Cold case file. The Rambler that was and then was not.

 

(This never happened.)

Circe 1981.

On Being and Nothingness.

Near one of America's favorite discount stores.  In face, in front of it, between the front doors in a little alcove near the fire hydrants and propane tanks.

It was, in fact, there, impelled, steered, driven, even, there, and parked conspicuously in front.  Dead in front.  In a little corner of an alcove, it declaring itself important, seeming at once, downcast, but impertinent among the other automobiles, the Mustangs and Yukons and various Buicks, sundry Nissans and other such, maybe even some Datsuns.

Then it wasn't.

See how that works?  It was, then it just wasn't.

 

One could get punchdrunk from the whole thing, maybe, how it is or isn't a particular moment, that maybe it had climbed onto a panel truck and escaped so far as to leave all of America behind, to just elapse elsewhere.

To elapse elsewhere.

There was a bonus bust, a trick and a working girl, and the trick paying for so much, and the lady keeping tally of it, somehow, his dismal grunts and groans, and he had an emanation that escaped his person, and could not be accounted for.  That erupted into a loud argument, and got to the front lobby somehow, a prolonged argument, one trying to walk away with the other following shouting, such that they basically each stupidly put themselves into the pockets of the cops.

But enough of that.

It was like that Cartesian Doubt, skepticism in philosophy, such that "how do we know anything at all?", and that in the face of the authorities, badgering witness, "what had happened was", such that one event had thousands of accounts, thousands of stories, and witnesses, and people that knew people