finished wiping my eyes, I surveyed the lot and all the cars remained, including Melody’s, which had not budged since she returned from Lexington, the front wheels still turned outward and away from the curb as though she had pulled into the spot with great haste.
As noon approached, the air dried and the sun shone through a cloudless sky. That type of easy summer day comes only a few times a year, the kind that instills a certain guilt if you don’t find a way to enjoy it, yet there was no sign that Melody might surface, that she might enter the world again in her little sundress, show the only way more beauty could be added to such a perfect day. I hoped for that. But by the time 12:30 arrived, only four cars remained across the entire parking lot; one was Melody’s, one was mine, and the other two were unlikely to move: a relic of a pickup that had special license plates designating it as a farm truck, and a banged-up minivan with a flat rear tire.
Almost everyone had returned home by seven that night. The sun had faded away slowly, as did the residents of Melody’s apartment building.
I’d spent the day making myself sick on fast food, nicotine, and caffeine, getting cramped and sore in the cab of my Mustang. Unshowered and unshaven for a few days, I was having a hard time being near myself. I’d begun longing for my humble apartment, where I could sprawl across the width of my king-size bed, take a shower so hot it would sting my skin, whip up a plate of peppers and eggs before I launched into my day. Though despite the discomforts of this journey, the aching in my trapezoids from lifting Willie off the ground, the scab around the torn nail of my middle finger that looked to be heading for an infection, the constant return to public restrooms that caused glances of increasing concern to be cast my way, I had no choice but to wait for Melody to surface, to know she was somehow surviving.
That night turned cold, draped itself over me like a wet washcloth on the head of a fevered child. The fluctuation in temperatures drove me crazy, had me balancing the windows and the heat and the air-conditioning throughout my residency in the car. You might think the boredom, though, was what really did me in. I diluted it with the likes of regional newspapers and magazines acquired as an excuse to use the restrooms of local convenience stores, with half of the library of music CDs in my glove compartment, with no less than six baseball games delivered via AM radio, with slowly eaten meals and lengthy prayers. The dullness and tedium did exist, overruled by the anxiety of what was happening behind the door of Melody’s apartment. Boredom performs terrible acts upon the imagination: It expands the realm of possibility to its furthest limits, the best- and worst-case scenarios. And I ran through them all with Melody, from casual disinterest about what had happened in Lexington to a resulting case of severe depression to a downright panic toward any future interaction with humanity. I imagined too many times her hiding under the covers, blinds drawn, shaking.
I could never be sure until I saw her.
If I’d brought trouble to Lexington two days earlier, by Monday morning I officially looked like trouble. I’d been living out of my car for just over forty-eight hours, and in that parking lot for thirty-six of it. My bathroom existed at an Exxon, my comb was my right hand, my toothbrush my finger. A five o’clock shadow was well on its way to becoming a beard, and my stomach, when not hurting, was audible.
The sun crested at five-thirty that morning and I crept out of my car to stretch and move my body in the motions of my childhood: the swing of a bat, the shot of a basketball, the sweep of a hockey stick. Once I’d finished my limbering, I slipped back in my car to procure more coffee, doughnuts, cigarettes, and a local newspaper, returned and parked a distance from Melody’s Civic just as the apartment dwellers with work schedules started to materialize and face the day.
One resident, an attractive woman I would have pegged in her late fifties, came out in a short business dress, wearing makeup and heels that suggested she resented the unstoppable progression of her age—though what stuck