Bad things always happen when I play hooky from work, but I had that "you deserve a break today" feeling, so I decided to take my chances. I packed up my Fender Twin and decided to park out on the Skyway, just wanting to listen to some tunes while I sat there in the car not going to work. Not much of a plan, and certainly not very well thought out, although I did bring along an extension cord long enough to run from the gas station on the corner to my unlikely parking spot on the busy road.
I spent an inordinate amount of time just deciding whether or not to park parallel or perpendicular to the curb. I tried both, but since there were no other cars parked anywhere in sight, I had no frame of reference. I decided to compromise and went with the angled approach, although there were no lines indicating that this was the correct choice.
I sat there for a while listening to the radio, as played through the Fender's two twelve inch speakers. It didn't sound particularly good, since it was a talk station anyway, but that was OK. It was me, doing what I wanted, making shit work while I avoided going to the job that I hated. Feeling a little proud, I stepped out of the car for a minute to have a beer with one of my friends who lived in a nearby apartment building.
"Come on in," the friend said, seeing my half empty beer bottle and offering me another.
"OK," I said, "but I can't stay long. I'm parked out on the street, and my amp is in the car."
He convinced me to stay long enough to finish the beer I had with me, plus the one he gave me. We talked about various conspiracies, from aliens to Armageddon, and I was starting to get that uncomfortable feeling one gets when something is not right somewhere. You don't know what or where, exactly, just that you have to leave. So, I excused myself and walked back out to my car.
Or, I should say, I walked back out to where my car used to be, because when I got there, it was gone. I kicked myself for staying too long in my friend's house, for ditching work and bringing my amp along with me, and for leaving my car parked in such a ridiculous spot. I should have known it would get towed.
I went back into my friend's house to ask for his assistance. I'd been looking on my phone, trying to google towing companies, but I couldn't type the words into the search bar for the life of me. I asked my friend if he knew the name of the towing company that was most likely to have towed my car.
"Death Suddenly," he said.
"Excuse me?" I said. "I just had my car towed, possibly stolen. I don't have time for any of your weird conspiracy shit."
"No," he said. "The name of the tow company is Death Suddenly Towing. That's the one my landlord uses, anyway."
I still couldn't get any words typed into my phone's search bar, but I had a brilliant idea: why not just ask the landlord? He'd know for sure whether or not he'd called the tow truck and what company he used. I excused myself and went to go knock on the landlord's door.
Silva from work was also hanging around, and he decided that he needed to go with me. The landlord wasn't a nice person, and I might require his particular diplomatic skills to get anything out of him. Silva was nothing if not a people person, so I agreed.
After a few knocks, the landlord opened the door a crack, squinting out at me suspiciously. He was wearing a wife beater and lazily dangling an empty beer bottle with one finger stuck in the mouth hole.
"What 'choo want?" he drawled.
Damned rednecks, I thought. He knew damn well what I wanted. He'd probably concocted this elaborate parking scam, in cahoots with his tow truck buddies. There weren't any "No Parking" signs on the street, probably because he'd torn all them down. They were probably hanging up in his redneck clubhouse with all of his other bullet-ridden trophy signs, right below the deer heads and between the Nazi and Confederate flags. I kept these thoughts to myself, however, and asked him directly about the car.
"I was wondering. I have a silver Honda Accord. No, I mean gold. Wait, no it's silver." For some reason, I couldn't remember the color of my own car. "It was parked right out front, and now it's gone. I'm wondering if it might have gotten towed, by any chance?" That was pretty diplomatic, I thought. I didn't need Silva after all.
"Well, I didn't have it towed, if that's what yer askin'. That would be Rodney. He's up in Number 8. But you best not bother him. He don't take kindly to interruptions. I better go wit 'choo."
We went to Number 8, and through the window, we could see Rodney, a fat black man in his 50s, fast asleep in his Lazy Boy. In front of him, just inside the door, was a big board with a lot of keys hanging from it. I spotted my keychain right away.
Geez, I thought, had I been that careless to just leave my keys in the car? I quietly opened the screen door and reached in and grabbed my keys off the rack. This was going better than I had thought. I had the keys, now I just needed to find the car.
The landlord told me that all the cars that got impounded for improper parking were stored in a loft in the back of the property. He led me to a decrepit old wooden building with broken windows and no visible ground floor entrance. We were going to have to climb up some rickety redneck fire escape made up of two extension ladders placed one on top of the other.
The landlord, who was apparently part squirrel, made it up no problem. I stared up at the unlikely configuration from the ground with unease, but I was determined to get my car back, so I nervously began to climb the first of the two ladders. When I'd gotten near the top, the second ladder fell away, and the ladder I was on suddenly became a lot less stable. It was barely catching the corner of the building, and it began to sway in breeze.
Before I had a chance to contemplate my long fall to the ground, and without getting any closure on my car situation, I woke up. I was none too pleased with myself, so rather than go back to sleep, I punished myself by staying up to dutifully chronicle the event.
