O parking lot: expanse of asphalt, temporary closet for our steel skins... mysterious midpoint between journey and destination. There you are spread out before me on a Sunday night, a black dark gateway between a hesitant September and the cold autumnal punishment of October.
I watch as an American minivan drives up alongside a European sports coupe. Three happy kids leap out of the car's backseat, arms brimming with toys, piling into the larger vehicle through its heavy sliding side-panel door. A woman and a man meet, heads bent, avoiding eye contact. The man hands her what appears to be an envelope, he gets back into the car, drives away quickly. As the van heaves and bounces with joyful children, the woman exhales deeply, her shoulders falling.
Another man and woman, sitting together in a nearby sedan. She's in the driver's seat. Both are still, gazing straight out the windshield for minutes on end. Their lips move, but neither shows any emotion or expression. In an instant, their faces are illuminated by lemon-colored blades of light that cut lengthwise through the shadows. A white pickup truck with a circular yellow flasher and a large "Security" decal on the side drives by, at an exceedingly slow rate of speed.
Farther away, more lights. Seven or eight figures gather around a whirling spotlight and an odd eight-foot-tall grey structure, one that looks like fabric-covered scaffolding... or maybe it's some sort of tent. What's going on, what is that? Are they shooting a commercial or something? An independent movie?
That's when the tow truck pulls up.
"Out of gas," I say after I roll down the driver's side window.
"Mmm-hmmm," the driver replies. He doesn't look at me, he just copies my driver's license and Triple-A numbers onto a clipboard.
I feel compelled to give some sort of explanation, although one wasn't asked for. "I thought I might have had at least two more miles in the tank, but I guess I didn't."
He hands back a short pile of plastic cards. "No, I guess you didn't."
O parking lot: land of memories, black palace of secret handjobs, great canvas of consumer dreams. May this song echo to the far corners of your under-appreciated pavement. Let it color in your cracked and worn division lines, may it sing your directional arrows ever in the direction of home.
