Fade in:

EXT. CITY STREET - EARLY MORNING

CLOSE on a DONKEY’s head. Still. Unbothered. A worn leather halter, and a rope running out of frame.

SFX: City noise somewhere behind him -- traffic, a horn a block off, a tinny radio playing out of an open window.

An ear flicks a fly away. He does not otherwise move.

The camera pulls back.

He is loaded. Wooden produce crates roped across his back, stacked and cinched -- a bodega delivery, mid-round. Behind him the end wall of a building, old brick, a fire escape zig-zagging up it. The rope from his halter runs to a steel pole at the curb, and he is tied off to it.

Mounted on that same pole -- NO PARKING. VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED.

Cut to:

WIDE -- the street.

The building ends at frame left, and an ALLEY opens beside it -- big commercial dumpsters down one wall of it, a service run. Cars parked solid away to the right, bumper to bumper, all of them nose-left -- sun-faded sedans, a work van, an old pickup.

Steam drifting up out of the street somewhere behind.

The donkey is at the head of that line. Same axis, same direction, facing the alley -- the last stretch of curb before the mouth, the bit nobody parks in, because you cannot get a vehicle in or out of that alley if somebody does.

Loaded, tied to the pole, parallel to the curb. Parked.

Narrator (V.O.)

(a woman. Mexican accent. Warm, unhurried, entirely sincere -- she is reading a real ad, not a joke.)

JJ’s Towing Company.

A beat. Long enough that the audience gets there first.

Narrator (V.O.)

We’ll tow your ass.

He is not coming back. Nothing happens for a moment.

Then a MAN walks in from frame left. Middle-aged, moustache, straw work hat. Botas picudas -- long pointed boots, the toes drawn out and curling upward. He does not hurry and he does not look at the camera.

He unties the rope from the pole.

Narrator (V.O.)

(fast, flat, entirely unbothered -- the small print, read by someone who has read it a thousand times)

Hook fees may apply. Livestock vehicles boarded separately, storage billed daily. Photo ID required for proof of ownership. Unclaimed vehicles may be sold at auction. Cash only. Additional fees may apply. Void where prohibited.

The man leads the donkey out of frame, left, past the alley. Neither of them is in a hurry. The space at the curb is empty again.

JJ’S TOWING logo.

Far off in it, a TOW TRUCK. Coming. It races up out of the distance, weaving -- threading the letterforms, swerving past them, not slowing -- and drops into its place in the mark.

Fade out.