by Jeff Strand
"Then let's do it," Amy says.
Good. There's still a chance that we're soul mates.
The workers where I get my oil changed always try to upsell. They never alter their tactic: they change the oil and do their fourteen-point inspection, and then they tell me that my car is in fantastic shape, the tires are perfect, oh my God, they've never seen power steering fluid in such amazing condition, this car will run flawlessly for the next decade, it's obvious that I take great care of this vehicle, wow, the other employees can't stop talking about how this car literally has absolutely nothing wrong with it, this car is pristine, this car is the basis by which all other cars of this model should be judged, this car is the textbook example of automotive perfection, except one little thing, not an emergency but not something I would want to let go for too much longer, and they're happy to fix it, no problem, in fact they're running a special on that particular procedure today, although there's nothing they can do about the cost of the parts, that's the distributor's fault.
Sometimes I succumb. Sometimes I don't. This time, I don't. "Just the oil change," I say.
The worker asks me if I'm sure. Like he said, it's not an emergency, but this kind of thing can turn into a major repair pretty quickly, and though he's not suggesting that the car is unsafe to drive, this isn't something you should ignore.
"Thanks," I say. "Just the oil change for now."
The worker nods, though his nod indicates that when my automobile bursts into flames, he won't bother to visit me in the hospital's burn ward.
Our next stop is a gas station. I start to get out, but Amy waves for me to stay in my seat. "I'm getting this," she says, opening the door.
"You don't have to pay for gas."
"The hell I don't. I'm cheap, but I'm not a moocher."
She gets out of the car, swipes her card, and starts pumping the gas. I decide to stop offering to pay for expenses that we really should share. I don't want her to think that I'm trying to be a sugar daddy. Anyway, I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination; I just don't buy much stuff.
She finishes pumping the gas and gets back in the car. "I'm totally serious about paying my share."
"I understand."
"I know I panicked a little bit over the prices at the seafood place. I'm clawing my way out of a financial mess from my divorce, but I'm not living paycheck to paycheck anymore. I threw away my credit cards, built up a cushion in my bank account, and I'm fine. Fifty percent of this trip is coming out of my debit card. No argument."
"Did you literally throw the cards away, or did you shred them?"
"I cut them up with scissors."
"Did you throw them away in the same bag of garbage?" I ask. "Identity thieves can piece those together."
"I guarantee you that I am more paranoid about that kind of thing than you are. Try finding out that somebody bought three thousand dollars' worth of fishing equipment on your stolen credit card number right before you go in for an MRI."
"That's a lot of lures."
"Yeah."
"Okay. I defer to your level of paranoia about identity theft. You win."
"Thank you. You're very agreeable."
"Not always. I didn't let that douche upsell my oil change."
Amy grins. "You're right, you didn't. So are we ready?"
"Should we run in and pick up more snacks?"
Amy shakes her head. "I've got some. Also pills and heroin. Not top-grade heroin--like I said, I'm cheap--but it'll get the job done."
"No meth?"
"Oh, fudge, are you a meth guy?"
"Yeah. My father was into meth and so was my grandfather, so there's always been a lot of pressure for me to become a meth head, too. Sometimes I just want to take my own path, but I don't have the courage."
"You should get out of your father's shadow. Don't let him control your life."
"I know, I know, but I just can't."
"You know what? Who am I to tell you how to live? First truck stop we see, I'll earn us enough money to get whatever you want. You deserve it."
"Thank you. I appreciate that."
I've never known somebody who would joke about prostituting herself at a truck stop for meth money. I love her mix of sunshine and darkness.
My car doesn't have a GPS, but there's one on my phone, so we know that we need to get onto I-75N, where we'll be spending the next 79.2 miles of our 1316.08-mile journey.
"Does your car have an adapter for an iPod?" Amy asks. "I made us a 'Road Trip To Providence' playlist."
"Sorry, no."
"That's okay." She leans back and grabs a small case out of her duffel bag. "I've got CD's, too. What do you want to listen to first?"
She lists musician after musician that I don't recognize. Then she gets to a band whose name I recognize, but I have no idea if I like their music or not.
"Do you have anything hot dog-themed?" I ask.
"Not literally. Metaphorically, pretty much every other song."
I believe that is a dick joke, but I'm not positive, and I don't ask for clarification.
"You pick," I say.
She puts in a CD for a band called Cowlick Shaved. The guitars screech, but you can completely understand the lyrics, and I kind of like it.
We exit off 275 onto 75 and I accelerate to the speed limit of seventy miles per hour. Then I decelerate as I see red and blue flashing lights in my rearview mirror.
"Is that for us?" Amy asks.
"I don't think so...I think he's after...no, wait, yeah, it's us." I pull onto the shoulder and the cop stops behind me.
"You were kidding about the heroin, right?" I ask. I'm ninety-eight percent kidding when I ask her if she was kidding.
Crap. I don't know this woman at all. What if there's a warrant out for her arrest? What if she's on parole and she's not allowed to cross state lines? What if this turns into a hostage situation and bullets start flying?
I wasn't speeding. My taillights are in working order. I didn't run any red lights or do that thing at a stop sign where you almost stop but don't quite reach a state of motionlessness. This has got to be about Amy.
I turn off the engine and take out my wallet. "Could you get the registration out of the glove compartment?" I ask.
Amy opens it. "Wow. That is one tidy glove compartment."
"Thanks."
She doesn't seem to be any more nervous than any regular person might be when pulled over by a police officer. There's no evidence yet that she's going to put a gun to my head and shout "Drive, asshole, drive!"
The cop, a young, tall woman, gets out of the car and walks over. Her partner, a middle-aged man, also gets out of the car but does not approach my vehicle.
I roll down the window. The cop gives me a friendly nod. "May I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance, sir?"
I hand it over. My hands are trembling a bit, but I don't drop anything, which is good, because when I reached down to pick it back up it might look like I was going for a gun, and that's never a good impression to give when a police officer has pulled you over.
The cop glances quickly at the stuff I've given her. "The reason I've pulled you over, sir, is that it's against the law in the state of Florida for your tag to be obstructed. You have a license plate cover that partially blocks the tag."
My license plate cover is in the shape of shark jaws. It's pretty neat.
"Oh," I say. "I didn't realize it was blocking anything. Sorry about that."
For a split second I'm tempted to ask why this hasn't been a problem in the six years that I've had the shark jaws cover, but I don't. I hate when people do that kind of thing ("But they let me on the plane with my oversized luggage on the first flight!") and I'm not going to be that guy.
"This won't be a ticket or a written warning," the cop assures me. "Just make sure your tag is not obstructed."
"I will."
"I'll be back in a few minutes."
She leaves with my paperwork. The other cop im
mediately walks over to my car.
"Hello, sir," he says.
"Hi."
"The officer you just spoke to is currently in training, and I would like to ask you a couple of questions about her performance. Did she clearly explain the reason that you were pulled over?"
"Yes."
"Did she ask for your license, registration, and proof of insurance?"
"Yes."
"Was she courteous and respectful?"
"Yes. Very." Is he going to ask me to fill out a comment card?
"And you know that it's against the law in the state of Florida for your tag to be obstructed, right?"
"I do now."
"Just try to get that taken care of as soon as you can. She'll be back with you in a couple of minutes. You two have a pleasant day."
"We will. Thank you very much."
The cop leaves.
Amy looks at me. "Well, that was...polite."
I'm extremely relieved, although I suppose they could still come back and explain that my passenger has left a trail of dead bodies from Phoenix to Tampa.
The female cop returns, hands me back my license, registration, and proof of insurance, then tells me to have a good day.
I don't want these cops to hunt me down ("I told you not to let your license plate cover obstruct your tag, motherfucker!") so I pull off at the next exit and park at a gas station. We get out and walk to the rear of the car.
One of the shark's teeth covers a sliver of one of the numbers. Yes, I can see the cop's point, but you can totally tell it's a 2. Still, I'd better take care of this.
"Did you pack a screwdriver by any chance?" I ask.
"No, sorry."
I didn't, either. There's no tool kit in the car, because I didn't anticipate having to do an emergency license plate cover removal.
"They might have one inside that you can borrow," Amy says. "Want me to ask?"
"Nah, I think I can just bend it out of the way."
My thirty-five years of life have not been free of mistakes. That said, I'm not the kind of man who bumbles his way through his existence, goofing things up left and right. I'd like to believe that, overall, my ratio of good decisions to bad ones favors the good ones. If I were to break my arm flying a kite, people wouldn't chuckle and say "Yep, that's Todd for ya!"
But trying to bend a metal shark tooth with my bare thumb? Not my most brilliant idea.
I let out a wince--okay, a yelp--and recoil from the vicious license plate cover. My thumb is already bleeding. I'm not sure how deep the cut is, but based on the level of pain, I expect half of my thumb to fold over like a banana being peeled.
Amy lets out a wince--a real wince--and takes my hand in hers. "Do you have a first-aid kit?" she asks.
"No."
I decide that spontaneous vacations suck. We should have gone on Thursday. Then I might have brought a screwdriver and a first-aid kit.
"I'll be right back," Amy says, hurrying into the gas station.
The pain is...well, after the initial sting, it's not really unbearable. There's no reason to be a baby about it. I inspect the wound, and though nobody will hire me as a thumb model (at least not while the blood is still gushing) I don't think it will need stitches.
And the blood isn't really gushing. It's just leaking.
If it leaves a scar, I'm going to tell people that it was a shark bite. (Though, of course, I will quickly follow that with a clarification of the actual circumstances. I'm no liar.)
I'm not getting dizzy. I refuse to get dizzy. Accidentally cutting myself in front of Amy probably won't have much of an impact on this trip, but if I pass out before we've even left Tampa, she may reconsider.
A woman pumping her gas is looking at me. I get the sense that she thinks that a person who is just standing around bleeding all over himself is not very smart.
Amy returns, holding some paper towels and a box of Band-Aids. She wraps a couple of the paper towels around my thumb, and I wait for the cloth to suddenly turn red. Though it does turn red, it's a more gradual process than I predicted.
Amy takes the paper towel away. "It doesn't look that gross," she says. "How bad does it hurt?"
"Not too bad. It's fine."
"You should rinse it off," says Amy. "But not in there. That's no place to clean a cut. Trust me. It was a bad, bad restroom."
She wraps my thumb again, and we walk over to the gas station next to this one. It's hard to imagine that the previous restroom was worse, though I take solace in the fact that I can't actually see the bacteria leaping into my wound. I rinse my thumb off. It's not so grisly. The whole digit will still be attached when I wake up in the morning.
"How is it?" Amy asks as I emerge from the gas station. I give her a bloody-towel-wrapped thumbs-up. She carefully puts a bandage on me. "There," she says. "All better."
Because my dignity is a bit shaky, I'm relieved that she doesn't give my thumb a mommy-style kiss, but also a bit disappointed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Wow, you squished the crap out of that moth."
--Exit Red, Season 5, Episode 10
Using the bottom of her shirt to protect her fingers, Amy tries to bend the shark tooth out of the way. I'm certainly not rooting against her, but I'd also prefer that she not effortlessly complete this task in half a second.
Apparently the license plate cover is of higher quality than I would have suspected from something I bought at a theme park, because she can't get the tooth to move. The amount of time I spend focusing on masculine pride is infinitesimal, yet I can't help but feel grateful that she didn't make me look even more like a dumbass.
One of the employees in the gas station lets her borrow a screwdriver, and she hands it over to me. The screws are rusty, but I get them out without showing evidence of a struggle, and remove the cover.
So the day I start to live my life in a more dangerous fashion, I have to take the shark jaws off? What kind of stupid symbolism is that? I should be adding more shark jaws to my car!
Amy returns the screwdriver and then says that she'll take the first driving shift. This is kind of disappointing; I think that somehow, deep inside, I believed that I'd impress the hell out of her with my astounding driving endurance. But the more I protest, the more she'll be thinking I can't believe I have to drive first shift because this dork cut his thumb, so I say "Sure," and get into the passenger seat.
Once again I have this gut-wrenching feeling that the car isn't going to start.
But it does. We get back onto I-75, and now our adventure begins.
I hope I'm not carrying the plague in my thumb wound. It would be incredibly irresponsible to drive through several states, spreading disease. I don't want to be Patient Zero.
I cleaned the cut thoroughly. Yes, there was rust in the screws, and yes, microscopic particles could have coated the metal shark teeth as well, but there's really no need to seek medical attention. That would totally ruin our trip. Amy would be right to abandon me.
Not that I ever actually seek medical attention. I just think about seeking medical attention.
My thumb is fine. I know my thumb is fine. I need to squelch the hypochondriac part of my personality for the next few days.
I ask myself, what would Craig say?
(Approximate answer: "Shut up.")
"Did you call your boss?" Amy asks.
"Not yet. I figured I'd do it this evening."
"Don't forget."
What if we're having so much fun that I forget? Such a thing is entirely possible. "I should probably call her now."
"Do you have your story planned out?"
"Yeah. I'm going to keep it simple." An obvious sign of a lie is when you give too many unnecessary details. I promise this isn't something I know from extensive experience as a liar.
"Do you want to practice?"
"Sure." I close my eyes to get into character. "'Hi, Gigi, this is Todd. Sorry to do this to you, but I've had some bad news. My grandmother just passed away, so I
'm on my way to Rhode Island for the funeral. I'll keep you posted, but I don't think I'll be back until Thursday. Sorry again. Talk to you later. Bye.'" I include the Rhode Island part, because when one is lying it's best to use as much of the truth as possible. Again, I swear this is not a skill set I've put to frequent use.
"That works."
I take out my cell phone, suddenly feeling very guilty about this whole idea. I don't know why. It's a victimless crime, unless you count the corporation that will be paying me bereavement time when I'm not really bereaved. I'm pretty sure the stockholders will be okay.
Granted, that's the kind of rationalization people use for criminal activities all the time, but...screw it, I want to go to Rhode Island, and therefore my grandmother has to die again.
I go to my contacts and find Genevieve Stein's work number. She's at least five years younger than me, and in fact I trained her when she first started, but her career trajectory from my trainee to my boss doesn't bother me at all. I can just sit there and peacefully do my work. She has to deal with crap like auditors, performance reviews, and employees calling in fake grandmother deaths.
"Do you need to sound like you're crying?" Amy asks. "I could tell you a sad story or squeeze your thumb."
"Nah."
"Would it be funny if I shouted 'Untie me, you son of a bitch!' while you're leaving the message?"
"Hilarious, but please don't."
"Okay."
I press the call button. Gigi's phone rings a couple of times.
It's Sunday. 11:54 AM. The expectation that I would be delivering a short rehearsed message into her voice mail was perfectly reasonable, so I actually flinch when she answers.
"Hello, Genevieve Stein."
"Uh..."
Our phones at work don't have caller ID. I could have hung up on her if I hadn't said "Uh..."
"Hello?" she repeats.
"Hi, Gigi, it's me."
"Todd?"
"Yeah."
"What can I do for you?"
"I've had some bad news today. Do you remember my grandmother?"
She's never met my grandmother, obviously, or even any of my non-deceased relatives. I'm babbling already. This could be problematic.
