middle finger—said something more interesting.
“You’re earlier than—”
“Thermal contraction,” Jack lied. “Glass is easier to remove before sunset.”
He followed her through a living room staged for Instagram—mid-century modern meets influencer minimalism. The broken window faced southwest, its spiderweb fracture suggesting sudden impact rather than gradual stress. Jack ran a finger along the muntin bar. “Suitcase, you said?”
Jacklyn’s throat moved. “It… slipped.”
In the reflection of the intact pane, Jack watched her pupils dilate—the body’s betrayal. The fracture pattern told the real story: something had hit this window hard and fast from inside the house. Something like a golf club. Or a fist wrapped in a designer belt.
“I’ll need to board it up tonight.” Jack unrolled his measuring tape. “Safety glass requires special order.”
Jacklyn’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, then toward the staircase. “I should… finish getting ready.”
As her footsteps receded, Jack inventoried the room:
- One shattered window ($387.63)
- Two empty Veuve Clicquot bottles ($90 each retail)
- One framed photo facedown on the bookshelf
He flipped it over. Jacklyn and a black-haired man at what looked like Art Basel. The man’s hand gripped her waist like a claim.
Phase Change
The plywood was cut, the glazier’s points removed, when the front door shuddered open.
Jin Choi stood haloed by the dying light—6’2″, 190lbs of curated muscle beneath a Visvim linen shirt. His Tom Ford sunglasses hid the eyes, but the jawline flexed like a warning.
“You.” The word landed between them like a dueling pistol.
Jack straightened, “Jackson Write.”
“Jin.” No last name offered. The handshake lasted exactly 0.5 seconds too long, pressure calibrated to intimidate but not quite fracture metacarpals. A man used to measuring his violence.
Upstairs, a drawer slammed. Footsteps—quick then measured—as Jacklyn descended. She’d changed into jeans and a black turtleneck despite the heat, the uniform of someone preparing for battle.
The three of them stood suspended in the desert’s golden hour:
- Jin’s breath (12% ABV, hints of barrel-aged resentment)
- Jacklyn’s perfume (Narciso Rodriguez, top notes of panic)
- Jack’s sweat (Cheap beer and CVS brand antiperspirant)
Outside, a hummingbird fought its reflection in the intact window. Somewhere beyond the San Jacintos, a cargo train whistled. The plywood waited.
Jin removed his sunglasses. “How much for the repair?”
” Four hundred.” Jack didn’t blink. “Safety glass requires—”
“I’ll pay 800.00 if you’re done and gone in the next hour.”
In the silence, the thermostat clicked over from 75 to 76 degrees.
BB Grey--musings 
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