By Daniel Webre

Solomon was discarding another load of junk mail when a circular for a dating service caught his eye. He had never realized what an industry loneliness had become. Perhaps because he had never felt it so acutely. He knew enough that he’d better make peace with it. In retrospect, thirty might have been a milestone, though one he hadn’t paid much attention to. Forty was more conspicuous, the markers more evident, though by then he realized it was too late. Now all that was just a scene in a rearview mirror.

This was the natural course of things. People grew older and the way they made relationships changed. Solomon was well conditioned by now to adjust when people did not react the same way they did to him in his thirties. But like so many other things in his life, there was a lag time, a delay, between the other person’s reaction and his recognition of why they were behaving that way. He was no longer the same old Solomon. He was now becoming simply Old Solomon.

A pity, he thought, but anyone surviving past the age of forty had necessarily suffered a disappointment or two and had ways of dealing with them. What was less familiar to Solomon was his new status as a vulnerable demographic. He’d always pictured adults growing more and more powerful—societally anyway—as they matured, until gradually, and only gradually, they slipped into a kind of dotage, well past retirement. Maybe that was what happened to other people. Solomon, though, had just cleared fifty and was already losing touch.

Sometimes, it surprised him how fluidly he slipped into his newfound isolation. The trouble was, he still had to interact with the world, just to keep his bubble operational, and those were the times when he swore he must be coated with some chemical like an anti-pheromone, that built up on his skin year by year.

Solomon didn’t take any of it personally. But when anyone did show an interest in him, he was wary. “Scam Likely,” his phone had started reporting to him whenever anyone called, and he had come to understand that his phone was a whole lot smarter than he was. The message now infected his own mind. Everywhere he turned, what came up was “Scam Likely.” It was how he experienced the world these days.

So when he started getting messages from his neighbor Leslie, “Scam Likely” was the first thing that entered his mind. These were not phone messages—she did not have his cell number as far as he knew. These were actual slips of paper that she tucked beneath the wiper blades of his Camry. He guessed she’d watched him get in and out of it, though he couldn’t recall when. He remembered speaking to her at the mailboxes of their apartment complex once, but that was weeks ago and he’d only seen her from a distance a couple of times since.

The notes were on monogrammed stationary with her initials in that weird diamond shape with the “L” in the middle and bigger than the “R” and “S” flanking it. He could never remember how you were supposed to read those things, though there was certainly nothing new about them. The whole idea struck him as kind of a throwback. She wasn’t very old—she couldn’t have been beyond her late twenties, early thirties tops. Solomon didn’t think people of that generation usually owned paper.

In addition to the initials, the stationary had a border of pink roses and whatever she had wished to communicate was written in blue ink. At least he believed the message had been intended for him—it was on his car after all—but the windshield was damp with dew by the time he found the note in the morning and the blue ink had smeared. He could see that she had beautiful handwriting, but he could only make out the words in a few places. Nowhere on the note could he find anything resembling his name. Perhaps it would have been better if he had offered her his number that day at the mailboxes, but what possible reason would she have had to reach him? He looked at the smeared, frilly note and regretted that he still didn’t know. “Scam Likely,” he thought as he refolded it and placed it in his shirt pocket.

Later, he tried again to decipher the words. Certain letters stood out. These were mainly the ornate capitals. He remembered an assignment once upon a time when he’d tried graduate school. He was supposed to transcribe a section of a seventeenth-century manuscript page from Thomas Traherne. In retrospect, that had been a snap compared to what faced him now. Traherne was giving advice for living. Maybe Leslie was too. He was certainly ready to approach it that way. No one had left him a note in ages. One of the lines—the second one—seemed to contain the word “neighbor,” which made sense. Then, towards the close, she seemed to be thanking him for something, but that was likely just an element of form. Beyond that, she used the letters “S” and “L” a lot. The L with which she signed her name was almost calligraphic and much nicer than the one generically stamped at the top of the page in her monogrammed initials.

It was beginning to drive Solomon genuinely crazy that he couldn’t make sense of the note. He thought of forensic scientists and archaeologists—maybe he could scan it on a computer and enhance the lines of the sentences somehow, maybe playing with the contrast or simply enlarging the image. Then it occurred to him that he could just ask her about it.

She was an attractive woman. No doubt about that. She was exactly the kind of person he might hope would leave him a note. She was pretty, and she also looked smart with her plain but stylish glasses. She would not have left a note lightly.

He looked at it again. He knew the dew had moistened it, but with the wavy blue smudges he couldn’t help but think “Tear-stained”—the kind of letter commemorated in song.

Solomon sighed. He was lonelier than he realized.

~~~

Solomon no longer had most of his textbooks. At one time in his life, it was either sell them or sell his plasma. Fed up with academics at that moment, he’d boxed up all of his books except for a few select volumes. His Restoration literature text was one of these.

He felt an urge to remember what Traherne had been trying to communicate so long ago and he went looking for it. Luckily, some careful scholar had transcribed the passages so Solomon wouldn’t have to. He would just have to find the book.

In the meantime, he found himself holding the note again. He sniffed it, half hoping it might harbor some stray whiff of perfume, but if it once did, it did no longer. The scent was most akin to laundry hung on the line to air dry—perhaps a trace of spring rain.

This time, though, as he gazed at the letters, they began to combine into familiar forms and he thought he could read the words. Maybe it was as simple as a change in light, an altered angle. Perhaps the last stray drops of moisture had evaporated, subtly finessing the ink on the way out. Although he believed he could make out the message now, his elation didn’t last. He’d been right about the parts with neighbor and her name, but the intervening passage was no more than a question: “Why do people park the way they do?” she said, or rather, the note said.

Solomon marched downstairs and over to the parking lot. There were no reserved spots, but each tenant had a parking sticker, and only residents were allowed to park in the places nearest the complex. He checked his car. He was within the lines on both sides. It was true, the passenger side was considerably closer to the line, but he had not crossed over. And the only reason he’d done that was because another neighbor’s big truck had encroached one oversized-tire’s width into the only spot left available to him. As it was, Solomon had barely been able to get out his door the night before. The truck had left sometime later that night or early that morning, so the spot on that side was empty by the time he’d recovered the note. Was Leslie complaining about him or the truck? Was she being passive-aggressive toward him or making him her confidant, commiserating in their shared struggles against the big truck? At the moment, these questions would have to remain unanswerable.

~~~

Solomon also started to question whether the note was meant for him personally or simply for the owner of the car. Did she even know the car belonged to him? She could have gotten confused, thought she was reaching out to someone else entirely.

He knew what she drove—a white Volkswagen Jetta. He remembered thinking before the note arrived that the car suited her well. For a brief moment—a very brief one—he considered leaving a reply on her windshield, this time offering his phone number or maybe an invitation to meet at his apartment for coffee. But there was too much uncertainty surrounding the situation. Ultimately, Solomon opted just to let it blow over. He would speak to her next time he saw her, maybe mentioning the note, or not. Probably not. He’d be friendly and casual but would wait and see if she mentioned it. But then three weeks went by and he never once saw her, though he noticed her car occupied several different parking spots over that period. By the time he did see her again, it was like nothing had even happened, and Solomon felt it was too late to say anything even if he had wanted to. She was leaving the laundry room just as he was going in. She smiled as she held the door open for him, but that was it. No words were exchanged, spoken or otherwise.

Solomon tried not to dwell on any of it as he put a load of blue jeans into the washer. How strange, he reflected, that he could be going about his bachelor routine just fine and unperturbed, and then something as insignificant as a note—not even a personal one—from a pretty stranger could reroute the direction of his thoughts.

As an experiment, Solomon tried double parking next time he came back to the complex. There weren’t many cars around, so even with him straddling the line between two spots, there were still plenty of other spaces available. The Jetta, he noticed, was not in the parking lot. Solomon went upstairs to wait.

Sure enough, a few hours later, there was a note. He could see it all the way from the stairs. When he got closer, however, he noticed the handwriting was different. This note had been printed in black Sharpie. From the looks of it, the author had some difficulty shaping the letters of the alphabet. But the message was clear: “Hey Asshole,” it said. “Move Your Car.” Solomon looked around the parking lot. The Jetta was nowhere to be seen. But the big white truck from the other day was back.

Solomon crossed out “Car” and wrote “Truck.” Then, he walked over toward the big truck and stretched to tuck the note under the wiper blade. True, the truck had not parked as poorly as he had deliberately done and he didn’t know for sure the truck’s owner had written it, but the truck was never quite contained within the lines. The space was big enough, but the truck’s driver just never exercised the required level of care and was always encroaching on someone else.

Solomon went back upstairs to wait for the Jetta. By two in the morning, he woke to flashes of amber in his bedroom and the beeping of a vehicle in reverse. It was only then he thought about his car. He’d intended to move it before going to bed. Now he was getting towed.

By the time Solomon made it downstairs, the tow truck driver was hitching a chain to his car.

“Hey, wait! That’s my car.”

The driver fished a damp card out of his pocket. “You’ll be able to pick it up from that address in the morning.”

“Why can’t you just unhook it now, and I’ll move it?”

“Sorry. Got to take it in now. Already called it in.”

Solomon noticed the neighbor with the truck standing curbside, quietly waiting with his arms crossed.

“Well, you can let them know you got in touch with the owner,” Solomon said to the tow-truck driver.

“It doesn’t work that way. You can call them in the morning. They’ll take a credit card.”

Solomon felt helpless as he watched the driver leave with his car in tow. The Jetta was back now. He noticed the note he’d placed on the pickup truck had been removed.

“Sucks that we only get one spot,” the neighbor with the truck said. He chuckled and walked away shaking his head. Solomon looked around to see if Leslie might be watching but didn’t see anyone else. He decided to leave a note for her on her car. “Call Solomon,” it said, and he listed his phone number. For good measure he added his apartment number in parentheses in case she wasn’t sure it was him. He folded the note and tucked it under the driver’s-side wiper blade, as was becoming the custom. Then, he went upstairs to salvage as much sleep as he could before daylight.

~~~

When he woke, the sun was just coming up. Although he didn’t expect to find any, he checked his phone for messages. His plan was to ask Leslie for a ride to the impound lot. He figured the chances were high he’d never hear from her. For all he knew, she might have been the one who called him in, though he suspected it had been Super Duty. He waited restlessly for the phone to ring. It was an unusually quiet morning—no scam calls even. He tried formulating a Plan B. He supposed he’d have to call for a cab. He wasn’t sure how to use the ride share services young people favored and decided this wasn’t the time to learn. Out of habit, he looked for his phone book, then remembered he didn’t have one. Either his address had been skipped when they’d been distributed or they just didn’t make them anymore.

He was searching for a list of numbers on his phone when he heard a knock on the door. It sounded louder and more forceful than he would have expected and it startled him. He hoped it might be Leslie, but when he answered, it was the neighbor with the truck.

“Did you key my truck, you son of a bitch?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I got a gash a quarter inch deep all down the side of it.”

“Wasn’t me. Why would I have done it?”

“Cut the crap.”

“Seriously. I went right up to bed.” The neighbor didn’t look convinced, but he calmed down a bit.

“Look,” Solomon said, “I know you had me towed, but I guess I deserved it. I meant to move my car, but I forgot.”

The guy looked as though he had been insulted. “I didn’t call nobody to tow your car.”

“What about the note?”

“I left you a note that said move your car. That ain’t the same as having you towed.”

“Yeah, I guess not.” This left both of them silent for a moment considering the other likely suspects. Both seemed to be thinking the same thing, though perhaps not in identical terms.

“You think it was the weird girl?” the neighbor said.

Solomon had never thought of her as weird before, but he could see how his neighbor might have thought this. “You mean Leslie?” He wasn’t sure why, but he immediately regretted telling him her name.

Just then, Solomon’s phone started ringing. It was a number he didn’t recognize, but in an effort to get rid of Super Duty, Solomon told him he had to take the call and shut the door with him still standing there, though he was careful to do it gently.

“Hello?”

“Solomon?”

“Yes?”

“This is Leslie…your neighbor. You left a note.”

“Yes. Leslie. Thank you for calling.”

His first impulse was to warn her about the guy with the truck, but he didn’t think he should start with that. He felt rattled and a little guilty, as though he’d somehow implicated her.

She started speaking again. “I didn’t think you were home. I didn’t see your car.”

“You know my car?”

“Sure. You know mine, don’t you? You left a note.”

“Right. Yeah. My car got towed.”

“That sucks. Of course, the way you were parked, I thought you might have been drunk or something.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“No worries.”

There was a long pause.

“So you left a note….”

“Right. You know that guy with the truck? He thinks you keyed it.”

“I did.”

“Why did you do that?”

“He’s an asshole. We have a history.”

“Did you call to get me towed?”

“No. I didn’t have to. Those guys circle around at night looking for people. That’s how they make their money.”

“But the other note. A few weeks back. You left that for me?”

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“It was something on my mind. Don’t you ever feel the need to share your thoughts?”

“Well, yes, but I mean usually I keep them to myself. I guess I’ve gotten used to it.”

She surprised Solomon when she started to laugh.

“Why is that funny?”

“It’s not,” she said. “I’m laughing because that’s something I’d never want to get used to.”

“Can you take me to get my car?”

~~~

The impound lot was a veritable sea of concrete and automobiles. Rows of cars stretched nearly as far as the eye could see. Solomon wished he had called the number on the card first because the small office where the attendant should have been was empty. A sign on the door said, “Back in five minutes,” but after fifteen, Solomon’s concerns were beginning to mount. Surprisingly, Leslie seemed relaxed about the whole ordeal. There was a bench outside the office where they could sit while they waited.

“So why do you think people park like they do?” she mused again.

With her by his side and neither one of them in any great hurry to be somewhere else, Solomon began to consider. He looked out at all the junk and impounded cars on the lot before them. It seemed at least as orderly as their apartment complex on a given night. He cleared his throat. At first nothing came out. He tried again. “I don’t know. I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

“Not at all?” Leslie looked skeptical beneath her glasses. “Not even after I left you the note? That was something like a month ago.”

Solomon wanted to tell her he’d thought about the note a great deal. But now that she’d repeated the question, he realized he hadn’t spent much time considering what she’d actually been asking. He did his best to formulate an answer now. “So listen, this is a little bit off the cuff, but here’s what I think might be going on. Nobody thinks about the people around them. Not enough anyway. They think, ‘Hey, there’s a spot, I need a spot, I’m done driving, let me stop right there.’ All they care about at that point is stopping the car—or truck—so they can get on with the next thing.”

“Hmm. I like that. Get on with the next thing. Always the next thing. That is a problem, isn’t it?”

Again, Solomon found himself at a loss for how to respond. At his stage in life, he no longer knew what to think about the next things. He supposed the immediate next thing would be recovering his car. But then what? He would drive it home and park. Could he spend the time to park within the lines only because there would be nothing much waiting for him inside his apartment? This seemed way too depressing to discuss with his pretty, semi-kindly neighbor—she had left a gash in a man’s truck after all. He’d prefer to hear her thoughts.

“Why is it a problem? I mean, I just made that up, and you’re young. What’s your next thing?”

Leslie laughed. It came out louder and more suddenly than any laughter Solomon was accustomed to. Maybe she was a weird girl after all. But aside from startling him initially, he didn’t feel as though she was laughing at his expense. She composed herself and responded, “I don’t think that way at all. Maybe I should. A little more anyway.”

Solomon listened as she caught her breath. The interstate, too, was not far and the sounds of moving vehicles streamed by in the distance. He thought about their place in all of it and was interrupted by new sounds—footsteps on the metal stairway, a chain of keys jangling.

When the footsteps stopped, a disheveled man in a partially untucked work-shirt stood facing them on the landing.

“Yell-oh. Been waiting long?”

“As a matter of fact—” Leslie started, but Solomon interrupted.

“No, no. Just having a chat. My car’s here, I believe. Towed in last night?”

“Well, now.” The man, whose name turned out to be Daryl, continued past them to the office, unlocked the door. “Let’s have a look.”

Solomon and Leslie followed through the office door. Daryl pressed some buttons on a computer and squinted a while at the screen.

“Yeah. Here we go. Mr. Gupta?”

Leslie was laughing again.

“No, my name’s Solomon.”

Daryl clicked a few more keys.

“Huh. That’s funny. You’ve got the Camry?”

“That’s right.”

“Says you picked it up this morning.”

Solomon and Leslie looked at each other.

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible, all right. Your car’s not here.”

“Well, you’d better find out where it is. Or else—” Solomon wished he hadn’t added that last part, but he realized he now had both Daryl’s and Leslie’s attention. Thankfully, no one asked, “Or else what?” because he had no earthly idea what he would tell them, though he supposed it might involve a lawyer.

“Hey, relax, guy. I’m gonna call the driver. Maybe he can help get to the bottom of this.”

Daryl picked up the phone and dialed a number. The parts Solomon could make out amounted to “Yell-oh, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, Camry.” When he hung up the phone, Solomon couldn’t gauge much from his expression.

“Okay, car’s here,” he said. “It’s just not clear where the driver left it. He didn’t log it in correctly, but it’s here, all right.

“You got your car key on you. Let’s try this. Hit the panic button. We’ll follow the sound.”

The three of them walked back onto the landing. Leslie led the way down the steps while Solomon waited for Daryl to lock up again and hang the “Back in five minutes” sign on the door.

“Hit it now?” asked Solomon.

“You can try, but we might have to get closer.”

Leslie had reached the bottom of the steps and was waiting for them. Daryl was next. Somehow Solomon had ended up last and alone again. But it didn’t really bother him. He found himself growing reflective.

He took his time catching up with the others. His car was out there hiding somewhere in a sea of cars, lost amidst the vast unknown expanse. But now he had help, and there was something tangible he could do. With a single click of a button, repeated over and over again, he would send out his signal, and then wait, listening carefully.

Maybe this time something would come back to him.

Maybe this time he would be found.

~~~~~

Daniel Webre’s short fiction has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Permafrost Online, Kansas City Voices, New Limestone Review, I-70 Review, Pinyon, Front Range Review, The Sagebrush Review, and other places.