Single White Female

What a lovely awakening. I made it to bed at the reasonable hour of 10:30 after reading for a while...and for reasons unknown to me at the time, I woke suddenly at 12:20. I lie there for a while, then notice that blue flashing lights are visible through my bedroom door.

Who parked a nightclub in my living room?

I go to the living room window and look out just in time to see the tail end of a police car driving off. There's a two-door white sedan parked in my driveway.

I go back to my room, check my bed - yep, just me.

That car should probably not be there.

Thinking rationally, something horrible may have happened across the street or next door, something requiring an emergency hospital transport with escort, and some family member or some such has dashed over and in haste, parked in my available driveway.

Careful not to turn on too many lights, I look up the non-emergency police phone number. Hey, I'm being a responsible citizen here. Can't call 911 on a car.

No answer. I go back to the window. Car - still there. Door - previously closed, now open. No one in sight.

Ah, bureaucracy, you leave me no choice.

I call 911. Explain.

"Yes ma'am, the police just attempted to apprehend a man and he bailed from that vehicle. Stay in your home."

Bailed from that vehicle? Bailed where? Bailed into my backyard? Bailed into my open bedroom window? Is he in my effing house right now, lady? Got anything else for me? And why did the police just LEAVE? Call me crazy, should someone, perhaps an officer of the law, stay behind in case said suspect should RETURN to the vehicle?

I thank her, hang up, and completely FREAK OUT. Every possible scenario plays itself out in my head. None of them involve whipped cream and a sponge bath, which is how I like my midnight fantasies. I had overheard the police scanner while I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher and I did catch "black male" and "do-rag", and the vehicle in my driveway was some sort of two-door Caprice-type vehicle with blacked-out windows. Was I seriously about to be taken down by a stereotype? How pedantic! How completely unjust! I always figured myself as an interesting serial killer victim type of girl - if I'm going to go down in violent crime, I'd like it to be in some sort of fascinating way, as the target of a sick fixation, perhaps, or just someone who fits into a desirable pattern, not the bitch who got her throat cut 'cause she was there.

Phone calls were made, answers were not received. My butch-and-available-tough-guy male friends number very few, and are (reasonably) not accessible due to respectable working hours.

Freaking out continues. I return to my living room, where the blue flashing lights have returned and an officer is making rounds outside the strange vehicle. I consider going outside, then imagine the (highly imaginative and completely improbable) scenario wherein the cop freaks and opens fire when I open the door. I see him speaking with a neighbor and figure if it's reasonable for her to leave the house, then surely I'm not suspect.

So I go outside. Tentatively, shoulders hunched, looking as demure and bleary-eyed as possible. No one would shoot a swollen-jawed bleary-eyed girl in a white hoodie and jammie pants, right?

(If that was at all suspenseful, use your brain - you think this witty post is my last as I lie here bleeding from a gaping chest wound, holed up in my house barring out the po-po?)

So the officer saunters (seriously, it can only be described as a saunter) back over to me, asks me if it's my car. ("Say yes," my brain tells me, praying for good comedy. I ignore it.)

Me: "No sir."
Officer: "Didn't think so."
Me: "So....do you happen to know whose it is? I mean, I don't."
Officer: "We attempted to pull the vehicle over - he fled, we chased, he bailed out here on foot."
(Brain - "Ask him what the guy did." Other brain - "We don't really want to know that, do we?")
Me: "Oh."
Officer; "We're still after him."
Me: "Oh. So....um....what happens with the car?"
(Brain - "What happens with the car? Is that seriously all you want to know? Why, you want it? For God's sake, ask the right questions!")
Officer: "We'll tow it out of here."
Me: "Oh. Okay. Um...thanks."

And I go back inside and think what an entertaining post I can make this into. Tapping this anecdote into the iBook is the only thing keeping me from freaking out right now, because for all I know, T-Bone is sitting on the arm of my chair behind me, watching me type and waiting for me to hit "Publish" before he puts a nine against the base of my skull and pulls the trigger. Ah, T-Bone - he's so thoughtful that way.

Now, if you're a good friend, you really don't ever want this post to end, because right now you're fearing for my life. That's really sweet. Hang on, I'll turn around.

Nope, no one there.

Now I'm sitting here listening to the hum of the tow truck and the voices of officers outside, and the barking of my dog who has finally figured out that someone is outside acting strangely at an off hour.

Tow truck just pulled away.

Curiouser and curiouser - I start to go outside to ask the officer if the guy's been caught, and the car's still there. Tell me the tow truck towed away the cop's car by mistake, because that would be classic. (But then where would the flashing lights be coming from? Eerie...)

The only thing I can think is if they DON'T catch the guy, he's going to come back here eventually to get his car, thinking how clever he is. And when his car's not here, he's going to bang on my door. Actually, he'd probably just let himself right on in. Maybe take my car. And I'd be all, "Come on T-Bone, it doesn't have to be this way." And he'd be all, "Who the hell is T-Bone?"

The sound of the tow truck has resumed. I'm imagining the cop running down my street on foot, waving his flashlight at the retreating tow truck, screaming, "Hey! HEY! You forgot the CAR!" That's good comedy.

My only question right now is this. Why the HELL did the dude have to park in MY driveway? Does this weird crap happen to me if my life stays relatively uninteresting for a certain period of time? (And for the record, I live in a decent neighborhood with like zero crime.)

Ah, and if you are the recipient of a voicemail that sounds like something out of Panic Room, I'm sorry. I'm going to receive at least one early-morning wakeup "Oh Jesus, are you okay?" phone call. Now I kind of feel bad for the voicemail. Honestly, why did I leave a "There's weird shit going on at my house and I think T-Bone's coming to get me" voicemail at 12:30? If they didn't answer the two times I called, that's it, man, game over - they're not going to hear the tiny voicemail beep either, and all I've succeeded in doing is making their morning a very jarring one. Or at least I hope so. I have to admit, if I wake up in the late morning having not received the "Are you all right?" call, I'm going to feel pretty hurt.

Crap - the truck and the flashing lights are gone. And I don't know if they caught him. So now I just lie in bed with that Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell book (doubling as a bedtime friend and weapon suitable for hurling from a distance, weighing in at something like 900 pages), praying for sleep and the chance to blog another day.

Sweet dreams, fair readers. Thanks for sticking with me to the end of this post.