"Have a nice life," said Alicia to nobody.
Zack was gone. He took the opportunity of a lifetime over the girl, and she didn't blame him. She didn't begrudge Zack for taking the promotion. She'd have done the same. So would anyone. Unfortunately, it did mean Korea, and that meant work visa, and that meant a choice. She didn't disagree with the conclusion.
More money, no more working weekends, no more covering nights, and a track to the sort of job with its own executive bathroom. The dream, more or less. Or he could wile away his 20s supervising at a call center in Beaver, Illinois. It's good to believe love will always triumph, but that's only when love competes within its own weight class.
The goodbye meant a return to the nearly forgotten life of Alicia Gretchen Winthrop - Unaffiliated. The Alicia Gretchen Winthrop who spent the last hour staring at a cloud shaped like a turtle where her boyfriend used to be. The Alicia Gretchen Winthrop with the impressive collection of damp tissues piled in the passenger seat of her powder blue '97 Perletta.
The Alicia Gretchen Winthrop who now found herself single after seven years with her high school sweetheart.
Maybe cool it on the "sweetheart," thought Alicia. But he was her long-term boyfriend, roommate, cuddle partner, and the man she thought she'd marry. Until a few months ago, Alicia hadn't considered the prospect of life as a solo act. It was easy to deny away the months when the big day wasn't even on the same calendar. There would be a tomorrow. April was next year. Heck, maybe even two years away. There would be a tomorrow. There would be a tomorrow.
Nobody told April it wasn't welcome. Guess who showed up. But the 4th was still at least a couple months away. There would be a tomorrow.
Until, unbelievably, there wasn't. With the sunrise came the disconcertingly usual clockwork of their morning routine. The familiarity made it easy to play along with the disguise a little longer. She showered, he showered, Brekkie Squares in the toaster, plates and cups, fridge, milk, pour, toaster's up, eat, keys, lights, car. Same as yesterday, but today, reality had tacked on its own to-do list: tears, airport, goodbye, parking lot, more tears, and then now. That part came less naturally.
Alicia reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror before tweaking the console lever to reposition the side mirror. She hated having to move the seat and fix the mirrors anytime Zack used the car. She often wondered how anyone could need so little legroom, not that the car was all that spacious to begin with. It was all hers now. She turned the key. Silver linings, thought Alicia.
What remained of Zack's presence had all but faded, at least from here. The passenger seat was adjusted for her considerable height, as was the driver's. She had a clear look at the rearview from her own perspective. She turned on the radio, flipped it to her station, and realized the dial would stay there. From now on, the toilet paper hangs overhand, Alicia resolved. Even if I'm feeling sentimental.
Alicia looked at the radio dial again. With that turn of the knob, Zack was gone. She would be driving home by herself. Here, in the first and only car they ever bought, there was no more of him left.
Her boss allowed her to take the day off from work as long as she promised not to cry at the office on Monday, which seemed like a win all around. She shifted the vehicle out of park and slid her dark tan hands up the wheel to 9 and 3. The tears had broken, for now or forever. There would be a tomorrow. Breathe in, breathe out. Foot off the breaks.
Crrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaakkkkkkk
The light blue sedan crept forward with the sound of metal grating against metal if a pig were caught in between, except louder and worse. The wail of the sedanshee drew a look from a bespectacled, bevested parking lot attendant driving a cart with a spinning caution light on top. Alicia shot a look back and scolded her silently. If anything, you should be embarrassed, lady. Look what you're driving.
KAWHUNKA-KACHUNK
Right. There was one last part of Zack left: he always backed into parking spots. She had put it in reverse on muscle memory, and the car was now straddling a four-inch concrete parking bumper. It wasn't the first time it happened. It would've been nice if it were only the second. The look changed on Alicia's face as she now pondered a question she had never quite worked out a right answer to: keep over it, or go forward and drive over it again?
What is there to take from someone with nothing to lose? She punched the gas and backed over that sucker like she meant it.
KAWHUNKA-KACHUNKKAWHUNKA-KACHUNK
Even if that meant going over a second parking bumper. Alicia secretly hoped the parking lot attendant had been struck blind minutes beforehand, despite it never working out that way in the past.
KAWHUNKA-KACHUNKKAWHUNKA-KACHUNK
The ceaseless, unbearable racket gave Alicia an opportunity to reflect. By the third KACHUNK, she concluded she may have been a bit hasty counter-looking the (perhaps recently blind?) parking attendant.
KAWHUNKA-KACHUNK
"Hey! Watch it! You could've broken one of those! Ma'am? Ma'am!" shouted the attendant.
Alicia cringed. The glasses weren't just for show. The words hit the back of her skull like a hot iron. The heat rushed to her cheeks as she drove away, keeping as low a profile as a mid-size sedan would allow. At least she didn't see any other witnesses.
Down one level from the open air roof were the pay booths and then home. 10:35 AM and it had already been a day. Ultimately, Alicia decided the incident didn't have to matter. She'd be well down the highway by the time anyone else heard about her parking lot adventure. She rolled her window down and handed her ticket to a distractingly attractive booth person.
"$10," said a young blonde-haired woman of about college age. Her flawless skin and perfect features projected a look of smoldering indifference. She appeared to have been ripped from a fashion magazine, stuffed into a reflective vest, handed an airplane-shaped nametag, and told to sit in a box for $7.50 an hour. "Did you hear that loud noise a minute ago?" she asked.
Alicia scrambled for her purse. Where was it? "Must've been someone speeding out of there," she said, buying time.
"No one's come through in a while."
"Hmm," said Alicia, leaning over the center console and groping through her purse with both hands for her wallet.
"Sounded like someone might've hit something," said the model/attendant.
"Could've been. Yeah, maybe. I barely heard it," said Alicia, clamping her fingers triumphantly around a familiar sensation of leather.
One, two, three, eight… 25, 50, 75, nine. Nine-o-six and a paperclip. Nothing doing. Time for the emergency 20. It was Zack's thing first. One soaking wet bus ride later, and Alicia came around on the idea. She craned around the seat to grab a maroon and white "Langston University Women's Athletic Dept '99" jacket, producing a $20 bill from the breast pocket. There was a momentary pause as the attendant seemed to notice nobody else had exited the parking lot.
The booth attendant's unblemished complexion turned from quizzical to bemused to conflicted to curious in seconds. Were she not preoccupied modeling the spring reflective vest catalogue, the young woman pecking at the register could've had a career in Hollywood. "Did you-"
Alicia stepped over her, "Sorry. I didn't want to make a thing out of it, but I think your coworker up there in the golf cart went over some of those concrete parking bumpers. She looked pretty upset when I drove by. Maybe take it easy on her and don't mention it. I think she might've been crying."
"$10 is your change," said the attendant, secondhand embarrassment seeping into her voice.
Alicia nodded, took the money in silence, pretended the lady in the booth hadn't arrived at the obvious conclusion, and drove away. As she merged onto the highway, Alicia reminded herself that things could be worse. Other than everything that happened between waking up and now, the day had gone pretty alright so far. Now what? Alicia asked herself. Coming up with stuff to do was your thing, Zack.
Maybe the plan was nothing. Minutes and miles passed in thoughtless solitude until just outside city limits, when Alicia was yanked back to cognition by a billboard that demanded attention at full volume.
Titans. Colossal and bold, they loomed indomitable above a world of puny motorists in pitiful cars puttering meaninglessly along a feeble interstate. Buckles and spikes, leather and neon popped from the black, red, and silver background. The only face she recognized was the one everyone recognized: Giselle Tillman - Party Girl - named after her fashion and cosmetics brand. Behind the featured wrestlers were the words "Queens of War," the biggest wrestling company in the region. At the bottom, in smaller but still very huge letters, it read, "Plunj Drain Cleaner Arena at 7:00 PM every Friday - Special events last day of the month!"
Without realizing it, a smile had crept its way across her lips. Alicia had been a fan--or, at least, an aspiring fan--since grade school. Her parents didn't allow it on TV, and her sister made fun of her if she tried to watch anyway. So did her roommates in college. And her friends whenever she mentioned it. Zack didn't have the stomach for the violence and never wanted to go. Even when it shouldn't have mattered, Alicia thought she'd look like a loser going by herself. But if you're single, that's not being a loser. That's being independent. There would be a tomorrow, and it started tonight.
"Mind if we go?" Alicia asked the wadded-up tissue pile.
Hearing no objections, she decided on a change of plans: to have one. She missed her exit and kept driving. A newly painted sign flew by, helpfully declaring "Beaver, Illinois: It'll Grow on You!" It was admittedly an improvement on the previous slogan of "The Last Major City Until Chicago." First the box office, then home.
She just hoped she remembered where exactly home was.
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