Free Parking
Carly had certainly experienced better afternoons. As she turned on her phone at the end of a long shift, she was notified of a voicemail from Alicia, her best friend since high school. Replaying the message for a third time, Carly was able to decipher through the sobbing that Alicia had finally confronted her verbally abusive boyfriend of four years about his infidelity, and that he’d promptly moved out, defacing Alicia’s property and running briefly through a laundry list of her insecurities as he packed.
Of course, it now fell to Carly to console her friend, which meant driving out into what forecasters were predicting would be Boston’s snowiest season on record. After three passes around the block, Carly found a newly free space. At least, it was free save for the plastic lawn chair, which she carefully folded and laid aside.
After perhaps half an hour of holding Alicia, pouring tea, and repeating the phrase, “at least the bastard’s gone,” Carly was drawn to the window by a commotion outside. A few houses down, a man was screaming at no one in particular as he walked from a double-parked car toward her Prius. Concerned, Carly went out to assess the situation.
The gentleman in question, it seemed, had spent over an hour shoveling out the spot that her little hybrid now inhabited, which he had indicated with the chair that Carly had so callously disregarded. Therefore, he added, if she opted not to “move the piece of shit right fucking now,” he would be forced to make sure that she’d, “need a fucking tow truck to get it out.” He was perplexed at how anyone could possibly be so inconsiderate.
450 #46, Submitted 4/1/15
