As the Wicked Watch(49)

Look at you now, Jordan, driving through Chicago’s Gold Coast in a convertible with a turbocharged engine to pick up sushi on the fly.

As it turned out, the day wasn’t through with me yet. When I pulled into the garage beneath my apartment complex, someone had parked in the numbered space I pay $150 a month to guarantee is reserved just for me.

“Gotdamnit! Really? Jerk!”

This has happened twice before, and it was just as infuriating then, too. Now I would have to turn around, make a left out of the garage, because you can turn only one way, sit through that long-ass traffic light at Halsted, and make another left to access the uncovered upper parking deck. The odds of finding an empty space this late in the day weren’t in my favor. Unlike in Dallas or even Austin, in Chicago a dedicated parking space is a privilege.

I passed by the floor-to-ceiling lobby windows as I drove around to the other side of the building. I could see Bass sitting at the guard’s desk. He looked up just before I rounded the corner, stood and waved, then shrugged his shoulders, his palms up and his arms out to the side. His body language told me that he’d probably seen me pull into the garage on the security camera and wondered why I was now headed to the roof.

The driveway to the upper deck is steep and always makes me feel as though I am falling backward. Thankfully, its being a Monday night, there were a few empty spaces for me to park in. I parked in the space closest to the heavy steel door leading to the stairwell. It has been a rule of mine since my early reporting days to favor stairs over elevators. This started as a means to get some exercise, because I hate working out, but it became a safety issue, too, after I read about a woman being attacked and pinned in the elevator of a parking garage. Ever since, I’ve considered stairs the safest route.

I reached behind the seat to get my heels and debated throwing them off the roof, given how much they’d hurt my feet today. And on top of that, I’m disgusted about the damage to the heel due to the mishap outside Cynthia’s house, in need of repair after wearing them only twice.

The upper parking deck was poorly lit. The lamp closest to the exit door has been flickering since the day I moved in. That was two years ago, and I’ve given up on complaining about it. I’m not up here that often anyway, though, on these rare occasions that I am, I could appreciate that the towering lamps were no competition for the radiant moon, which has a scene-stealing advantage from up here in a cloudless sky. Instinctively, I checked my surroundings before getting out of the car and walking toward the heavy steel door. Just as I yanked it open, the light went off on cue and the cold draft from the stairwell penetrated my bones, a startling reminder it was time-out for parking on the roof. I don’t belong here anyway. I pity the person who dared park in my heated garage space again. I might have to go rogue and key their car. No way I wanted to ever wake up to my convertible under twenty feet of snow.

My feet pulsated pain with every step, and although I’d hardly eaten today, my clothes felt like they were tightening around my body. If my parking space hadn’t been hijacked, I would be in my apartment by now, completing my transition from work me to home me. I should be de-splintering the chopsticks and stirring wasabi into the soy sauce and savoring the prickly slivers of ginger on the back of my throat. But no. Some foolish person had subjected my feet to a marathon walk to my apartment. Red-hot anger pumped me full of adrenaline, and before I realized it, I had flown past my floor and headed straight to the lobby to tell Bass.

I nearly ran into him when I opened the lobby door. “Oh crap!” I said. “I’m sorry, did I hit you with the door? Are you okay?”

“Hey Jordie!” he said. “No, it’s all good. I was just coming up to see about you. Did somebody park in your space again?”

“Yes,” I said, pouting.

“Why do you sound like a five-year-old?” He laughed.

“Because I’m mad, and of all fucking days!” I said. “Is that grown enough for you?”

Bass is four years my junior, but his congenial ribbing sometimes made me feel like I’m younger than he is.

“What kind of car is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but it’s got a Michigan plate . . . license number . . . BLE . . . 568,” I said.

“You wrote it down?” he asked.

“No, but I’m fixin’ to so that I don’t forget,” I said, slipping into my Texas twang.

“You memorized that?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” I said matter-of-factly.

“But you don’t remember the car? The color? Nothing?” he asked again.

“I don’t know. I don’t know cars,” I said, giving him my most intense eye roll. “I just need it out!”

“All right, Texas, I’m on it,” Bass said, mocking my accent.

“Boy, you better leave me alone,” I said, shifting my weight between my aching feet.

“Jordan,” Bass admonished me playfully, “nobody calls a Black man boy in Chicago.”

I rolled my eyes at him once more. “You know what I mean.”

Though I pretend to be annoyed, our lighthearted verbal sparring had a calming effect on my mood. These fun-loving exchanges with Bass were reminiscent of one of my besties from Texas—Tyson Holloway. We met in drama class sophomore year and were cast as siblings Tom and Laura during a table read of The Glass Menagerie, and the rest is history. Tyson and I became running buddies. I wasn’t looking for a brother and he wasn’t looking for a sister, but we fell effortlessly into a sister-brother type vibe, nonetheless.