The Quota
He emerges at night, once weekly. Nameless and swift, he could be a lingering shadow. Kathy imagines that he ascends to the parking lot from an as yet unseen subterranean cave. His silhouette slinks along, pushing supermarket carts into place, wonky wheels chattering against the asphalt.
He must spend the weekdays in a designated hostel for others similar to him, men and women who perceive and interact with their world with child-like naiveté. Forty going on twelve. A child of the night, he slots the abandoned shopping carts into place and their metallic clang is the song of the parking lot.
His weekend begins on the early hours of Saturday, in the perennially unlit parking lot, unlit as the local council seeks to cut down its energy costs. The council counts dollars, ignorant of the darkness and its implied invitation to discord and underhanded transactions--blowjobs parked cars, by the moment or the hour, and plastic zip lock bags exchange hands.
Not one, but three pairs of designer runners hang over the power line. Some say that the shoes mark the territory of dealers. Each pair advertises a local sales representative. In this case three representatives, potential rivals, but this is not a Neapolitan slum. No gunfire or camorra type blood-feud punctuates life here in proletariat gray suburbia.
A cigarette dangles in her hand. She flicks ash with a tap of her index finger, watching the man amble along, this time transferring empty plastic milk crates, all freshly stolen from the supermarket one block up. He holds one in each hand, forming a demented stick- man night shadow. Above him the sky groans. A universal creak splinters clouds and a silvery-grey flash startles him. He lets out a low groan and waves a fist at the sky, reprimanding the deity he was conditioned to pray to since childhood.
The rain pelts the ground erratically at first, then settles into a downpour. The drops pelt corrugated iron roofing, clay tiles, windows, and everything that looks up to the sky. The TV predicts strange weather patterns, flooding and other misfortunes (destruction,
drowning and delayed insurance claims). The rain rinses away all signs of life and only the memories remain, like hair that collects in the shower drain. Water, the universal thirst quencher is hard enough to kill when frozen, yet soft enough to melt into visually symmetric currents that drown old and young alike.
Across the way, the sound of running water drowns out the television and its snoring viewer. Even the distant barking of a terrier cannot break free. The dog is aware of the wonky cart-wheels and milk crates. The dog won't stop barking until the footfalls dissolve or fade out like an ear splitting song, and only then will the mutt curl into a ball to sleep, its bark now a faded memory, the stranger now an irrelevant fragment.
She lights another cigarette and watches him appraising his own geometrical study in plastic milk crates. Frank Gehry eat your heart out, she thinks and laughs, twisting her lips for a sardonic French accent to tumble out. Architecture urbaine.
Otherwise, this is just an average wet night, one night from hundreds spent smoking on the apartment
balcony overlooking an open car park drowned in dull orange light.
The stick figure nods, dusts his hands off and leaves another sculpture for all to see. The crates pile higher and higher, and had she not been out there, had it not been for post redundancy insomnia, she'd be asleep, fretting about the next day at work at the plant, sorting good apples from bad. Watching the conveyor until the floaters in her eyes alert her to the machine. Her thoughts snag. Metal grinds against metal. She looks up and across the way, the grinding sound is isolated.
A maroon VW van had been in the parking lot since the afternoon. She'd seen it in passing. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the van now had the company of two other cars occupying opposing corner parking-spots. The sliding door closes and Kathy stands, leaning over the metal balustrade craning her head to see the driver venturing out into the orange glow. The pub had been shut hours before, expelling its loose limbed and staggering patrons. Their vocal mash of football anthems had faded hours before.
Her ear catches the initial rumble and splutter of the ancient vehicle. Chug-Ch-Ch-Brrr. If she stood close and laid her hand across its ass-end, she'd feel the tremor of age and trepidation through the metal. She expects the headlights to illuminate the asphalt and paling wood-fence directly across, except the driver prefers the darkness. The darkness lingers too, engulfing the shifting van, something she notes as an oddity. Stranger still is the mass left behind.
Kathy drags and inhales, ears registering the crackle of burning tobacco. There were two legs, and arms. The body positioned in a way that reminded her of her cool-down exercises at the gym. A woman's body occupies the a parking spot, laying on her side, leg raised and planted over the hip, like she'd get up in the next few minutes and run. Kathy drags on her cigarette again, reaches the burning filter and exhales hot smoke that catches in her throat, scraping it raw from within.
Out of the parking lot and a left turn later, the driver continues as Kathy stands gripping the balustrade. He'd seen her and her glowing cigarette. The sinewy
curve of her body within its tank top and boy briefs confirms her feminine form. Tart, he thinks. She probably assumed no one would see her scantily clad body.
They all thought the night obscured them, but not from him. He was ejected from a putrid syphilitic- womb, fully formed, third eye absorbing the surroundings, right down to the minute life forms that burrowed beneath the fingernails of the midwife that assisted his mother, reaching into her and pulling him out, branding him with her taint.
If he did have advantages, they manifested in the form of an upstanding family, a private school education, and a social life attached to the right clubs. He received awards for lifeguarding. He gallantly rescued flailing and spluttering tourists. He accepted the offerings of the sea and sand. Bodies. Glistening limbs. Bathing beauties. They all paraded for him, eager to display gym-honed rear ends and abs.
Every passing summer magnified his cravings. He saw no reason to work his way from the bottom. The idea
of harming the innocent toy poodle next door made little sense. His psyche yearned for a grown body and his summer job presented him with bronzed opportunities.
On the day of his eighteenth birthday, an ordinary day like all summer days, he waded out with his body board and oversaw the scene. He saw the swimmer further out. Her head bobbed up and down and her arms carried her across the current. From her slow pace, he figured she reached the halfway mark, the psychological crossroad that all exercisers struggle through. He reached her easily enough, using his large hands as shovels. He remembered their brief encounter like breakfast. `You're swimming in a rip current.' She spat out water, heaved a little. `I don't think...' `I'll give you a hand,' he said. `I-I'm all right. Always swim here...' `No. I know what's best.' `I'm fine.'
His hand reached forward and a little under the water. Brilliant and fluid, her hair flowed freely, as though
she wanted to be captured. She brought her arms up to batter his, but found that her hair embraced his arm in numerous loops. Then she went face down, mouth agape and taking in salt water. She spluttered as he pulled her up, lungs screaming for air, throat whistling with desperation. `I told you it was dangerous. But none of you listen.' He grinned and shoved her face down, until his triceps tautened to diamond perfection. He stopped when her legs stopped kicking and her arms fanned out to embrace the water.
What a beautiful day it had been, he thought as he pulled into the illuminated driveway of his award- winning coastal home. He parked the van at the far end of his four-car garage. The ancient grubby van is the lesser sibling to his Maserati, Porsche, and Jaguar, but has remained faithful over the years. He turns the ignition off and gets out. Lightness pervades his lower limbs. Endorphins continue their molecular dance throughout his body.
Within the steam room he reflects on his day. The finalization of a hostile takeover followed a laborious
day checking the bond markets. All was not lost. His wealth rose by fifty million, but that meaningless in the scope of things. The icing had been the female jogger that took up space in a parking spot. He leans back and closes his eyes, oblivious to the droplets of moisture collecting at the tip of his nose. The smoking woman from inner western suburbia invades his mind. He smiles and thinks how lucky she was to escape this month's quota.