Her eyes were filled with tears when she walked into the kitchen and held up the key. It was half a key. Broken in half, that is. My eyes grew wide as my lips formed some shape resembling a grimace—what had been a lousy end of the week suddenly dive-bombed into the gateways of Hades.

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “Where’s the other half?”

“I don’t know!” Des wailed as we stood there with our mouths agape and her car blocking the driveway. There was no freaking way this was happening. Not now.

“Ok, ok,” I said out loud. “We’ll figure this out.” Somehow Desiree had to get to Bakersfield for a little emergency involving our sister and family but she had no way of getting there and I had to be at work the next day.

“Take my car,” I said “I’ll get a locksmith to come take care of this.” Des refused though, and plunged into the task of getting a locksmith. Little did we know such a small task would become such a huge pain in the ass.

The night before two strangers showed up at our house, made weird accusations/comments regarding my family and sent most of us reeling into a semi-bewildered state of panic.

How did I handle it?

I went to buy a bathrobe.

That entire night seemed surreal—the situation, the fact that a car had blown up on the side of the road on my way home and set a hill on fire, and the fact that almost twenty minutes after the situation, I was determined to find Lindsey a bathrobe.

“Um….does she need a bathrobe for something?” my dear friend D. calmly asked me on the phone.

“Well, not exactly. I mean I just….I told her I was going to get one…” I said through little hiccup-y sobs.

“Does Lindsey need a bathrobe or do you just need to get her one right now?” she asked again with a touch of amusement and a tone of pity in her voice.

“I just need to get her one,” I sniffed as I combed several stores for the now sold-out for Christmas bathrobes.

While on the phone with my friend I nearly ran a red light and gratefully sighed when I saw it and abruptly stopped. I was even more grateful I’d stopped when I saw a runner dash across the intersection in front of my car and two others. I was stunned, not grateful, when I saw the guy get pummeled by a large luxury vehicle and ended up wounded in the gutter. But instead of getting upset I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” my friend asked.

“I just saw a guy get hit by a car.”

I knew then that I was at a low point. I was on a wild-goose chase to find bathrobes and laughing at poor beat-up bastards in gutters. I must be truly sick, I thought.

Des’ low point was the missing half of her key one night later. We tried everything to find it—but no luck. And apparently every locksmith in town was either busy, hanging up on Des for no real reason, or lost in some other zip code. By the third hour we had both sunk into a catatonic state of frustration.

Finally the locksmith arrived but Desiree had to go out to the street to guide him into our complex. When he stepped out of the van we knew something wasn’t right. He staggered. He slurred. He said he was too busy to do the job.

“You’re shitting me, right?” I wanted to yell at him. We’ve waited over three hours for a creepy drunk guy to come tell us he doesn’t have time to do the job? What parallel universe to hell IS this?

If that wasn’t bad enough, we thanked the guy nervously (realizing how drunk and weird he was) and jumped back into the apartment. Eight minutes later he was back banging on the door and leaving incoherent messages on Desiree’s cell phone. My fairy-like sister seemed to quake first with annoyance and second with fear.

So we called the cops.

At this point I’m shocked that we don’t have them on speed dial, and to be quite honest, that they don’t also have us on THEIR speed dial. We make the call at least once a month.

Three very large officers arrived in the dark of the late-night hours and joked about asking the guy to drive back over and then arrest him. Of course they didn’t, but it certainly didn’t make the night any less bizarre.

After they left another locksmith who said he was on his way called and said that he thought we canceled the job. Since Desiree’s car was still standing in the driveway, and we were still pacing the wood floors of our apartment wracking our brains about what to do next, “no, actually” Des said, “We did NOT cancel the job.”

But no one came. Around 1am Desiree decided to go up to Bakersfield to be of whatever assistance she could be at that hour and I decided to go to sleep and deal with the car in the morning.

Four and a half hours after my first phone call at 8:00 am I was conversing with my landlord about why the car was stuck in the driveway and his father who apparently used to walk to the liquer store in his "nightgown" until an old woman "beat the shit out of him and he never went back". Besides wondering why he was telling me this information, I also wondered why a man wore a nightgown. Ever. He then decided to show me the apartment in our complex he is currently renovating. It’s the apartment we call the “dead man’s” house.

Yup. I have a dead man’s car; he has a dead man’s apartment. We’re like twisted soul siblings or something.

“Yeah, my friend died right there and the police had to take the door off to get inside and pull out the body,” he said casually as he showed me the place.

Just a helpful hint here, Henry, I thought to myself, Don’t say that when you show the place to potential tenants.

Finally the locksmith arrived (with the wrong key, of course) and Henry I stood and watched him fumble with the doors.

I can’t believe my life right now! I thought I said inside my head. I guess I said it out loud because Henry sniffed a laugh and then said,

“You can’t believe YOUR life?! My son dies,” He said nodding toward the apartment where his grandkids live with their mother, “and his wife is now with a woman!”

“Ok,” I said, “You win.”

When I finally arrived at work (as everyone else was leaving that Friday before Christmas) the guards cheerfully asked me:

“You get a new car?”

“Heck no,” I said “Just a new catastrophe.”