Undisclosed Parking Lot

Down the hill at the drugstore, I saw that Mountain Dew is back in cans. Duly noted, but I was shopping for a Coke. There were only plastic bottles, twenty-ouncers that cost $1.79 and don’t hold a chill.

You know that feeling when you have to scram, just for ten minutes? I burned through five minutes driving to the brown bottle, the one that would prop my eyes open for the rest of the day. For my last five minutes, this was the plan: sit in the parking lot and stare up at the sparrow’s nest in the “a” of the pharmacy sign. If history is a guide, someone in a red shirt will climb a ladder soon, reach his hand into the hollow, and slide the home into a Hefty.

“What is UP with this heat?” a woman said to her friend as they struggled out of the Toyota parked next to me. I looked over when their doors slammed, and my eye fell to a pattern of chewed gum and cigarettes at their feet. Dashes and dots. Morse code for “Three minutes remaining,” pronounced in a Blade Runner voice.

I cracked the seal on the soda, gulped, and leaned into the void of the driver’s door. The little black bristles that ate the window brushed against my cheek. When they grow up, they’ll line an escalator and catch chewed gum and cigarettes.

Disclosure: I wasn’t wearing underwear. Not in a sexy way, in a mountain-of-laundry way. Remember those old Underalls ads? Like it was a felony to have panty lines show through your drawers. The camera should have panned up to the woman’s face so she could say, hey, cut me some slack, it’s the 70’s and thongs haven’t been invented yet. P.S. Stop looking at my butt.

I drove home boosted with corn-syrup serotonin. Man, that lady has such a pulled-together stoop. Every day is New MLS Number Day at her house, how does she do it, dang! “Hi!” Wave. Oh, I like that guy because he lets his dog walk way out in front of him like he’s not supposed to. Wow, there are my kids waiting for me in the driveway. Two seconds remaining. Yes, I got the toothpaste. I know I just got some yesterday, but we needed more today. Thanks, monkeys, I’m really glad to be back, too! I am so, so glad to be back.