Air-hanger.
Lisa said, “What's that?” to no one.It was a car. It hung in the air, directly above the White House.
The rose garden was a flurry of screaming as the press corps got their bearings. The president disappeared behind his shifting Praetorian Guard.
Lisa, Associated Press affiliate, grabbed her grip’s camera and thrust it upward; she was the first person to identify the car to the world. “It appears that a white, 1968 AMC Javelin is hovering over the white house”, she said with such quick authority it surprised her. Lisa then remembered the time she had had sex in a car like that, and for a long moment of silence, she performed bad journalism.
For a while, the secret service was busy evacuating the building. Then the S.W.A.T. teams arrived, to point their rifles at it. When it was clear that rifles were no match for the harmless floating car, they went away, but not too far away. They might be needed in case the car was harboring a dangerous terrorist.
The papers were full of stories about the car. The television news networks let the world know that they had nothing meaningful to say on the subject, using as many words as possible.
At first it was assumed that it was a sophisticated hologram, but x-ray imaging revealed it to be actual, and so the standoff continued, with the president speaking remotely from an undisclosed location on national television, promising to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice with the full might of the men and women of the armed forces of this great nation.
The Javelin stayed one hundred fifty feet above the white house until the next day, when the cranes arrived to remove it. They tied it up tightly with chains, unsure how it would fall, and tugged at it, smashing it up a bit. The morning sun caught the polished chrome of the driver’s side mirror as it spun to rest on the roof, and then the rest of the car relented its hold on the air, swinging in the humid breeze. After it came down, the people of the United States were told it was in another undisclosed location, for reasons of national security.
Now, of course, America is a safer, and better, and healthier place, because that rogue car, however it got there, will never physically be there again; although I suspect on some days, when the morning air seeps into the dark hangar where it lies disassembled, that the cream-colored 1968 AMC Javelin can tell it is nice outside, it can smile a broken car’s smile, and the memory of its last day in the sun remains a pleasant one. And I suspect with a memory like that, no car is ever sad.
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