everything falls apart — a serial

Foreword I

This is not my story.

I am only the momentary caretaker of the story. It is one of those stories that drops in someone’s lap without warning. Except, in my case, it made its appearance by being underfoot.

A recent transplant to the Twin Cities, I had been warned by a friend that January and February were bitterly cold, and buses were less dependable on those frigid days. His advice: just buy a decent car and an engine block heater and plug the car in at night so it would start the next day. That way, he said, I wouldn’t find myself standing in twenty-below wind chills waiting for a bus that may or may not come.

I had never heard of such a thing — an engine block heater? Plugging in a car with a combustion engine? I waved it off.

It only took a week before the Minnesota winters broke me.

I bought a 2018 Nissan Altima one bitterly cold morning in late January, from a seedy-looking lot on Central Avenue called Carpathian Auto Sales.

There was an old guy at the lot with an accent I couldn’t place. When he found out I’d moved to Minnesota with no car and no idea, he looked at my coat, said something that sounded like psykh, and laughed. Then he pointed me at the Nissan.

“This one. Is good car. Fresh off impound auction, I don’t even wash her yet. Comes from city with keys — is rare.”

“How do you know it’s the car for me?”

He shrugged, like the answer was obvious. “I match. People, cars. They buy from me, they come back, because I know. This one” — he patted the roof — “she is krasunia. Little bit fancy, little bit smart. You need both, tak? Trust me.”

He laughed, I laughed. An hour later, I had a car and was driving home in my new used Nissan, feeling a bit like a thief, as it already had one of those engine block heaters installed. It purred down Lyndale like it knew the way.

Another one of those things they warn you about when you move to the Twin Cities is this stuff called black ice. I figured ice was ice and, because I’m an alert kind of driver, I’d see it before I came across it.

I was wrong about that too.

About half a mile before I got back to my apartment, I was in seventh heaven. The sun was threatening to peek out from behind the clouds, all the traffic lights were green and I was finally thawing out in my new car, switching lanes to turn left. My turn was just past Lake Street, which was just up ahead. Until it wasn’t.

I hardly knew how it happened. I tapped my brakes for someone ahead of me who waited until the last absolute moment to signal a turn. The next moment, Lake Street was behind me and I was looking back towards downtown. As my ex used to say, it was a bit discombobulating. I tried to brake again, but the pedal wouldn’t depress.

Lucky for me, that driver didn’t wait long to turn and the next time I tried the brake pedal, it worked and I came to a stop in the middle of Lyndale — facing away from home but in the right lane to be heading back downtown.

With headlights in my rear-view mirror, I accelerated and turned onto one of the side roads to catch my breath and check the brake pedal to see if I needed a tow and thorough inspection before I drove the car any further.

I don’t know the first thing about auto repair, so I’m not sure what I expected to see. It wasn’t someone’s phone on the floor, its screen freshly cracked.