Certified Pre-Owned. It was another name for somebody else’s worn out ride. But cars seemed to sell themselves when Jeff Melbourne got hold of them. Salesman of the week. Of the month. Of the year. Twelve hours a day, five and a half days a week (Saturdays they closed early so the boss could make his tee-time). It wasn’t a glamorous job, but it paid. And he was good at it. They gave him the sales manager position and things were working out okay.

But while his days were spent on the car lot, his nights were spent following the police scanner. Mister Amazing had public appeal, even for a masked vigilante: the press loved him, women adored him, children idolized him. He had charisma and presence. He seemed to show up at just the right times. Every encounter was an event. Every appearance, a display. Good always prevailed. A beacon in Hudson City for twenty years.

But now, looking across a darkened street into the illuminated family room window where his two kids laughed and played with their mother and brand new father, he realized he wasn’t a hero at all. He was a failure. As a husband. As a Dad. As a person.

On the streets, stopping criminals, Mister Amazing was on top of the world. In private, Jeff Melbourne was losing his fragile grip on a fragile life.

All the way across town, far from this perfectly manicured landscape on this perfectly quiet cul-de-sac in this perfect little slice of upper-middle-class suburbia, there sat a double-wide trailer. In it was a half finished bottle of scotch calling his name from miles away. Next to it lay an old friend, one lonely bullet in the cylinder. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but it, too, waited for him. Much like she used to, but maybe not quite as happily.

Was it the long hours at work? Or the late nights doing god-knew what with god-knew who? Those secrets that he had to keep to protect his family? She was the only one who saw through his charming ruse. It was the reason they fell in love. The reason they got married. The reason he was unable to keep her.

So he sat here, night after night, week after week, across the street, avoiding the accusing street light, watching his family from afar. A family he lost. A family with a new life with a brand new high-class lawyer daddy. He was able to give them what Jeff never could. And it was eating him away, bit by bit. Glass by glass.

Like a responsible parent, she wanted to wait to have kids until she was settled, secure, and stable. Now he was forty years old, watching his six and eight year old from sixty feet away, as close as he’d been since she left. He was forty. Half his life was over. More than half, if he was lucky. Here he sat in the torn upholstery of the crew cab of his rusted out pickup, living alone in a trailer park with nothing more than booze and a bullet to keep him company. He was forty and the furthest thing from stable or secure.

He should have gotten a lawyer. Though he suspected that few would have been half as good as the pit-bull she hired. It was naïve of him to think she would’ve settled for anything but a clean break. And that’s what she got. Half of everything, right down the middle. Plus alimony. And child support. And the children.

A fragile life.

A fragile grip.

The police scanner bleated at him like a baby sheep calling for help. A robbery. A shooting. A car chase.

Jeff sighed heavily and turned the ignition. He turned it again when the engine didn’t turn over. And once more, since the third time was a charm. The truck coughed and sputtered to life.

He sighed again and gripped the wheel. Criminals were simple. Crime fighting was easy. It was something he could still control. Something that he still did well.

He gave one last goodbye glance through the illuminated family room window as the old pickup shambled away from the curb and out into the night.