Chapter 4 - The Parking Lot Spectacular
The video Aunt Barbara sent looked like a found-footage horror film shot by a giggling retiree.
The camera was shaking violently, zoomed in across the asphalt of the Food Giant parking lot. Snow was beginning to fall in fat, wet flakes. The temperature was twenty-eight degrees.
In the center of the frame, right next to the corrugated metal shopping cart corral, stood my brother Trevor. He had removed his designer ski jacket, revealing a sweat-stained gray thermal shirt. Beside him on the freezing pavement lay a mountain of deflated, neon-red polyurethane fabric.
"What is he doing?" I muttered, leaning closer to the screen.
In the video, Dad was standing beside the bed of his 2012 Ford F-150, holding an industrial orange extension cord plugged into the truck’s auxiliary bed outlet.
"Fire it up, Dad!" Trevor bellowed on the video, his voice carrying over the sound of idling minivans. "Get the commercial blower running!"
*WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRR.*
The sound of a two-horsepower centrifugal fan screamed through the phone’s speakers. The massive pile of red fabric shuddered, puffed up, and began to rise from the asphalt like an unholy holiday demon.
It was the commercial inflatable Santa costume. The one from Christmas Day.
"Barbara," I whispered to myself, horrified and fascinated. "What did you film?"
Aunt Barbara’s gravelly voice could be heard behind the camera, narrating with malicious delight: *"Dennis wouldn't drive back to the house to get his wallet because he said the gas would cost four dollars. So Trevor had the brilliant idea to liquidate corporate inventory right here by the carts to pay for the shrimp."*
On screen, Trevor stepped inside the half-inflated Santa legs. He pulled the heavy industrial nylon over his shoulders, sealed the heavy-duty plastic zipper up to his chin, and strapped the battery-powered internal blower to his hip.
Within forty-five seconds, Trevor was no longer a thirty-nine-year-old failed entrepreneur. He was an eleven-foot-tall, perfectly spherical, violently red caricature of Father Christmas, hovering over the concrete parking blocks.
A minivan pulled up. A suburban mother rolled down her window, looking confused.
Trevor waddled forward, his synthetic white beard flapping wildly in the winter wind. Because the suit was fully pressurized, his arms were forced straight out to the sides like two overstuffed bratwursts.
"Madam!" Trevor’s muffled voice boomed from inside the nylon belly. "Are you seeking commercial-grade festive infrastructure for your residential cul-de-sac?! I am offering this heavy-duty, weather-resistant marketing unit for the exclusive holiday liquidation price of eight hundred dollars cash!"
"Sir," the woman called out, pulling her sunglasses down. "Is this a promotional stunt for the seafood sale?"
"THIS IS A HIGH-YIELD ASSET SALE!" Trevor shouted, attempting to bow.
Because an eleven-foot inflatable sphere has no center of gravity, the bow went disastrously wrong.
A sudden gust of December wind—the kind that sweeps across open suburban strip-mall parking lots at forty miles an hour—caught Trevor’s backside like a mainsail on an eighteenth-century schooner.
"Dennis!" Mom screamed from the edge of the frame. She was clutching a plastic shopping bag containing a single loaf of discount white bread—the only item they had managed to pay for with pocket change. "Dennis, catch him! The wind has him!"
Trevor’s feet left the pavement.
He didn't fly—he skittered. His giant, rounded nylon belly hit an empty chrome shopping cart. The cart acted as a wheeled chassis. Trevor, trapped inside the inflated sphere, fell backward directly into the cart basket.
The cart, now bearing the weight of a two-hundred-pound man inside an eleven-foot red balloon, began rolling down the parking lot’s three-percent grade toward the commercial dumpster area.
"ABORT!" Trevor shrieked from within the suit. "DAD, UNPLUG THE MAIN! PULL THE SEAL!"
Dad ran after him, his paper crown finally blowing off his head and tumbling across the dirty slush. Dad lunged for one of the giant inflated boots trailing behind the cart. He grabbed the left heel with both hands.
*RRRRRRRRRIP.*
The pressurized seam at the ankle gave way with the sound of a small cannon firing.
The boot detached completely, leaving Dad holding a limp piece of red rubber while Trevor and the cart slammed sideways into a concrete landscape planter filled with frozen ornamental cabbages.
The impact punctured the main belly chamber.
*HISSSSSSSSSSSSS.*
The giant Santa did not gently deflate. It folded inward with the violent, sputtering flatulence of a ruptured zeppelin. Trevor was instantly entombed under forty yards of thick, heavy nylon.
A grocery store assistant manager in a yellow reflective vest walked out into the frame, a metal clipboard in his hand. He looked at the cart, looked at the collapsed red mountain, and then looked down at Dad, who was still kneeling in the slush clutching an oversized plastic boot.
"Folks," the manager said, his voice entirely devoid of human emotion. "You can't stage a carnival attraction in the handicap loading zone."
From beneath the red fabric, Trevor’s muffled, furious voice barked:
"WE ARE NEGOTIATING A BULK COMMODITY TRADE FOR THE TIGER SHRIMP! CALL YOUR REGIONAL BUYER!"
At that exact moment, Mrs. Pritchard—our parents' seventy-eight-year-old next-door neighbor, who spent her retirement cruising local supermarkets for sodium-free bullion cubes—walked past the cart. She paused, unwrapped a peppermint candy with steady, arthritic fingers, popped it into her mouth, and looked down at Trevor’s writhing nylon heap.
"Dennis," Mrs. Pritchard remarked calmly to my father. "Have you ever considered simply living within your means?"
The video cut out with the sound of Aunt Barbara laughing so hard she began wheezing into the microphone.
I sat on the equipment trunk in the empty circus gym for three full minutes. The silence was absolute, save for the dripping of snowmelt outside the loading bay doors.
I didn't laugh.
At first, I thought I would. I thought seeing Trevor’s bloated, arrogant ego literally punctured in a grocery store parking lot would bring a wave of triumphant vindication. But all I felt was a cold, sick weight settling into the pit of my stomach.
Because behind that ridiculous, tragic spectacle was eleven thousand four hundred dollars.
My kids’ college savings. The emergency cushion Oliver and I had rebuilt after my shoulder surgery two seasons ago. The money I had earned hanging thirty feet above the arena floor with no net, holding my body weight by my wrists until my tendons screamed.
They hadn't just stolen my money to buy Trevor’s children happiness.
They had used my sweat to finance a farce.
I stood up, grabbed my gym bag, and tossed my phone inside.
"Oliver," I said when he answered my call on the second ring.
"How bad was it?" he asked gently.
May you like
"Put the kettle on," I said, walking toward the exit. "The clowns are on their way to our house."
***
