The Lady in the Maroon Buick

I pass by a grocery store parking lot on my daily routine several days per week. There are three rows of parking spaces at this grocery store with trees planted at the ends of the rows. Everyday, office workers who prefer the solitude of eating lunch in their cars vie for the shade under one of these trees. There are usually different kinds of cars and different kinds of people, depending on the day and time. It's oddly fascinating to me. (I know, I need a hobby.)

The interesting part of this is that there is one lady who is there in the parking lot every single time I drive by during the work day. She is there if I go by at 9:00AM, she is there if I go by at noon, she is there if I go by at 2:-30 P.M. Every time. She sits in her car with all the windows rolled down and her left foot out on the ground most days.

A few weeks ago I started needing to know her story. Today, I almost just asked, but I didn't. I don't think I can ask her without her thinking I'm stalking her or something. Can you stalk someone who is sitting still? Anyway, I don't want to take away her solitude. I know how much people need it sometimes.

However, because I make things up for money anyway, I've taken to writing her a new story every time I pass her. Yesterday, I decided she has been fired from her job and she doesn't want her husband to know because he is mean and controlling, so she gets up every day and goes to the grocery store parking lot to make it look like she is working. Today, though, that story felt too "Lifetime" and so I made her a novelist. She is writing a tween series and she's going to be rich, and then in her interview on Oprah she will say that she wrote the whole book in longhand in a parking lot under a tree.

…I know.

But now you're wondering, too, aren't you?
-b