We turn the car into our parking space, our headlight (singular at the moment) illuminates the emptiness ahead.
“I thought you said you forgot to bring it?”
“I did forget to bring it.”
“So it’s not in the car?!”
I open the car door with a few swift motions, just to stand and stare blankly at the spot where it used to be. I walk over to the laundry room. Maybe someone saw it lying there and put it in a room for safer keeping? I take a gander, look under the table and even behind the door. Not there. I check the garbage area. Maybe someone thought I didn’t want it? I shine a light from an iPhone on the bins and I don’t see it in the mounds of trash. I search the other parking spaces as we walk by, heading to the lobby. My last hope is that maybe someone brought it upstairs and left it outside of our apartment; because each space has the apartment number listed on it. Once we reach the top floor and I don’t see it laying by the door, my heart sinks. Someone stole my sixty dollar (plus tax) bike rack.
It’s been on my mind all day. I had biked to work Friday morning and for the rest of the weekend I followed my ususal routine of driving my car in. My bike has been rusting in the rain for three days straight. Now it’s Monday and I have run out of excuses as to why I can’t collect my bicycle, the Knight Rider. There’s no traffic, its no longer raining and I was already in the area. Some Mondays I’ll treat myself to a trivia at a local ale house. I was meeting some friends and my boyfriend was on his way to meet up; but not before he came to the house to walk the dog. I has asked him to bring my bike rack, that had been sitting in our gated parking space. Only he forgot today, the day that one of my neighbors decided that they needed a bike rack more than I did.
I feel betrayed by the people that I live with. I try to entertain the thought that maybe it was a guest of one of the neighbors, that stole it; but that doesn’t offer me much comfort. Then I start to panic as I run by some scenarios in my mind. What if I forget to lock up my bike one night and someone takes my primary mode of transportation? I’m trying so hard to find the positive but my anger clouds it’s way. I can replace what was stolen but now I’ve lost trust in my neighbors.
Vignettes are funny. I can't define them very well, but in 162 I find myself spending a lot of time in weeks 8 & 9 playing the judge and determining that a piece is or is not guilty, i.e. is or is not an vignette.
ReplyDeleteI think you have a vignette right through "Someone stole my sixty dollar (plus tax) bike rack."
But after that.... Vignettes can't bear much explanation, backstory, flashback etc. They are there, then they are gone, and if you try to make them hang around the stage too long, the audience starts shuffling its feet.