Week Five Prompt: I Lost It....

                The sliding doors opened and I rushed out of the Hannaford, in a hurry to get back to work. I was sent on a mission by my militant boss to buy corned beef and it took me longer than I wanted it to. The first meat counter I went to said they didn’t have it, that I had to go to another department. The young kid they sent me to assured me the package of meat I bought was what my boss was looking for but I wasn’t sure; the package didn’t look like anything I’d seen in the restaurant before. In fact, it looked like it was meant for a broiled dinner, not a Reuben. What did I know? I wasn’t a chef.

                It was a cold, windy day in Maine. The sky was grey and the air was bitterly cold. Each gust of wind was as subtle as a cinder block hitting me in the face and chilled me to my bone; the second I passed through the automatic doors of the grocery store, I couldn’t wait to find the car. Where was it? A sudden panic overwhelmed me and I no longer felt the cold. I had no recollection of where I had parked. I had lost my boss’s van. I could hardly remember what it looked like, how was I supposed to find it?

                I walked briskly in the direction I thought I parked and saw a silver van similar to the one I drove. With hope in my heart, I hurried up to the driver’s side door only to find an elderly woman sitting in the passenger’s seat, visibly alarmed by my sudden approach. Embarrassed, I casually walked away to diminish my awkwardness, as if I meant to walk up to her van in the first place. In my mind I visualized Gaby’s van. It was beat up with a dent in one side. What side? I thought it was the passenger side, but…it could have been the driver’s side….

                I knew I had parked far away from the Hannaford in a secluded parking spot, far away from other cars. Even though my boss told me before I left that “The van’s a piece of shit. Don’t worry if you bump it up a little bit, it’s old, there’s nothing you can do to hurt it,” I didn’t believe him and, not being the world’s most accomplished driver, I had been nervous I was going to crash his car. Now I wasn’t going to lose my job because I crashed my boss’s car, I was going to lose it because I lost his car. “This cannot be happening,” I muttered to myself and I willed myself to think. “I know I parked near the Hallmark store…” and I continued to walk aimlessly up and down the rows of cars.

                Looking for a silver van with a dent in one of the sides, I felt like a desperate pet owner who had lost their dog. If only Gaby’s van responded when I called its name….My eyes gravitated towards cars parked in distant places and somewhere near Planet Fitness I ran into the dull silver van that belonged to my boss. It was now surrounded by two cars, a Honda Civic and a black CRV and a new worry overwhelmed me. Could I get out of this parking space without crashing into one of those two cars? I was yelling at myself for ever taking on the task of going to the store, angry I had agreed to go get the pastrami, disappointed I had overestimated my driving abilities.

                “Focus. You can do it. You have your license. You can drive. Just because you don’t drive doesn’t mean you can’t drive.  It’s your choice not to drive. You don’t like it. You don’t not drive because you’re not good at it….you don’t drive because you don’t want to…” My pep talk didn’t do much for my confidence as I backed out of the parking space I had initially chosen because I could pull out of it.  A blue Subaru appeared out of nowhere and honked their horn as I was backing out. All I could think is “Thank God they’re a better driver than me. Thank God they saw me and stopped,” and slowly accelerated towards the bright lights of Broadway.

                “A few more feet and we’re there,” I thought as I pressed my left foot down on the brake. “All I gotta do it turn left here…” and realized I would never be able to turn left on Broadway at lunchtime. A good driver would be able to, they wouldn’t think twice about it. Me? I turned right when the light turned green and pulled into the convenience store up the road to turn around. As I pulled into the narrow drive at Jimmy V’s, I breathed a sigh of relief. Gaby’s van was back, intact, no extra dents. I had found his van, didn’t get pulled over, and had only had one person honk at me. I had survived the horrifying ordeal. I never wanted to drive again.

                “What the hell took you so long?” Gaby barked the second I walked through the swinging white doors in the back of the restaurant.

                Unwilling to admit I had lost his van I said, “They said they didn’t have it in the meat department so they sent me to another department where I got this.” In a desperate attempt to save myself I added, “It was really busy there!”

                I showed him the bag of meat I had bought and he grunted his disappointment. “That’s for broiled dinners. That’s for corned beef and cabbage. We can’t slice that. What meat counter did you go to?”

                I tried to explain that the people at Hannaford told me this was what I was looking for but he didn’t want to hear it. Muttering something about how if he wants thing to get done he had to do them himself, Gaby rushed back to the Hannaford and I watched the clock until it struck two so I could go home.