“It could be snowing.” I responded.
The officers all nodded, impressed by my sage wisdom in this time of crisis. However a quick buzz on the police radio had them all piling back into their van. The man with the pot belly having scored the passenger seat leaned out of the window and yelled to me “Hang in there and good luck!” before pounding the side of the passenger door as the van sped off in a cheery belch of black smoke.
I stood there alone on the street, the bustle of traffic humming around me as I watched car after car swerve around my disabled vehicle like a drunken game of Frogger.
Eventually Fred and Kelly returned, left overs from dinner in hand, where they retreated upstairs to their fourth floor apartment. A hour ticked by and the police van did a drive by, the pot belly man yelling out the window as they passed, “You still here?” with me giving a sloppy wave in return. But just as the frazzled remains of my composure were about to give way there on the horizon, like the goddess Aphrodite rising from the sea appeared a bright red truck with the word LOCKSMITH written in bold letters across its side.
The man gave me wary look as I jabbered in desperate joy at his arrival. Fred appeared by my side, summoned by my squeal of joy that had floated up four stories, to hover anxiously by my side while the locksmith calmly surveyed the situation. With the careless shrug of a seasoned professional he put my key in the ignition, took a pair of pliers from his pocket, and with the additional leverage cranked hard on the ignition which miraculously turned over and the car sputtered to life. I swooned against the door frame at the painful simplicity of the fix until the man with a satisfied smack of his hands said, “that’ll be $300 dollars. I’d carry a pair of pliers with this car from now on. Subaru’s are known to develop this problem.”
I continued my to jabber my unceasingly gratitude while the back of brain screamed at the price tag for a pair of pliers. I shoved the man my credit card uncaring in my joy at having the car up and running.
With a jaunty nod, the locksmith jumped back into his mighty red stead and rode off into the dim evening light leaving me alone with a running car, an ex-boyfriend, and a load of another woman’s stuff.
Fred and I stood on the corner in silence for I don’t know how long until he turned to me and asked in a quiet voice, “Would you like a ride home?”
“Yes…yes I would” I responded flatly.
“Okay but you’re going to have to ride on Kelly’s lap because there’s no where else for you to sit.”
I turned and looked him blankly. My brain refusing to compute what was just said. The words were pebbles against stone, just bouncing off the exterior of my skull. Ride on her lap? I was going to ride on her lap??? But instead of a scream of rage all that bubbled from my lips was: “I need chocolate.”
I turned on my heel and walked to the cafe on the corner and stood in the center of the empty cafe blankly staring at the four walls. The young man behind the register, in his muddy brown uniform, sensing the maniac energy roiling off me asked nervously if he could help me.
“Chocolate. I need chocolate.” Was all that I could managed.
“We have hot chocolate. Would you like that?”
“Chocolate.” I responded flatly.
“Ookkayy… one hot chocolate coming up.”
The boy slid the cup of over the counter and I clutched it like a rosary as I left the shop, a $5 dollar bill abandoned behind me, to walk back to my car where Fred and Kelly were seated happily inside the now cozy warm vehicle.
“Are you ready to go?” Fred asked chirpily.
“I have chocolate.”
“We can squish!” Kelly offered and I envied her blissful ignorance of the next 40 minutes.
With a resigned sigh with the singular thought of get home… get home now… running in my head, I slid into the car and positioned myself on Kelly’s lap which was surprisingly comfortable given her much larger frame. In order to distract myself from the bizarreness of the whole ordeal I started singing an ode to chocolate as my fingers threatened to crush the delicate paper cup in my hands. “sweet chocolate, oh how I love theeeeee! Chocolate how I love thee oh come all ye chocolate, oh come all yee chocolate, oh come all yee chocolate, oh come to me!!”
This continued through Manhattan, across the Brooklyn bridge, and down into Brooklyn proper until we arrived in front of my apartment. The chocolate song had grown to have three verses and a singular chorus that Kelly and Fred sung along to. The poor paper cup in the meantime I had been shredded to tiny bits that fluttered to the sidewalk as I slid out of my car.
I watched in silence as Fred, ran around to give me a huge hug. “Thanks so much for everything!! I’ll have the car back in a few days.” And took off with my car, Kelly, and the tattered remains of my infatuation. I went upstairs, my trudging steps, opened by fridge, pulled out the ‘emergency’ wine bottle and spent the rest of the evening getting well and truly drunk.
A week later Fred returned my car and three months later I traded my car in for a brand new vehicle, one that had a push button ignition. And yet when the flowers started to bloom my phone rang again and it was Fred. With a happy tune that rang with the voice of someone loving spring he asked, “Hey, can I borrow your car?”
“No.” I responded and hung up the phone.
And I breathed my first free breath in 3 years. The curse was lifted and I was free! And to this day I have never let anyone borrow my car again…
©2020 by Leila Ghaznavi. All rights reserved.