The Parkgarage at the End of the Universe

Which is not to say that last night was not deeply traumatic in its own right. I was done with work, it was early and, better yet, it was a Monday. Monday, the day when if we can predict nothing else, we can predict that the art world is closed and the bridge and tunnel set stay safely ensconced in suburbia, Tivoing and chamomile tea-ing away the weekend's Home Depot and white sale excesses.

The sun was still out, the water was lovely, the air was softly moist, and I was brave and strong and filled with desire for a Douro. A wine bar was the thing to slake my wine lust and validate my courageousness. And, I had a book with me, so there would be no need to run up against any predatory alcohol-sodden flirtatious nonsense. I would park, I would swap the Driving Shoes for one of the pairs of nice ones just waiting in the passenger seat for such an opportunity to fulfill their destiny, and I would walk up the hill and have a nice glass of wine.

I found a parking garage that abutted the street I like to use to go home from downtown, in order to avoid the freeway and all thoughts of fifth gear. I changed the shoes, grabbed the (oddly heavy, even when empty) leather bag with the book and a notebook, fixed the lipstick, took the tiny purse, and headed for the exit.

Then I headed for the exit that way. Then I walked around in several concentric circles for thirty or forty minutes, coming upon nothing but private elevators which would have taken
me to the street, but only under condition that I were possessed of the secret code. Which, despite my good looks, keen attitude, and zest for the true, the blushful Hippocrene, I was not.

My back hurt. My feet hurt. The nailbeds in my fingertips hurt, and the membrane that handily keeps the brain away from the skull hurt, and I felt sad that I should have to live out my remaining decades stuck in a poorly-lit parking garage with the scent of kelpy air taunting me at every breath. I failed even to spot my own car save for once in all my increasingly hopeless wandering.

Then, finally, a street exit. I crouched under the gate and I was free! Free for Douro, or Barolo, or anything else my flagging whimsy fancied. I confidently marched up the hill, enthusiasm and bravery returning with each step of my buckle-embellished mules. I had nearly caught a joie de vivre when I had a vague feeling about keys. It wasn't anything more than that. Just 'keys.' Once I thought to think of what such a vague thought might mean, it became far less vague. I didn't remember doing anything with my keys. I remembered getting out of the car, and I certainly remembered getting lost, but I always immediately put my keys into whatever tiny purse I have that day, and I didn't remember doing that. Or even having uncharacteristically put them into the big bag, which would be the sort of thing that would stick in the mind for all its uncharacteristicality.

Just to confirm that, despite not recalling anything, I did indeed have them, I checked in both the tiny purse (hard to miss anything in there, most particularly a gigantic collection of largely orphan keys tied up together with a huge red carabiner) and in the mostly empty big bag. And they were in neither. Leaving all thoughts of dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth behind, I hurried back to the car. This in fact amounted to hurrying back to the parkgarage, which was easy enough to find, and then wandering for fifteen or so minutes in search of the car. When I found it, the keys weren't in it. They weren't on it, and they weren't under it. And while that would be more entertainingly put in Turkish, I wasn't thinking of that at the time, because I didn't have my keys, and I had no idea where they could possibly be. Certainly they were not at the counter in the wine bar next to the lecherous Rioja-swilling Hair-Club-for-Men member -- since I hadn't managed to get that far.

Now, clearly, the thing to do at such a point is to Retrace One's Steps. This becomes tricky, however, when the One whose Steps are to be Retraced has no idea either where she is now, how she got there, or where she was before. Which steps? I didn't know where I had gone or where I hadn't gone. But I did my best, and I left the heavy bag in the car that time, which was the smart thing I accomplished yesterday.

After giving up on the garage, I went upstairs to the concierge for the building. No one had turned in keys, but she assured me that hers was the desk where keys would be turned in, at least on those occasions in which such a turning-in took place. Now was not one of those occasions. Nor was it such at the parking office, either.

Now I was even sadder than before. Not only would I have to live in a parking garage because it was an unnavigable maze of a thing, but I would have to do so incommunicado, since my lack of keys would preclude charging my cell phone. I walked around a bit inside again and found the exit, and with no hope remaining in me but not wishing to dwell on the negative, I retraced my few outdoor steps again. At some point before the destroyed eye makeup obscured my vision entirely, I called The Boyfriend.

Not, I hasten to aver, to ask for help, nor even with the intention of admitting that anything of any sort other than the most dulcet of Douros had befallen me. I was already on the right street for a taxi, the appointment for the locksmith was set for 9 AM the next day, and I was going to go home and bang on a neighbor's door and beg for a bed. But, perceptive and not-hard-of-hearing as he is, he heard the cracks and chinks and quavers in what was left of the audible range of my voice. And, weak as I am when confronted with a direct question (and sometimes the hint of a question when I am completely at wits' end), I spilled it. He said he would come over and help me find them. I knew it was futile to look further, and he lives so horribly far away that it seemed inhumane because it was now not so early as it had been two hours previous or even forty-five minutes, and also I already had the appointment with the long-winded locksmith to get a key made.

I needed Closure, not solutions.

But he came, and we reexamined my car with the assistance of a flashlight. The keys remained obstinately unthere. After the search of car and environs and a feebly-uttered and marginally coherent brief recapitulation of my barely-remembered 'timeline,' we retraced my steps outside, which were easy as they were few. No keys. We went back to the garage and retraced any and all steps by any person capable of making steps on my level of the garage, since I was of no assistance in suggesting what steps I might or might not have made. I was unapologetically and tiresomely apologetic and made repeated vows to repay him in whatever way most pleasing to him, so long as it didn't involve money, because that was all going to the locksmith and the wine cellar I was going to start building next week so as to prevent this sort of thing happening in future. And my feet hurt. My feet, my shoulders, my back, and it was starting to become that horrible sort of tired where you walk like you've still got training wheels on your legs and they are likely at any moment to come out from under you and wouldn't it just be better anyway if I lay down right here and no it won't take but a couple hours they can drive around me no I'm sure the concrete will be more than comfortable.

And then, in a weird little alcove that only housed a few cars and in which I had been when I was on foot or at least one very similar to it in near uselessness and seeming unusually after-thoughtish for a parking garage, there they were right by a post and a little ugly wall. All ninety-seven of them and the red carabiner, as well. I would have been overjoyed, but that would have required being conscious or sensate, neither of which I have any reason to believe I was at that point. I did, however, manage many more profuse apologies and gratitudes, but the lack of muscle control precluded smiling.

I made it home. I drank a beer. I apologized and thanked in email and on phone forty-three more times and vowed to myself to have copies made of house and car keys, and stick them on the car and in the planters of dying flowers outside my door. And passed out and slept the sort of sleep you can only sleep when you imagined the end of the world but it was really only the end of the two-for-one sale on vegetarian items down at the Indian place.