Play "Misty" For Me

I come to work early every day. It always feels good to sit in my car for a few minutes before somebody comes with a key to open up the building. I have time to collect and examine runover thoughts from the previous night, do a bit of reading, actually chew my breakfast, and generally take some time to enjoy the early moments of a new day.

Yesterday morning, because of a doctor's appointment that ended at 8:30, I was incredibly early for work. I got there at 9:00 and technically we don't open until 10:00 so I knew it was going to be a while. I reclined the driver's seat in my mom's Toyota Corolla, which I've been driving during the few days my Echo has been in the shop. I manually rolled down the windows, and laid back with my current book club read--Connie Schultz's "Life Happens."

I was really enjoying myself, reveling in the glory of being scarcely a pinky finger away from the end of the book. I had stopped popping my head up to look for the boss's car in the parking lot. I was determined to finish the book this morning. And I knew I would.

Then out of nowhere, I was jilted from my seat by an offensive knocking at the half-open window on the passenger side. I jerked forward, startled, and saw a young man, maybe thirty years old, leaning towards the car smiling at me. He was a man of medium build with bright green eyes, a purple button-down shirt, a braided belt, and he had smooth sandy brown hair that he wore long like a student. If it weren't for the scar that crept down along the right side of his smile, he wouldn't have seemed creepy at all.

I suppose this is why I wasn't opposed to saying hello and conversing with him. "You look comfortable there," he said, and I could almost hear him wink although I was reluctant to look him in the eye. "Are you reading?" I nodded and told him that I was in a book club. "You came to work early just so you could read, didn't you?" I laughed and told him that I did because I wanted to finish before my friends and I met to discuss it.

Then it happened. He leaned back from the window just slightly. At this point I was looking right at him when he spoke.

"So where's the Echo today?"

I closed my book. My eyes narrowed and my knuckles tightened. I felt like I was in that moment in a bad horror movie--the one where you finally know who the killer is. This is the moment where the orchestra strikes suddenly and you jump out of your skin in spite of yourself. That one sharp fiddle squeals and everything feels eerie and dissonant. This is how I felt. A strange man knows what car I drive. I've never seen him before, and he knows I normally drive a Toyota Echo. And he's pointing it out to me. Be cool.

"It's in the shop. Oil leakage." And then I added in a tone of voice that's meant to sound coy but probably sounded nervous and frightened, "How do you know I drive an Echo?"

"I work upstairs at the juvenile center. I see you coming to work a lot. I've never had the chance to say hello." The business I work at is housed beneath a juvenile detention and rehabilitation center. So he works with the criminally-minded youth. I hope and pray that they haven't given him any ideas.

Boldly, I offered my hand to him, and my name. He returned the gesture.

"Anyway, I thought I'd just come by and say hello. I saw you with your little book there and figured I'd make a smart-ass comment. I'll talk to you later."

He'll talk to me later? What is that? And how condescending of this man I don't know to say "your little book." What is he reading right now? War and Peace? The complete works of Shakespeare? The dictionary? Where does he get off calling my book "little?" And color me old-fashioned but a person who calls himself a "smart-ass" just after an introductory handshake is no gentleman.

Needless to say, I went from being creeped out and scared witless to being offended and annoyed. He walked away. I continued reading until I finished my book and then I locked my car and headed towards the door, shooting paranoid glances at the cracks in the blinds of the windows above me.