EX2: The Parking Space (standard:other, 1338 words)
Author: kathyg	Added: Oct 02 2003	Views/Reads: 3573/2256	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A rewrite of my TOF Project. Thanks for the feedback. I didn't know snowflakes had ears either. Thanks for pointing that out.

The Parking Space 

It is almost midnight. She sits at her window seat with a cup of tea and
watches the impending snowstorm. Snowflakes decorate the windows as she 
listens to the weather report on the radio.  There is a Nor' Easter 
coming up the coast tonight with wind gusts of 10 to 25 miles per hour. 
Already she notices the snow covering the cars parked on Lacrosse 
Street. There must be a foot of snow already and it is coming down fast 
and furious. Looks like we are in for nasty weather. 

Hardly anyone on Lacrosse Street owns a garage. Most of the folks here
use the street to park and in the winter time, human behavior gets 
mighty peculiar. Funny thing about parking spaces, nobody owns the 
street. 

Some folks  just think they do. 

Sipping slowly, she pulls back the curtain and watches the man walk his
wife to the car. He is dressed in a heavy parka with a black hat and 
gloves. She is wearing a blue wool coat, hat ,mittens and  boots. She 
carries her white shoes and waitress cap in a bag.  He is holding her 
arm carefully and opening the car door for her. He holds her face in 
his hands and looks at her for a few moments, smiling. She smiles back 
at him and kisses him goodbye. She knows the woman very well. She works 
the night shift at the diner across town. The man looks very worried 
that she has to travel in this snow storm. Shutting the door, he waves 
goodbye and shines his flashlight in her face. She covers her eyes and 
laughs. It is a thing they do each night. The woman puts on the 
headlights and starts up the car. Her husband watches the car go down 
the street until the tail lights are no longer visible. He starts his 
vigil in the night  like a constant torch blazing a path safely home. 
He starts to shovel and salt a path down to the street to make a 
parking space for his wife. 

It is two in the morning and the blinding snow makes it even harder for
the man to  shovel. The man's face appears stiff from the cold but he 
doesn't seem to mind. This storm, so fierce, that she wonders why he 
doesn't just wait until it stops snowing to even attempt to shovel away 
the snow. He continues to shovel despite the futility of it all. The 
path he made from his front door is already covered by the snow. Still 
he continues. His coat is covered and his movements become stiffer as 
time passes. Hour after hour, he puts his shovel into the snow drift 
and still he isn't any further than when he started hours ago.He puts 
down the shovel for a moment and rubs his arms and legs. He shivers and 
shines his flashlight down the road for any sign of life. He stares at 
the road for several minutes before he takes his shovel once again. The 
street is almost invisible by this time.The gusts of wind have picked 
up blowing the man's hat off his head. He stops and runs after his hat 
and quickly puts it back on his head. Running in place he tries to warm 
himself. A little girl all bundled up in a coat and hat and mittens 
runs out the door. She has a thermos of something hot in her hands. She 
gives the thermos to the man. The man pats her on the head and takes a 
drink. The little girl runs back and forth in the snow laughing and 
throwing snow at the man. He points back to the house and gives her the 
thermos. She gives the man a kiss on the cheek and goes inside. 

The man looks like he is slowing down a bit. He put his shovel in the
snow bank and is looking down the street. He sees something and he is 
focusing on it very intensely. She sees it too from her vantage point. 
Headlights. The headlights of a single car coming down the street. He 
hurries and gets his shovel and continues to clear away the snowbank. 
The snow drifts  and the winds make it harder for him to clear.  The 
man is checking his watch, looking very confused. He looks again down 
the road, shivering from the cold. 

The headlights of a car approach the man as he continues to clear a
parking space. The car comes very near the man and stops. Three people 
come out of the car. Two men and a woman. The men are dressed in black 
parkas with shoes and no boots. The woman has a light jacket on with a 
wool beret and no mittens. Her red hair blows wildly in the wind. She 
is not smiling.  The two men appear impatient and walk up to the man 
shoveling and point to the parking space as if they want to take it for 
themselves. The man shakes his head and holds his arms up in an 
animated fashion. The other two men gesture wildly pointing to the 
parking space that the man just finished shoveling.  They push the man 


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