Heart of Parkness

Earl Fowler

Must be somewhere (sweet life) to be found (out there somewhere for me) instead of a concrete jungle (jungle), where the living is harder.

But for now, the lot was alive with the sound of clanging carts and the occasional scream of a toddler, lost in the labyrinthine aisles, discarded fast-food wrappers and tramped-on Starbucks cups solidified into cement-like blobs.

Veni, vidi, venti.

The sun had dropped at a slack, semi-comatose pace, more like Foreman in the eighth than Liston in the first, but the heat was still clinging to the asphalt like an overzealous ex. Me, I was sweating like a Republican Speaker in the adult movie section of a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood as I squinted through the windshields of a dozen identical utes and SUVs.

Somewhere out there was my car. Somewhere, buried beneath a sea of shiny bumpers and parking lot lights, was my old reliable sedan — the one with the waggly tail light, the broken air conditioner, the cracked windshield and the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror like a pair of sad, half-melted marshmallows. The feet of a broken-off hula girl from the Seventies were still stubbornly clinging to the dashboard panel on the passenger side. One toe over the line.

I’d been roving and reeling for 50 minutes in this sad excuse for a soul-sucking suburban hellhole. My knees creaked like a rusty hinge every time I shifted weight, and my back made a sound like a cemetery gate slowly being opened by an invisible hand. Oh, Mama, can this really be the end?

I knew I should’ve written down the section. I knew it. But I’d been distracted — sidetracked by a few things that didn’t concern parking lots, like somehow getting old when no one was looking and misplacing my bifocals. Not to mention the fact that I’d just paid $14 for a sandwich made out of cork and used pencil shavings. Or the increasingly grim certainty that every other metal death trap in this godforsaken purgatory seemed to be a blend of grey, silver and grotty who-the-hell-cares?

This whole black maw of mechanical megalodons — laid out on a grid of fading white lines based on a fey notion from 1985 that vehicles were fated to get smaller — should have been cordoned off by yellow police tape and declared a disaster zone like Chernobyl or my living room.

My legs felt like they were being held together by duct tape, WD-40 and bad decisions. I adjusted my fedora and wiped the sweat from my brow. I might be getting older, but damn it, I was still a certified private eye. I’d solved cases involving missing jewels, cheating spouses and the occasional dead body. Now I was facing something insidious.

Dude, where’s my car? The horror, the horror!

My 2001 Ford Escort — a compact that had seen more potholes and ice slicks than the tu-tued tush of Tonya Harding — was out there somewhere in this tatty orgy of overblown SUVs and minivans, out of place as a mendicant friar at a naked encounter group of accountants and hedge fund managers.

I checked my watch. Sixty minutes. Couldn’t remember the last time I’d stood this long in one place without at least a good scotch to keep me company. That ... or a single-action, semi-automatic Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless dug into my back by a morally ambiguous Venus flytrap who spent most of her waking hours publicly adjusting her stocking straps.

I approached Row D with trepidation. D for desolation. Three sedans, none of them mine. A pair of SUVs, also not mine. A Prius Prime and a Tesla Model S — P for pretentious and S for sap. Took a deep breath.

It was no good. No idea where the hell I’d parked. I’d come from a meeting over gimlets with a dissipated British ex-pat at Victor’s and wandered a little too far from the entrance. Just a couple of aisles down, and now my brain had packed up and gone home. This was starting to get embarrassing.

I was a ruthless bastard with a twisted mind who could look on death and find it pleasant. I could break an arm or smash in a face because it was easier that way than asking questions. I could out-fox the fox with a line of reasoning that laughed at the truth because I was the worst of the lot and never did deserve to live. Built Ford tough … yet I couldn’t come up with a better idea?

That’s when I saw her — a shapely Lana Turner type in a bright neon green hoodie, the kind you’d wear if you were trying to shake down an ATM but didn’t want to be caught on the security cameras. She was walking in circles, her face a portrait of confusion and frustration.

I narrowed my eyes and she gave me a look that stuck four inches out of my back. Aside from being a blonde — a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window — this dame wasn’t any different from dozens of other hollow-eyed recidivists and apostates wandering around the parking lot, pretending to be looking for her own lost car.

Right. And I’m Walter Lantz at the projector.

Something about this damsel in distress didn’t sit right. Maybe it was the way she kept glancing at the pavement like she’d misplaced something far more important than a set of keys. Or maybe it was a rap sheet of lost innocence, a dim reminiscence of a time when she wasn’t a cunning seductress intent on ensnaring mugs and patsies with her charm and beauty, only to leave a litter of dirty downfalls and poor, bleached basketcases in her wake.

Like a moth to a fast-approaching high beam on the 2 and 20, I fluttered across the entrance ramp. Skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky do.

“Lost something, kid?” I asked, pouring a bigger glob of tobacco than I’d intended out of my cloth bag with the silk ties and onto a welcoming Zig Zag. Puff: The magic dragon. It was a moment of self-indulgence— something I allowed myself when things were starting to feel a little precarious.

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket. “Uh-huh,” she murmured, looking me over like a trussed holiday ham at a country fair. “Can’t find the red Bugatti. I parked, like, right here. In this row. And now it’s gone.”

I took a drag, exhaling the frolicking autumn mist to a land called Casualty. “You sure? Maybe you’re just looking in the wrong place. Or maybe you just don’t know the right people. That’s all a police record means.”

She purred with pleasure, but not like Bugatti or a Lamborghini. More like the sultry crankshaft of a ’74 Pontiac Trans Am 455.

“Come a little bit closer. You’re my kind of man. So big and so strong. Come a little bit closer. I’m all alone. And my car is long gone.”

For a moment, I forgot all about my little Ford Escort. This was starting to seem like a nice neighbourhood to have bad habits in.

Without the benefit of my blinkers — hell’s bells, where had I left them? — I took a giddy, vertiginous step forward. From 30 feet away, she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away, she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

“I parked right here! I swear! I was just here, like, two minutes ago!” By now she was trying to sit on my lap while I was standing up. I could visualize my bank account crawling under a duck.

Frank’s words came back to me just in time: Use your mentality. Wake up to reality.

All dames are alike: they reach down your throat so they can grab your heart, pull it out and they throw it on the floor, and they step on ’em with their high heels, they spit on it, shove it in the oven and they cook the crap out of it. Then they slice it into little pieces, slam it on a hunk of toast, and they serve it to you. And they expect you to say, “Thanks, honey, it’s delicious. May I buy you a Bugatti?”

And that’s when I heard it — the dulcet tones of Ol’ Blue Eyes segueing into the familiar beep of my car alarm. The sweet, gentle sound of salvation, wailing into the evening like the bitter experience of an aging private dick who’d just dodged another third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous.

Been down that road enough times to develop a nasty alimony habit.

I whipped around and sure enough, there it was — a rusty beater, padded and white-walled as a room in a psych ward, worn and comfortable as the pyjamas waiting for me under my pillow back at the Bristol Hotel. I felt a surge of triumph, the kind you get when you’ve solved a case without staining your double reverse-pleated trousers with raspberry Jell-O.

Made it, Ma, to the top of the world!

A shopping cart abandoned by some overburdened Karen with three brats and a diabetic future had wound up wedged underneath my front bumper, triggering the alarm. I pulled it out with a smooth motion and kicked the cart out of my way like Dave Cutler putting the boots to the Ottawa Rough Riders in the ’81 Grey Cup game.

Or maybe like Mr. Miyagi in the original Karate Kid movie. I never forget a face. Hadn’t he been diner owner Matsuo (call me Arnold) Takahashi on Happy Days? Didn’t he have a recurring role as Captain Sam Pak on M*A*S*H and as Ah Chew (give me a break) on Sanford and Son?

Hot Legs was standing there, mouth agape, as I emerged from my Miyagi reverie. “Really? That … that’s your vehicle?” she asked incredulously, as if I’d just found the bottom of the barrel and scraped it clean. But I didn’t care. I got a kick out of her.

Tossed her a casual nod. “Yep. Just a cart trying to ruin my day. Happens more often than you’d think.”

Whatever interest I had held for her crumbled like the face of an aging Hollywood A-Lister after a touchup by Priscilla Presley’s plastic surgeon. “Dude, this is insane,” she said, pivoting back toward the Walmart escalator with an unmistakable look of disgust. “Oh, and by the way, Dickweed, your glasses are on top of your hat.”

“Life’s insane, kid. But at least now I’m going home. Good luck finding your wheels. You know, you’re not a bad girl. You’re just a little mixed up.”

I slid into the driver’s seat, gave the engine a rib tickle for good measure, and turned to look at her one last time. “You’re a good man, sister.”

Slammed the gearshift into reverse and hit the gas. Mistah Kurtz, he sped.

Watched yet another femme fatale fade in the rearview mirror like Johnny Depp’s career or the Leafs in the playoffs.

It wasn’t the case of the century, but it was the only one I had tonight. And in this town, that was enough. Now if I could only track down my wayward specs.

All the other motorists were driving on the wrong side of the road.