/yesod

Tag: car

  • parking

    At the gateway of the ramp, I take the ticket from the mechanism and slyly point out that we can go through the first level without being detected. My companion is skeptical but follows along as we pass through the gate without being stopped.

    On the other side, a woman in uniform stops us for confirmation and I show her the ticket. She waves us on but my feet lose their purchase on the ramp and I begin the slip away, falling upwards into the sky, pulling her along with me. 

    I tell her that she has to be in trouble for me to be able to do anything, that my own power cannot be activated unless another is in peril. 

    “Help me,” she says unconvincingly at first. “Help me.”

    It does not work, though her sincerity increases as the danger grows and I jerk awake.

  • the breakfast date

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 15th, 2001]

    …and I am sitting there in Nate’s diner waiting for her to arrive. Finally, my time running short, I get up to leave. At the counter, the night shift waitress turns over the reign to the day shift. Nate stands, friendly and smiling wryly with his shirtsleeve pinned up to this left shoulder, a war injury I assume — perhaps mistakenly. While the women bicker over tips and time clocks, Nate hands me a bag. “On the house,” he says. Because I have been stood up yet again by my breakfast date.

    He smiles as I leave, wading through the snow to my car.

    And when I wake, it is summer and I realize that somewhere between the diner and my car, I lost the bag Nate had given me, its paper bottom stained dark and greasy from the warm chorizo and eggs he had prepared special for me out of pity.