The Keys Were Visible Through the Window the Entire Time

June fourteenth. I want to begin by saying that I could see them. The keys. Sitting in the cupholder on the driver's side, very clearly, through the window, in the exact spot I always put them. That is the detail that made the whole thing worse.

It happened in the particular way that small disasters happen in summer, too fast and then immediately too slow. I had gotten out of the car, closed the door, heard the click, and understood in the same half-second that there was nothing to be done. Simone was already on the sidewalk, having come downstairs to meet me. She looked at my face, then at the car, then back at my face. She said, with great confidence, that she knew exactly who to call. Then she took out her phone and held it for a moment in a way that communicated she was now reconsidering this claim. We stood there for a while. The car did not open.

Eventually she crouched down and looked through the driver's window, as though the angle might reveal something new. It did not. I stood behind her with my arms crossed and thought about what Gerald was doing at home, because the mind goes somewhere when there is nothing useful left to do.

Simone investigating the situation. The situation did not change.

We ended up sitting on the front step of her building, it was warm, the block was quiet, one of those June Sundays that has a particular stillness to it that feels almost borrowed, and waited for roadside assistance to arrive. Forty-five minutes, which is less bad than it sounds when you have someone to sit with.

Simone named the best part of it afterward, walking back up to her apartment: she said the two of us have now collectively sat on that step for longer than we have ever spent in any restaurant together, which is true and which I cannot argue with. The keys were fine. The cupholder was fine. Everything was fine except the forty-five minutes, which were also, in the end, fine.

The waiting portion of the program.