Night Parking

There was a spot that I used to like to take dates to when I was younger. I would turn down an alleyway between two tall buildings and then I would drive straight up into the sky, passing window after window as we climbed past the floors of the buildings, until we were up over the roof of one building and then the other and there was nothing but open space around us and the glitter of the city below. And I would keep on driving up until the front bumper of the car split through the clouds at the very edge of the Earth's atmosphere and we emerged to a view of the crescent moon drifting on an ocean of sky sprinkled with millions upon millions of stars.

There would always be a gentle little bump as I stopped and put the car into park, and then the car would just hang there in space as I pulled my hands from the gearshift and the steering wheel and took a deep breath. There was a very specific spot that I had to reach where the Earth's gravity and the car's gravity would balance each other out and the car would just float in place, pointing up into the night. The bump would always elicit a nervous laugh from my date and then a smile in the dark as the car settled and she realized that it was going to stay there, firm and floating, and she could lean comfortably back into her seat, the world turning calmly below miles and miles behind us.

Of course, it was never a completely perfect balance. And no matter how close to perfect I got it, it couldn't be maintained indefinitely. As the night would wear on, the car would gradually begin to slip backwards. At first we wouldn't notice it, and we would continue on in our drowsy enchantment with the cosmos, the dial on the radio turned low, catching faint signals off the atmosphere. But finally we'd start to get that dropping feeling in the pits of our stomachs, and then my date would bolt up straight in her seat with her eyes wide open, gripping the armrest or squeezing my arm, and I would laugh and tell her that it was all going to be fine.

And as we fell from the sky, gaining speed with every crucial second, I would reach for the lever for the handbrake, which I had rigged up to release a parachute. I would wait for just the right second, and then I would pull the parachute and it would catch on the air and slow our descent and the car would turn so that the wheels would be facing towards the Earth beneath us. And we would sway and swing and drift down between the buildings, the windows steamed over in the grey morning mist, the shadows of the car and the parachute scaling down the contours in the brick, until the wheels touched down on the pavement and the car would rock and compress on its shocks and find its hold again on solid ground. And we would look at each other and grin and shake our heads and breathe that long, long sigh of relief that can only come from finding that sure place on Earth once again.