Thursday afternoon I got the call. I didn't recognize the voice. It was female. Southern accent.

"Uh, hi. May I speak to . . . "

"This is him."

"Um . . ." The woman seemed hesitant. Nervous. "Did you lose something?"

Something? I've lost many things, in fact. Where should I begin?

Existentially: "Why yes, I've been unable to find myself for some time now. "

Psychologically: "Indeed, I seem to have lost my mind."

Physically: "I've lost so many things. Maybe a game of twenty questions would help? Is the object small or large? Is the object blue? Does the object play Italian polkas when you wind it up? If you found my little accordion-playing monkey I will be so excited!"

There were so many possibilities. And, posed as it was by this stranger with the tentative, southern voice, her query was ultimately greeted with confused silence on my end.

So the caller tried a different approach: "Do you own a little red Volkswagen?"

And that's how we found her. Carmen. The woman who called worked in a hair salon in the District Heights strip center where Carmen had been left overnight. She had found my phone number on a receipt for some tires that had been left behind. I had anticipated a call for several weeks, but after settling with our insurance company about a week earlier, both C and I had sort of given up hope. The woman on the other end of the phone and her boss, J, were very nice. J gave me instructions on how to get to his place, despite warning me that I wouldn't like what I found. "I don't think you want to see it," said J to me over the phone. He seemed to me to have a Greek accent, though I found out later he was from Israel. "You'll be sad."

C and I were sad when we saw her. But it was necessary. We wanted to see if there were any personal items left behind. But more than that, we wanted to bring closure to the whole bloody thing. We felt like we were going to identify a body.

And that's pretty much all that was left. When we arrived at the location, we saw Carmen immediately. She was sitting alone at one end of the strip center, a ghost of her prior self, small and abandoned in this lonely parking lot. The first thing I noticed was that there was some kind of greasy film covering her, inside and out, and everything reeked of oil. While we weren't able to open the hood, we were pretty sure we wouldn't find an engine there. Or at least we wouldn't find Carmen's engine there. She had tires and wheels, but they were a size too small, and looked strange under her body. The tires that I bought for $175 a piece not very long ago were gone and some mud-splattered, thin-tread rubber circles were left in their place. The only thing left of the dash was the steering column, and it lay sadly on the floor among a jungle of colorful wires and fuses. Oddly, the seats had been left, as well as the passenger side door innards and all the speakers of the 'Monsoon' sound system. In fact, the more we examined her, the more we were surprised by all that had been left behind. It was like the guys that took her had an order to fill and they grabbed what they needed and left the rest.

Photos are here
Warning: not for the faint of heart

After looking Carmen over, taking pictures, and telling her how sorry we were, we walked over to the hair salon and spoke with J and the employee who had called me. They commiserated with us, and told us how their car had been broken into and nearly stolen only a couple of months ago, in broad daylight, right in front of their shop. They gave us the paperwork for the Goodyear tires (which had enabled them to find our number). Also, they passed on a pair of shoes and some other odds and ends which they had removed from Carmen upon my request, in case we weren't able to make it out before the tow-truck arrived.

We drove home quietly, a little stunned by what we had seen, a little pissed that there were people in the world who did this kind of shit. But we were also relieved that Carmen had been found and that we were able to see her one final time before she was sold piece by piece at some auto auction. She was by far our favorite car. Classy. Speedy. She had character. Part of that character was that she was often high-maintenance. But we loved her anyway.

We still haven't purchased a replacement, but we've finally made a decision as to what that replacement will be. Now, we just have to wait for the model we want to get in stock. I won't go into detail right now as to what we're getting, but I will say that we're taking a VW hiatus. Since 1999, C and I have had three different VWs, and while we loved all three, we agree that it's time for a change. We've found something new which we're really excited about. I'll drop another clue and say that it is an import, so right now it's on a boat somewhere making its long journey to the dealer's lot.

So with that, I put Carmen to rest. But not to despair. I'm sure a new chapter of car tales is soon to follow.


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