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You’ve just stepped out of the shopping mall. It’s scorching hot, the kind of heat that makes your soles feel glued to the asphalt.
The bypass, wrapping around the area like a noose, smolders like a fire doused with buckets of water or a spent matchstick, and you push the cart. It squeaks and veers to the right, as always. The previous customers forgot their receipt pinched between the grid. No matter how hard you try, no matter how closely you examine the contraption like a Formula 1 pit crew, you always end up with the one cart whose wheels are misaligned or whose bearings are reduced to gravel.
Nothing major — you just needed toothpaste and toilet paper, and maybe a couple of frozen pizzas for those quick-fix dinners. But things got out of hand, and by the end of it, they had drained one hundred and seventy euros from your credit card.
At first, you don’t see it. You sense it.
It’s so close that a single puff of air could nudge it into you. It reeks like a volcano and is as silent as a killer in the fog.
It’s there — the black car.
You ignore it, but you can’t help noticing an extra pulse thumping alongside your own and feeling another bead of sweat sliding down your back. So, you quicken your pace, digging your hand into your pocket for the keys as you turn into a side lane of the parking lot. The cart’s alignment doesn’t help, but you push it past a blue sedan, the one dumped with three wheels out of four in the disabled parking space.
But it’s Sunday.
Your favorite team played on Friday night, and the mountain hike stayed in the realm of good intentions. There’s more belly than heart these days, your hiking boots are drying at the bottom of the closet, and the bike surely has flat tires.
Your car is at the far end, baking under a tree that has no intention of growing, its trunk paired with another sporting the initials of some long-forgotten lovers. You’re no expert in measurements, but it’s at least thirty meters away.
You wonder how architects managed to design green areas with wide, shady canopies and illustrations of happy families, men in bowler hats, and ladies with parasols framed against a playground, only for you to end up on a blazing expanse of concrete and broken bricks, sharing space with weeds.
But it’s Sunday.
The parking lot is as vast as Nebraska, yet there isn’t a single spot available, not even for a bribe. Impatient husbands drain their phone batteries double-parking, dogs pee on alloy wheels, and their owners brave the air conditioning to deliberate over swimsuit colors — the ultimate trial. And the kids are inside, drowning in a sea of colorful balls under the watchful eye of the same staffer as last Sunday, and the one before that, and that rainy spring when cars splashed puddles all over you. You’d swear you’ve seen him slicing deli meats, driving a forklift, or rushing to a loudspeaker announcement with a whiff of sweat wafting from the fluttering blue apron.
You’d swear, but you don’t care: he probably doesn’t even have a girlfriend.
And the black car inches closer.
You hear its tires chewing the road and the fan humming in the background. It pulls up beside you. The tinted window slides down, releasing a tangle of low-frequency Dolby Surround sounds. That’s when you don’t understand, when the voice from inside the cabin makes you squint.
But it’s Sunday, and the cart veers to the right, nearly kissing the black car’s door. The driver moves his elbow away and glares at you, seething.
Then it passes. He forces a smile, as if jacking up his cheeks with a car lift, and exhales a whiff of mint. The woman next to him tries to appear friendly, but all you see is a cleavage marked by tan lines and the faint start of a neck.
You stop.
You stop and notice that the black car isn’t alone. It’s followed by a line of compacts, SUVs, and minivans bursting with restless kids. At the end of the queue, a lady, trapped by a maneuver with no apparent solution, blares her horn and curses the world.
The black car inches closer.
It’s followed you across the parking lot, and with it, half the vehicles registered in the last five years. Looking closely, you can’t tell where the line ends.
“Are you leaving?”
The smile propped up with the car lift falters, and the hand dangling outside taps the bodywork with its fingers.
“Excuse me?”
“I said: are you leaving?”
It’s Sunday. The bypass is probably jammed, and the toll station impassable. Your spot at home has surely been snatched, and you’ll need to circle the block twice with your bags. The sliding doors of the shopping mall are paralyzed by the customer flow. Sure, the stupid sensor occasionally tries to shut them, but it’s Sunday, and the two panels just can’t meet halfway.
“Yes… yes, I’m leaving,” you say, gesturing toward your car as if to justify yourself.
“Good. Then I’ll take your spot.”
At that point, the window rolls up. Farewell to the faceless woman and the triumph of subwoofer-enhanced basslines. Farewell to the hopes of a thousand other anonymous drivers, as free to go wherever they please as they are prisoners of that ton of metal and rubber.
But it’s Sunday.
You’ve grown accustomed to the cacophony of horns. You load your groceries, get in the car, start the engine, and begin to reverse. The black car sticks so close you have to be careful not to scrape its bumper. You feel stupid for over-maneuvering in front of that entire audience. You think you heard some insults hurled your way.
But it’s Sunday.
You’re gone before you can round the corner, and the black car has already slipped into your spot.
The couple with the cart and the kid riding in it doesn’t seem to care. Like at a funeral, a gray station wagon silently follows behind. Judging by the situation, the others will have to keep circling for a long time yet.
The bypass, wrapping around the area like a noose, smolders like a fire doused with buckets of water or a spent matchstick, and you push the cart. It squeaks and veers to the right, as always. The previous customers forgot their receipt pinched between the grid. No matter how hard you try, no matter how closely you examine the contraption like a Formula 1 pit crew, you always end up with the one cart whose wheels are misaligned or whose bearings are reduced to gravel.
Nothing major — you just needed toothpaste and toilet paper, and maybe a couple of frozen pizzas for those quick-fix dinners. But things got out of hand, and by the end of it, they had drained one hundred and seventy euros from your credit card.
At first, you don’t see it. You sense it.
It’s so close that a single puff of air could nudge it into you. It reeks like a volcano and is as silent as a killer in the fog.
It’s there — the black car.
You ignore it, but you can’t help noticing an extra pulse thumping alongside your own and feeling another bead of sweat sliding down your back. So, you quicken your pace, digging your hand into your pocket for the keys as you turn into a side lane of the parking lot. The cart’s alignment doesn’t help, but you push it past a blue sedan, the one dumped with three wheels out of four in the disabled parking space.
But it’s Sunday.
Your favorite team played on Friday night, and the mountain hike stayed in the realm of good intentions. There’s more belly than heart these days, your hiking boots are drying at the bottom of the closet, and the bike surely has flat tires.
Your car is at the far end, baking under a tree that has no intention of growing, its trunk paired with another sporting the initials of some long-forgotten lovers. You’re no expert in measurements, but it’s at least thirty meters away.
You wonder how architects managed to design green areas with wide, shady canopies and illustrations of happy families, men in bowler hats, and ladies with parasols framed against a playground, only for you to end up on a blazing expanse of concrete and broken bricks, sharing space with weeds.
But it’s Sunday.
The parking lot is as vast as Nebraska, yet there isn’t a single spot available, not even for a bribe. Impatient husbands drain their phone batteries double-parking, dogs pee on alloy wheels, and their owners brave the air conditioning to deliberate over swimsuit colors — the ultimate trial. And the kids are inside, drowning in a sea of colorful balls under the watchful eye of the same staffer as last Sunday, and the one before that, and that rainy spring when cars splashed puddles all over you. You’d swear you’ve seen him slicing deli meats, driving a forklift, or rushing to a loudspeaker announcement with a whiff of sweat wafting from the fluttering blue apron.
You’d swear, but you don’t care: he probably doesn’t even have a girlfriend.
And the black car inches closer.
You hear its tires chewing the road and the fan humming in the background. It pulls up beside you. The tinted window slides down, releasing a tangle of low-frequency Dolby Surround sounds. That’s when you don’t understand, when the voice from inside the cabin makes you squint.
But it’s Sunday, and the cart veers to the right, nearly kissing the black car’s door. The driver moves his elbow away and glares at you, seething.
Then it passes. He forces a smile, as if jacking up his cheeks with a car lift, and exhales a whiff of mint. The woman next to him tries to appear friendly, but all you see is a cleavage marked by tan lines and the faint start of a neck.
You stop.
You stop and notice that the black car isn’t alone. It’s followed by a line of compacts, SUVs, and minivans bursting with restless kids. At the end of the queue, a lady, trapped by a maneuver with no apparent solution, blares her horn and curses the world.
The black car inches closer.
It’s followed you across the parking lot, and with it, half the vehicles registered in the last five years. Looking closely, you can’t tell where the line ends.
“Are you leaving?”
The smile propped up with the car lift falters, and the hand dangling outside taps the bodywork with its fingers.
“Excuse me?”
“I said: are you leaving?”
It’s Sunday. The bypass is probably jammed, and the toll station impassable. Your spot at home has surely been snatched, and you’ll need to circle the block twice with your bags. The sliding doors of the shopping mall are paralyzed by the customer flow. Sure, the stupid sensor occasionally tries to shut them, but it’s Sunday, and the two panels just can’t meet halfway.
“Yes… yes, I’m leaving,” you say, gesturing toward your car as if to justify yourself.
“Good. Then I’ll take your spot.”
At that point, the window rolls up. Farewell to the faceless woman and the triumph of subwoofer-enhanced basslines. Farewell to the hopes of a thousand other anonymous drivers, as free to go wherever they please as they are prisoners of that ton of metal and rubber.
But it’s Sunday.
You’ve grown accustomed to the cacophony of horns. You load your groceries, get in the car, start the engine, and begin to reverse. The black car sticks so close you have to be careful not to scrape its bumper. You feel stupid for over-maneuvering in front of that entire audience. You think you heard some insults hurled your way.
But it’s Sunday.
You’re gone before you can round the corner, and the black car has already slipped into your spot.
The couple with the cart and the kid riding in it doesn’t seem to care. Like at a funeral, a gray station wagon silently follows behind. Judging by the situation, the others will have to keep circling for a long time yet.
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