My client and I were hanging out in the dollar store parking lot as she smoked a cigarette, and I watched from the driver seat.

A woman,her ragged car parked across from mine, struggled to change a flat tire. Her male friend looked on and they tinkered with different rusty tools and jacks and wheels with little success.

The woman turned to my client and asked her a question that my client deflected to me.

“Do you have 14 inch tires? My friend has 16 inch tires and I was going to use his but they’re not the same…”

“I couldn’t tell you,” I said. “I really dont’t know.”

She continued to stare at me, sweaty skin, ragged black hair. She looked tethered. “You got a donut spare I could use?”

My first thought was trying to explain to my dad that I’d given away my spare tire to a shady woman in the dollar store parking lot.

“I can’t do that, no. Sorry.”

When we returned home, I told the story to another client and her staff. We all laughed at the thought of it, and my client joked, “what if I let her have one of the wheels off your car?”

“You’d have to walk home,” I told her, “we’d have to walk home.”

The entire night I’ve had the vision of a car with only three wheels. It would still stand and wouldn’t look entirely ruined, but it would be hard to drive.

My boyfriend and I separated last night, after a lengthy bout with long distance and life. Today has been a daze — and I feel like a car with only three wheels.