There is a camera on the side of Hillcrest Garage that was not there in August. I know this because I have had my truck serviced there for six years, closer to seven now if I am honest about it, and I stand in that exact spot by the door every single time while they tell me what the estimate is going to be before they even pull it onto the lift, and there has never been a camera on that wall, the siding is corrugated and rust streaked and I have looked at that wall more times than I can count waiting on an oil change, I would have seen it. White dome, the kind that swivels inside the housing so you can't tell from the ground which way the lens is actually pointed, mounted low, lower than you would put it if you cared about the roofline or the door, mounted at about head height on a man standing where I stand. Not aimed at the garage door. Not aimed at the register. Aimed, near as I can tell from the angle of the housing, at the sidewalk strip where customers wait. Where I wait. My wife used to say I stood too close to things, counters, people, doorways, like I was daring something to happen. Anyway.

I already wrote up the meter doing the thing it does, the meter pages are still up if anyone wants the dates, and this is the same shape of problem wearing a different coat, infrastructure that answers to nobody showing up on a wall that used to just be a wall. The camera, the camera, I keep coming back to the camera because there is nothing else on that corner of the building to come back to. Asked the kid at the counter who installed it, he said corporate did it, didnt know why, didnt care, which is either the truth or the most convenient non answer a seventeen year old has ever handed a customer without blinking. July. No, it would have had to be September, the invoice from my last visit is dated august 14th and the wall was clean in the photo I took that day for a completely different reason, so September, closer to five weeks ago now, maybe six.

Six weeks.

They moved fast on this one. Nobody moves that fast on a parts order, I know because I have waited eleven weeks on a transmission part from the same supplier this garage uses, but a camera goes up inside a month and a half, no notice taped to the door, no mention on the invoice, nothing. The guy two bays down was getting his brakes done and didnt even look up when I pointed at it, which tells you something about who is paying attention around here and who isnt, and I am not going to pretend I dont notice the difference anymore.