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          When he saw me he smiled and shook my hand but even I could see that it was nothing more than polite fluff, and without hesitation I asked, “What’s wrong?” Of course he said nothing and shrugged and left it at that until later when he grew too quiet, and so once again, I asked, “What’s the matter?” This time he sighed, squinted into the afternoon heat and said that over the summer vacation he had left his car in the covered-parking area by the water tower because everybody told him it was the thing to do, and it cost nothing. ‘Everybody does it, it’s very safe, no worries,’ and so on. So, wanting to believe them, he left it there, by the water tower. He stopped the story, squinting into the afternoon heat once again, and asked me for a cigarette. I reminded him I didn’t smoke, never had, and he nodded a remembering. When he returned in September–after seeing the best parts of Budapest and Vienna, with a quick no nothing stopover in Frankfurt—stepping off the airplane, meeting the furnace heat he had almost forgotten about but quickly remembering because for the smallest moment it snatched his breath away, making him dizzy, he walked over to the parking area, next to the water tower; as he got closer he could see his car, and of course it was covered with dust, which was only right, but then once he arrived he found the rubber on the windshield wipers had melted into the glass, the tires were flat and gummy from exhaustion, his back bumper was no more.