What's the Story?

This is the view from my porch. My goal Saturday was to get to the mailboxes behind the yellow van and drop a number of envelopes into one of them. Pretty dull, eh?
Not for me.



First, I wondered if I was having an acid flashback - what's up with the stripes on the brick? That building doesn't usually look like that.
I went back inside to grab my camera...

And then I saw the car. The blue Volvo station wagon.
Actually, I could smell the car, but at first I thought it was the hospital across the street incinerating body parts and infectious medical waste again.
I was wrong.
It was the car.



Breathing as little as possible, I approached it. A bedraggled young man with a scruffy knapsack was standing a few yards away, waiting for the bus. The smell of cheap wine coming from him was staggering, even at that distance, and combined with the stench coming from the car, it was almost pukabley offensive. With the windows up.




I had to get a pic. This sort of thing isn't quite so unusual (or wasn't, back in my hobo days) in NYC ,San Francisco, the DC area and other places that are far too expensive for most humans- but this is Fallentown. It's getting bad, but rent is still pretty cheap here.
Our local homeless people don't own Volvos, they drive shopping carts.

The last time I saw a car like this , it was a battered old AMC Gremlin and it had luggage , furniture, clothes and other readily identifiable items neatly organized inside- it was clearly a 'domestic' vehicle.
Today's car was full of garbage-literally. Rotting offal.
It's been cold lately- what would this thing be like in summer?
Who drives this mess?
I looked around. No one nearby except the drunk on the corner.

"Don't take my picture," said the winey bus stop buzzard. He didn't seem especially drunk, but the smell was awful...oh, man it's bad when you can drink that much without showing it. I know.

I had no intention of taking wineman's photograph but I had to ask:

"Is this your car?"

"No. I'm waiting for the bus. That guy's fucked up or sumpin'.."

"Really?"

So I walked around the car, peering into the windows , trying to discern whether someone was living in it or if was simply full of refuse.
It was refuse alright, rotting remnants of fast-food meals and crumpled wads of disturbingly brown newspaper... but my question of inhabitation was unanswered.
There was a hairbrush and a desk fan on top of the junk in the driver's seat...why?

I didn't see how one could survive it, much less live in it; then again, there wasn't much at all I understood about this car. Curiosity piqued, I decided to sit on the wall and wait for the owner.
I figured I'd interview the driver and get their story; if they were in a bad way, there are places in town for different sorts of help and I know most of them, or people who do- but my motives weren't altogether altruistic- I was simply curious . Nosy, really. I like to know the story.

Speaking of nose...
Usually , one of my cats joins me when I sit outside, but neither one wanted to come close to the Stenchmobile. After a few minutes, the smell started to bother me. It smelled like a dead cow. Or a corpse. Or a corpse hidden in the hollowed-out body cavity of a dead cow.
Bad.

So I mailed my letters and went inside to see if the Dept. of Health and Sanitation was open on Saturday.
Hmmm...there's a number for abandoned vehicles, but this doesn't qualify. From the looks of it, the owner of this Volvo has abandoned everything but the car and it's contents.

Emergency? Given the freaked-out fear world we live in, I imagined the results of a call to the Hotline reporting a vehicle emitting a noxious odor - they'd probably evacuate the area until a CDC ABC team could scour the entire area, including my apartment.
I could find myself living in my own Volvo.
What do do? Nothing.

A few minutes later it was gone. I didn't hear the engine start or the door open and shut.

It was just gone.

The bricks had returned to normal.