The Car Place
Cassandra Keenan He did not know what “spartan” meant when I commented on how the room looked. He was behind the counter seated at a computer and did not care. “Very austere,” I said. “Sparse.” To which he invited me to relax on a small cushioned desk chair randomly placed in the tight space behind the counter — its black mesh-like fabric speckled with dog hair. The office had a disproportionately large window overlooking the faceless industrial building across the street. Outside it was about 106 degrees with not a cloud in sight, and my friend was in the large lot bagging up her possessions from her repo’d Bonneville. As I waited for her, the owner started talking about cars with his only employee, and then he did a Google image search to show us the blue Sunbeam Alpine Series II he used to own. He pointed out that James Bond had driven it in the original film. He then showed us a snapshot of it on his iPhone. He had painted it a shrill blue, like the Vegas sky, and he was seated behind the wheel, smiling with the roof down on a sunny day. He said he had a friend of his who was savvy with Adobe Illustrator add the flames and debris from two explosions, complete with someone fleeing on foot with the posture of a world-class runner. Soon after, my friend came into the office winded and red-faced. She asked me to pull my car around. Then we stoically carried the large, heavy bags with her belongings across the dusty lot, placed them into the trunk and the back seat and took off. |
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About the Author: Cassandra Keenan is a poet, flash-fiction writer and visual artist living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her flash fiction has been published by Five 2 One magazine, and her poetry is included in the literary anthology "Legs of Tumbleweeds, Wings of Lace."