One particular sport that Fiancee S. and I have been up to lately involves two parking spaces in the garage for our apartment building. We have an indoor parking area in our building, you see, with assigned spots. Two of these spaces are assigned to a fellow we call "Corvette Guy" who lives one floor down on the other side of the building. Every day we arrive home and wonder what we'll see in those spaces next.
At first, it was only Corvette Guy in his blue-green, late model Corvette. Corvette Guy is a rather tanned, lean looking fellow, who looks like he should have been an extra in the movie Boogie Nights. At first, I imagined him as some kind of retro-70's suburban gigolo; the kind of guy whose fashion sense looks like it is just about to graduate into a leather Member's Only jacket and Isotoner leather driving gloves. Corvette Guy doesn't look like he adds up to much, but, always leaves you kind of wondering if there is something you don't quite imagine lurking just below the surface. That he was always seen coming and going at odd times and left his Corvette backed in across two parking spots just fed my ridiculous fantasy that he had a beeper and needed to make the quick run across town to service his bored suburban female clients at a moment's notice.
That fantasy was quickly dispelled when the Corvette began to take up only one space. The first guest in that other space was a monster diesel truck belonging to a tile contractor. Oh how boring, just another working joe who saved his money to get a blue-green example of Bowling Green Kentucky's finest automobile. At least it was good to finally know what Corvette Guy did for a living, and who we could call for an estimate should the shower need renovation.
After the contractor truck began to show up regularly, the Corvette spent less and less time in the garage and began to be replaced by other vehicles. The weirdest is this used late 80's/early 90's Cadillac Seville. The first time I saw the Seville in question, it was parked in front of the building with a man (who was not Corvette Guy) furiously attempting to work a coat hanger in around the passenger side window to unlock it. While I paused in the lobby of our building to puzzle over whether or not I should report this activity to the police or at least ask the man for his name, Corvette Guy rolled up, parked his car, and started helping the guy. I remember remarking to Fiancee S. that should the police start coming around asking about auto theft, at least we would know where to direct them.
Auto theft turned out to not be a problem. Evidently once Corvette Guy and his faithful Sancho Panza had managed to get the car unlocked, they decided to roll it into the garage and into one of the two spaces that the Corvette used to occupy. There the car has sat since, motionless.
How do we know the car has not moved? Well, it had four completely flat tires the day after it arrived in the garage. Corvette Guy was sometimes seen working on the car. Floor jacks appeared under the car for a while and I saw Corvette Guy armed with a can of "Fix-A-Flat" trying to inflate tires. This evidently only partially worked because the car had two completely flat tires for at least a month.
Finally, Fiancee S. and I noticed a contractor's truck of sorts parked in front of the building when we got home one night not long ago. We also noticed that there was a long hose stretching from the truck into the garage. Who was seen handling that hose, but Corvette Guy... We noticed the very next day that the Seville was sitting on four inflated tires in the garage for the first time, ever.
Now the Corvette itself has not been seen near the building for quite a while. Last night, it was replaced by rather shabby used Ford. This only leads to further speculation. Has Corvette Guy lost his dream ride in a nasty divorce settlement? Only time will tell.
said drgeek
on 2004-01-28 at 3:32 p.m.
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