The Parking Lot Attendant

by Nafkote Tamirat

  The disciples confronted parking lot procedure with the precision of a well-trained army; if the attendants were the cavalry, they were the infantry. Ayale was careful about which of his ideas he allowed to thrive among them. His ultimate design was to create a human fleet in his own image, and he and Fiker fantasized about this high-quality citizenry, a people intelligent enough to accept.

  Discipledom was a thankless assignment, although that was hardly Ayale’s fault; it’s inherent to the gig. A casual stroll through the Bible confirms it. The disciples of Jesus were forced to abandon (at minimum): careers, incomes, the respect of others, fornication for pleasure, families, clean clothing, regular meals, self-esteem.

  Before I left Boston, it was widely believed that most of the disciples were in hiding in western Massachusetts. A few drifted back into their former lives with neither a murmur nor a cry, held always at arm’s length by the rest of our people. I still don’t know how I feel about them, but no one can deny that they loved Ayale with an ardor that elevated them when most everything else in their lives tried to thrust them back.

  ON THE SUBJECT OF THE BASEMENT COVENANT

  Just as I was learning to stand Fiker’s unsettling presence, my father started going away on the weekends. My father is a man of habit, most of his patterns locked firmly in place since childhood. Any potential new tendency, foodstuff, or pair of pants is deliberated over for weeks, during which time he remains entrenched in the kind of soul-searching that has broken stronger men. It’s nearly impossible to ascertain when he’s in the middle of one of these reflection sessions or just being his workaday self, since the usual signs of pensiveness—excessive silence, furrowed brow, vigorous smoking, solitary walks—are already principal aspects of his persona.

  It was a Thursday when he made his intentions known, a small duffel bag already packed in preparation for the voyage, which he would embark upon the next day, directly after work. His destination would wait for no man.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Visiting.”

  “A person?”

  For as long as I’d known him, he’d never mentioned any friends or family members, except for one or two brunch references to unknown or possibly fictitious people in Addis, most of whom had breathed their last. My father didn’t attend funerals for the same reason that he didn’t eat fruit in the car: principle.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Sunday night.”

  “Why are you going?”

  “I just have to straighten out a few things. I’ll leave you some money.” He sounded lost.

  “Is everything okay?”

  He began to play with the mugs on the counter.

  “I’m not doing much good here, am I?”

  He smiled with his mouth closed; it looked painful.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  My eyes were trying to locate a view that didn’t include him.

  “I mean, you’ll do exactly what you want and I won’t have any way of preventing that or of helping you, because, it turns out, I’m incapable of all this.” He gestured vaguely at the kitchen cupboards. “I’m an incapable person.”

  When I didn’t respond, he sighed and went to the bathroom. I fiddled with my shirt buttons, then made myself stop; I’d already disabled too many items with my nervous habit. When he came back out—I was always surprised by how little time he took, almost as if he only went to cover up the fact that he didn’t have a bladder—he stood close to my chair, his hands hovering above mine, in what I believe was an attempt to hold them.

  “I’m sorry for what I said.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t need to hear that. Maybe it’s good that I’m going away for a while—we can both take a break, think about what’s bothering us.”

  “Nothing’s bothering me.”

  “That makes one of us,” he snapped. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  This was my first glimpse into the constant guilt that plagued my father. He appreciated love, he wanted to do right by others, but he also wanted to be left the fuck alone, and that desire seemed so alien to everyone else around him that he was certain he was in the wrong. Even retreating was a minefield, his seclusion ruined by his sadness at deriving no comfort from the kinds of relationships that fueled everyone else. My father simply asks that those he loves let him be.

  “Are you sure nothing is bothering you,” he tried again. “I mean, a lot of this isn’t normal.”

  “What isn’t normal?”

  “Our lives, this whole Ayale thing—”

  “What Ayale thing?”

  “The man is older than I am, and yet you two hang out like buddies. If you need friends, they should be of your own age.”

  Typical, how he addressed the idea of having friends as a nasty compulsion in which only some, like me, would even think to indulge.

  “I’m happy with things the way they are.”

  “I just can’t believe that.”

  “You’re going to be late.”

  “For what?”

  “Sleeping. Good night. And you don’t have to take your keys—I mean, if you forget them, I’ll be here on Sunday, I won’t fall asleep.”

  I babbled in order to ward off the specter of mutual revelation he kept shoving into our midst.

  “One more thing.”

  I turned slowly from the entrance to my room. It was like he’d swallowed some sort of truth serum, a laxative for the mouth. It was horrible.

  “Now that we’re on the subject”—which we weren’t really; thinking about something that the other person has neither mentioned nor heard you think about is not at all the same as being on the subject of that something—“I’ve been meaning to ask you if you have any questions … about your mother. Or, maybe, questions about your mother and me? I wasn’t sure if you’d, well, if you’d like to talk about the situation? Because maybe you’re curious, perfectly natural to be curious, and you didn’t know how to bring it up before?”

  I felt like I was going to vomit. No amount of insistence on his part was going to transform us into that TV-movie family where having only one parent makes everyone that much closer. In my experience, having a single parent was like having one leg: you got used to it, but you always sensed that phantom limb.

  “No! I understand everything!”

  “Great! I’m glad that’s clear!”

  I now regret not seeing his generosity for what it was and rebuffing his efforts to open a new door. We’ve persisted in our mutual games of evasion, but now that I recognize what we’re doing, now that I see what we could have been doing instead, I find myself loving him all the more.

  The question of why he was leaving had been yanked out of my mind by all that had almost been revealed before I saved us with my cowardice. I remembered only the next day when he said, “See you Sunday” as he dropped me off at the bus stop. At the lot, I read one sentence after another in various textbooks and novels until Ayale visited me in my nest.

  “How are you?”

  “My father’s going away.”

  “Why?”

  Ayale’s surprise mirrored my own, for which I was grateful.

  “He’s visiting people.”

  “Real people?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Is this the first time he’s left you alone?”

  “Yup.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Better. Are you going to be all right? You have enough money? You won’t get scared?”

  “I’ll be fine—I’m not five, you know.”

  “Only the young announce their age at every given opportunity.”

  Two boys in aviator sunglasses arrived, twins who were starting their own Palestine Liberation Front and wanted Ayale to get involved. We didn’t speak again until I said good-bye, while he was giving some last-minute advice to Darius, the younger by three minutes. He offered me a ride, but I declined. I wanted to walk a bit a
nd then sit on a train and then sit on our couch, with no demands to listen and speak. Halfway to the Green Line, I wished I had accepted, and by the time I got home, I felt lonely—surprising since I had been living with someone who sometimes lost his voice from using it so little. I didn’t sleep well that night; I had dreams about going to dinner and never coming back out.

  The next day, I was drowsing at a nearby café when I started—I thought I’d seen Ayale. I was clearly losing it, gaping at mirages in the middle of Coolidge Corner. I closed my eyes, opened them again, and there he remained, grinning so hard that my face hurt in sympathy.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Did you think I lived at the lot, surviving on coffee and newsprint until someone came to relieve me with kind words and stale pastries?”

  “No, of course not. But this is nowhere near the lot.”

  “Did you forget that I still own a car? The kind that can go from one location to another, even when the locations aren’t next to each other? I’d even argue that it does better when the locations aren’t next to each other.”

  “All right, all right, don’t choke on your own cleverness.”

  Ayale scooped up my mostly intact sandwich and calmly stuck half of it in his mouth. As he chewed, he looked around.

  “This is a new place, right?”

  “Not at all. Do you like bagels?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Why are you at a restaurant that only serves bagels?”

  “Which is nowhere near the lot that I’m doomed to haunt for the rest of my life.”

  “Jesus, leave it alone! I’m sorry, okay? You’re a vibrant, interested, and interesting person with freedom of movement, freedom of choice, freedom of speech—are you happy now?”

  “Why are you getting so irritated?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Do you miss your father?”

  “No and no.”

  “Do you not like being in the house by yourself?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Eat lunch.”

  “You just did.”

  “You just did.”

  “Right. After your second lunch?”

  “Don’t know. Movies. Bookstore. I need new sneakers, actually.”

  “Let’s do that last one.”

  We made our way over to the shoe store I’d been in love with since last year. My father flatly refused to purchase anything from it, stating that it was too expensive and the shoes looked like they would blow apart if one trod too heavily in them.

  “They just look fragile! They’re British!”

  “The British should know better. They used to own the world.”

  In order to enter, one had to pass through the front of a convenience store, where cans of food lined the walls. Bored fashionistas stared at the incoming traffic and sometimes deigned to point people in the direction of the elevator, which led into a magical kingdom of colorful accessories and footwear, although the sneakers were the main attraction.

  Ayale looked around with his habitual air of amusement. I showed him two pairs that I had finally decided were my favorites, after a thorough tour of the establishment. Without a word, he took both to the cash register, paid, and gave me the shoeboxes as we exited.

  I had become wary of Ayale’s munificence. On top of my delivery fees and tips, he continued to gift me with varying amounts of cash, with no warning or reason given. If I tried to refuse, he’d insist, joking that he knew how easily money disappeared when one was young and reckless, apparently not understanding that only one of those adjectives applied to me. My father had already lost his mind when two fifties fell out of my pocket, and I wondered what he’d do when he learned about my delivery gig. He believed these offerings to be near-pathological ways in which Ayale bound people to him, trapping them in a web of debt from which they could never escape. This, according to him, was Ayale’s version of creating love. He forbade me from ever accepting anything from Ayale, an empty display of power, which didn’t detract from the fact that he was correct. My distrust was born from the fear that Ayale thought he had to keep giving me money to make me stay. I wanted him to understand that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I loved him, but since I couldn’t get up the courage to say so, the desire felt misbegotten from the start.

  I’d like to tell you that I tried to stop Ayale from spending unnecessary money, but let’s be honest: I wanted to believe that him buying those shoes proved that he cared. Giving money is impersonal, but a present shows that you know someone. No matter that I’d chosen the shoes. I’d decided this was significant, and I wasn’t letting go of that. I thanked him profusely.

  “All right, all right. I get nervous when people thank or apologize too much.”

  “Sorry. No, wait, not sorry. Forget I said that.”

  We spent the rest of the day in a wandering mode. We stopped when we saw something pretty, something to eat, something to buy, or when we ran out of cigarettes. We talked about my future, as well as the future. He explained why silk ties were the only acceptable neckwear, I why Of Mice and Men was boring. In this way, it got to a late hour and Ayale drove me back to my apartment. When we arrived, we immediately found an empty parking space; usually my father and I had to circle around the neighborhood for at least fifteen minutes until we could steal into a just-vacated spot, the honking and fuck-yous of other thwarted seekers music to our ears. He kept the engine going as I climbed out and was so neatly ensconced that when I asked him in, there was no extra maneuvering necessary.

  He had never before seen the inside of our apartment. He noted that it didn’t feel like a basement, and I thanked him as if I had built it myself. I played my father’s old records, mostly Ella Fitzgerald. It was almost midnight when he cleared his throat, and I knew that this was the moment we’d been anticipating for most of the day. He wasn’t stupid, but neither was I. The sneakers may have been a tactical move on both of our parts.

  “I don’t know if you remember our little chat. About how a good rule to follow, for the both of us, would be to tell everything there is to tell, whatever that might mean. Do you remember that?”

  “Of course I do. It was because of me that we even came up with the rule.”

  “Let’s not forget that it was more that I thought of the rule and you went along with it—”

  “I agreed to it; going along with something makes me sound more passive than I’d like.”

  “I wasn’t completely honest with you before.”

  “Your trust means a lot to me too, thanks.”

  “I didn’t know if I could tell you.”

  His tone was making me feel panicked; I strove for levity.

  “I wonder what else you aren’t saying. What about those deliveries? Probably bombs or something like that, huh?”

  One look at his face showed me that I’d gone too far. Unbidden, the thought came that if I tried to scream, no one would hear. My father had always viewed the thickness of the walls as a good thing.

  “Is that what you really think?”

  “No, no, I’m—I’m so—”

  “That I’d harm another human being? Any human being?”

  “Absolutely not! It was a joke!”

  “It’s not hard, what you’re doing—you know that, right?”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it! I was messing around, you know me—”

  “I thought I did.”

  He looked like he was trying to locate me in the cosmos of what he knew and cared about.

  “I think this is just a misunderstanding.”

  “I’ve had about enough of what you think.”

  We sat in silence, as I sweated and he looked more poised than ever. I cast around in my mind for something that would mend what I’d cracked. My distress must have moved him, or perhaps he’d only been pretending, so that saying what he’d set out to say would have the veneer of forgiveness. Look back on the past, given what you know in the p
resent, and you’ll realize that all along, you’ve been inventing stories and labeling them “history.”

  “It’s about the parking lot.”

  I almost jumped into his lap, I was so grateful.

  “Yes?”

  “And I might need your help.”

  “You’d better start from the beginning.”

  So he did. And so will I.

  It was Ayale who first discovered how to make real money as an attendant. He calculated by how many cars he could surpass the legal limit before actual damage occurred. He discovered that the regulation forty could be stretched to sixty-four or even up to eighty when the weekday security guard for the adjacent office complex was off-duty, since he’d threatened to report Ayale if he continued to sneak cars over to his section of the sidewalk. With perfection of the system came increased profits, so that Ayale and his team were usually flying high by Sunday, with Thomas looking the other way as long as he got 4 percent (5 percent with the birth of his second child).

  All profits were counted, then divided at the end of the week, with adjustments made for sick family members, mortgage payments, Christmas. The weekly sum had dwindled due to the rising number of people who had to be given a cut: first Thomas, then Lentil, then the policeman who did his rounds in the area, then Elsie (“But that’s different,” Ayale said, and I was too scared to ask how), then the two university security guards who palled around with Ayale when they weren’t making greater demands. Luckily, increased sponsorship (as he put it) had also given them extra parking spaces, their jurisdiction now covering most of the surrounding streets, even those that trailed into quiet cul-de-sacs where the wealthy could meet the same people with the same level of prosperity, over and over again, until they died in bed.