Zachary Karabashliev - 18% Gray

I wonder how people faint at such sights. I can’t. The news continues with preparations for the New York Halloween parade. Danny orders vegetarian lasagna. I order ravioli with mushrooms.

*

We leave the restaurant and walk toward the car. It has just started to rain again. Where I had parked though, is now a dry rectangle. They’ve towed my car? In New York City? I run to the intersection, peek around the corner, come back, run to the other corner, looking around — nothing.

“Where did you park?” Danny still hasn’t grasped what’s going on.

“Here. Right here! Here. Here. Here!” Danny rolls his eyes, takes a deep breath, and bites his lip. He scratches his eyebrow, pointing at the sign on the fence. It reads that the parking spaces are for residents of that building only and all violators will be towed at the owner’s expense. For more information, call this 1-800-whatever-seven-digit number. Danny takes out his cell phone and dials. Half turning his back to me, he talks to someone, then takes a pen out of his pocket, looks around, picks up a smashed cigarette pack from the ground, writes something on it, and hangs up.

“It’s there.”

“Where?”

“There.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred and eighty dollars.”

“They’ll eat two hundred and eighty fucking dicks, fucking motherfuckers.” I’m furious. A cab passes, I try to flag it down but it doesn’t stop. I see another one behind it and almost jump on the hood.

A Pakistani with a turban.

Danny and I get in the back. Danny knocks on the plexiglass divider and shows him the cigarette box with the address. The Pakistani rolls his eyes like a madman and starts waving his hands, screaming.

“No cigarettes. No smoking.” Danny calms him down, points to the address written on the pack, and the Pakistani starts driving somewhere. We pass through dark, desolate places. It’s raining harder now. The red brake lights of the vehicles in front of us dwindle. We pass through grim housing projects and arrive at something that looks like a prison with a gate, prickling with barbed wire, fences, and an aluminum roof. We pull up and I pay the cabbie. We go into a trailer with barred windows. Behind a plastic divider sits an obese Arab in a white Radio Love 93.1 T-shirt, eating barbecued wings out of a plastic box, his fat face smeared with Tabasco sauce. He notices us and starts wiping himself with a pile of napkins. And he wipes, and wipes, and wipes, and wipes, and wipes without giving a shit about the number of trees felled in the Amazon just so he can wipe the orange Tabasco sauce off his unshaven, greasy face. All the jungles on the planet would not be enough for you to wipe the grease off your muzzle, freak!

“What do you want?”

“Our car, what else?”

“The Mercedes with the broken trunk?”

“Excuse me, you opened the trunk?”

“The trunk opened by itself. Your car had been rear-ended, the trunk opened by itself. We are not responsible if the car has been rear-ended.” The room spins.

“What was in the trunk?” I ask.

“A spare tire.”

“What else?”

“An emergency kit.” You will need an emergency kit now, you fucking pig-face! I shove my head through the small window and try grabbing the fat freak by the throat. He swings back surprisingly quickly, the chair flying out from under him. Half-eaten chicken wings, Tabasco sauce, celery, napkins, and dressing fly up in the air on the other side of the plastic divider and land on the dirty linoleum. My head is inside, behind the fiberglass. I want to squeeze my shoulders in like a rat, to crawl inside, knock the Monstrosity to the floor, grab the fire extinguisher from the wall, and bash his head with it, just like in that horrifying French movie, to release the world from his weight (Five hundred pounds? Six hundred?). I’m sure the world would be a better place, a far better place, if this pile of meat dies, rots, and turns into soil, fertile soil in some cemetery, upon which green grass will grow, clean morning dew will fall, the sun will shine, and harmless bugs will crawl. Swine-man, however, is in the corner of his little office, a safe distance from me. Centrifugal forces have pushed out the jelly around his neck. Grunts and snorts come out of his mouth as a walkie-talkie appears in his hairy hand, decorated with a heavy golden chain.

“I’m calling the police!” Wheezing.

“There was a bag in the trunk of the car,”

Wheezing. “That’s not my problem.” Wheezing.

“It will be your problem in a second.”

“Are you threatening me, huh? Are you threatening me? I’m calling the police!” Danny pulls me by my legs into our half of the office.

“I need my car.”

“It’s two hundred and eighty dollars.”

“Pay him,” He says. “And let’s get out of here!”

“Danny,” I whisper. “These fuckers took the bag of marijuana.”

“All the better,” says Danny, “Now you won’t have to deal with it. Just pay them what they want and let’s go!”

“Danny, are you kidding me!? I expect fifty grand from that pot and you want me to leave it here in this pigsty? I crossed the whole continent, rain soaked me, fire burned me, frost frosted me. .”

Danny whispers even more quietly. “These fucks. . you can’t reason with them. There’s nothing you can do.”

“They’ve just brought the car here, the bag is around here somewhere. It’s here, you understand?” The fatso looks at me, looks at Danny, swallows, and snorts. He lifts the walkie-talkie to his mouth and says something in his language.

“Hey,” I yell. “Hey!” I gesture for him to get closer to the fiberglass. “How much?” I rub my fingers together rigorously. “How much?” He’s quiet. “Hey, listen. I’ll leave you the car. I’m giving you the car, man, give me the bag that was inside.” The swine-man pulls out a calculator the size of a notebook from the pocket of his sweatshirt, digs his chin into his fat neck and starts calculating. “I’m leaving you the car, hey, hey. . What are you calculating? I’m leaving you the car!” Fatfuck lifts his head and says:

“You leave the car plus thirty grand.”

“What!? You fat Arab swine!”

“I’m Persian.”

“Well, go back to your fucking Persia that’s not even on the fucking map, you fat fuck. There’s no Persia on the map, there is Iran , but no Persia! And there’s an ayatollah ruling Iran, but soon there will be neither an Ayatollah nor an Iran , nor a Persia , because there are even more radical fucks than all of you dirty Arabs, right here in this country.”

“I’m not an Arab.”

“You are too, dirty Arab! I’m leaving you a Mercedes, a sports model. I paid over thirty grand for it two years ago.”

“Those Kompressors lose value quick.”

“You’re nuts!”

“Yeah, I’m nuts? And you aren’t — keeping drugs in a car trunk that opens by itself!”

“Fuck you!” I try to calm down a little.

“I’m calling the police.” He grunts.

“Listen,” I say. “I don’t have any money. I just don’t. I have about three, four hundred cash. I’ll pay my fine for parking in a tow zone and that’s it.” At the door, on our side of the office, two Arabs with gaunt faces, blue Adidas jackets, gold chains, and white sneakers show up.

“Hey, get the Mercedes here, ’cause I’m in a hurry.” I yell. They are all silent. “C’mon, bring the car. The bag, too. . I’ll share some of it, no problem, we’ll make a deal, ok? I’ll give you a deal. I’m leaving you a Mercedes, it’s a Mercedes, boys.”

“Ten grand each.”

“Are you nuts?”

“Ten grand each.”

“But I don’t have thirty grand, people! I’m not a drug dealer!”