Chapter Fifty
We had been driving for a few hours, the last vestiges of sunlight had been eaten away in the western horizon long ago. The highway was dark, motorists far and few between. Occasionally I’d pass an eighteen wheeler. After exhausting ourselves on theories and predictions of Paul and his hostage and what they might be up to, and giving up hope that Maurice was going to call me with good news, we found a distraction to help pass the time: trivia. We downloaded trivia apps on our phones and took turns asking the other a question. At first neither of us were answering correctly the questions, as we had bigger things on our minds. But as with anything you become numb to situations and the idea of confronting Paul early tomorrow morning took a back seat to meaningless trivia, and thus we began cogitating more effectively.
“Which was the first European country with freedom of religion?” I asked her, eyes flashing between phone and black road.
“Europia,” she said. “That’s still a country, right?”
“Stinker.”
“I’d guess Switzerland.”
I made an incorrect buzzing sound. “Netherlands.”
“Are there nether regions in Netherlands?”
“I’m pretty sure there are,” I said.
“How many miles have we driven?”
“Is that a trivia question?” I checked my odometer trip A, which I had reset upon leaving Norrah’s. “Three-hundred-and-twenty miles.” I whistled. “Damned if trivia doesn’t make the time go by fast. Aaron said audiobooks make it go by super fast. Maybe we should pick one up in Sedona for the drive back.”
“Sure. How many miles do we have left?”
“Uh, Mapquest said it was just under five-hundred miles total. So like one-eighty maybe? Is my math correct?”
“Yes. That’s not bad. Is it this highway for most the way?”
“Yep. Oh crap, we’re almost out of gas.” The low-gas light had literally just turned on. And unlike some brands, Chevy doesn’t give you a comfortable cushion to find gas between warning you and running out.
“Good,” Norrah said. “I’ve had to pee for a while now.”
“Not so good if we run out of gas and get butt-raped by some desperate truck driver.”
“Some cop you are,” she said and chuckled.
“Hey, I’m a realist. Truckers can be big and I’m dainty. I hope there’s an exit soon. They put these damned gas stations twenty miles apart so if you miss one you’re screwed.”
It was ten miles later when we came up on Road 119. How’s that for a street name? Nobody cares about these roads to the extent that it’s beneath the city planners to attach a real name to them. The gas-gauge was looking grim. We made it to Chevron just in time. When I twisted off the gas cap it hissed and gasped exaggeratedly, to make a point maybe. Norrah trotted off to the unisex restroom outside the food mart. I checked my phone for the time: 8:10 P.M. No missed calls. As I pumped gas I shot Aaron a text. I didn’t want to worry him this night when he was enjoying the company of Deborah and Brooke, so I’d keep mum about Paul until after the crisis was at an end. I wondered what the three of them were up to over there. I figured Aaron would confess to Tinkerbelle why he had wanted her to come over. He’s an honest kind of guy; lies don’t become him.
I pumped eighty-eight bucks of petro into the starving gas tank. Ouch. I wondered if my old pal Maurice was going to cover the cost of my gas. I saved my receipt just in case.
Norrah came out of the food mart with a package of zingers and bag of Doritos, two sixteen-ouncers of Coke.
“Want me to drive for a bit?” she asked. “You can take a nap if you’d like.”
“Sure. I doubt I’ll be sleeping, but I could use a break.”
She took over as pilot of the Tahoe. I reclined my seat and nestled in for the long haul. This trip would be so much more enjoyable if it wasn’t for the knowledge of how it might end: someone dead or seriously injured (hopefully Paul).
She cranked the engine over and yawned, took a sip of Coke. For some damned reason I was feeling amorous. From out of nowhere! Biology is what it is. I had a hot dame seated beside me and it was awfully dark in the Tahoe cabin, if you know where I’m going with this.
“Tired?” I asked her.
“A little.”
“I have somewhat of an energy drink you might enjoy, zero calories.”
She looked confusedly at me. I touched her inner thigh, winked at her.
“Are you always horny?” She giggled.
“Only when I’m awake.” I winked.
“I’m not really in the mood, sorry.”
She shifted into drive and slowly pulled out of the gas station. I changed my strategy, abandoned her thigh and moved on to bigger and better things. I had only just begun touching her when I discerned her disinterest fading away. Her legs opened a little, just enough to know that there would be a happy ending for her in the near future. We were putting along Road 119 at a turtle’s pace. I don’t think she had any concept of speed right now. Mindlessly she turned onto the onramp and crawled along.
My eyes were on her; her eyes (narrow as they were) were on the pitch black road, no vehicles of any variety driving in either direction. A few minutes ticked by. I glanced at the speedometer. She was cruising at a respectable 70 miles an hour. I saw the cruise control icon illuminated on the gauge-cluster.
She was beginning to moan, which turned me on. What didn’t turn me on is when she said, “Oh shit,” in a non-romantic way. My first reaction is that we were being pulled over. I’d have to flash my badge and talk our way out of a ticket. But we were driving the speed limit. I looked behind us and saw no lights.
“Oh shit!” she said more alarmingly.
“What?”
“I’m pretty sure Modesto isn’t on the way to Arizona.”
“Modesto?” I looked at the side of the freeway for a sign but there were none. I removed my hand from her.
“Modesto 122 miles, that last sign read,” she said in a panic. “Tell me we aren’t going the wrong way!”
I pictured a cute little blond-haired boy with Paul aiming a gun at his head. Paul, who would be watching the clock and expecting us in a few hours.
“Are you sure it said Modesto?” I asked her.
“Positive. Damnit, Jay. Have you been driving the wrong way this whole time?”
“Impossible. I’m sure I was going the right way.”
I looked up at the rear-view mirror, where a digital compass read N and not E. I palmed my forehead. “How could I make such a huge mistake? I’ve never done anything like this before.”
She began crying.
“Don’t cry, baby. Turn around at the next exit.”
“I can’t help it,” she said and wiped her eyes. “That boy is going to be killed, and it’s our fault.”
“No, it isn’t your fault. It’s my fault. Damnit.”
“How do you drive over three-hundred miles without seeing a sign indicating you’re going the wrong way? Look!” She pointed at a little green sign reading 99. Highway 99—we should have been on Interstate 10. Just past it was another sign reading Sacramento 193 miles.
“I don’t know. Wasn’t paying attention I guess. I screwed up. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry to me. I’m not the one whose life is in danger. You’d better call Maurice and tell him the bad news.”
Not a call I wanted to make. I decided to text, take the chicken-shit way out. I texted him: sorry man, but there was a delay in our travel. We’re behind. It was an accident.
I pressed send.
“I said it was an accident,” I said proudly. “He’ll assume I meant a car accident, not an accident of direction. A fatal accident could cut off a highway for hours, because the coroner has to come out and investigate before reopening it. So that’s why we’re late.”
She shook her head at the situation.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked with puppy-dog eyes.
“No. A little frustrated, though.”
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“Sorry, babe. I can be an idiot.”
“If you’d think with your brain and not your dick half the time, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
That hurt, bad. What hurt is that it was true.
We passed a sign that read Next Gas 6 Miles. We were stuck driving north until that exit. I got a text back and dreaded reading it. Maurice texted: Accidents happen. Don’t worry about it. Just get here safely.
“Wow,” I said. “He totally didn’t come unglued like I thought he would.”
“I figured he’d call you and get details or something.”
“Me too. Maybe they’re in a good situation over there. Maybe they have S.W.A.T. preparing an ambush, or a sniper getting ready to fire a bullet through a living room window at Paul.”
“I hope so.”
“Heck yeah.”
I tried my hand at touching Norrah again, but this time her shoulder. She brushed it away and said she wasn’t mad at me, just not in the mood anymore. That she jumped to the conclusion that I was preparing to touch her more intimately made me feel like a pervert. I hung my head like a scorned dog.
A sign read Next Gas 1 Mile.
I used the GPS on my phone to see how many miles from here to Sedona. I loathed to see that fat number. It calculated a moment (big numbers take time to compute, perhaps) before displaying directions to our destination. Total miles 739, time 11.4 hours. I honestly felt like crying just then. I wasn’t about to tell Norrah the bad news. I hated myself wholeheartedly. I examined the digital map of my phone, looking for a highway that might cut east from the 99 so we could get there more directly.
Suddenly I flung forward in my seat with tremendous force, slammed into the dash. Tires howled as Norrah stomped on the brakes and banked hard left. This idiot hadn’t fastened his seatbelt. We came to a stop. I was off my seat, in the foot-well. I got back in my seat feeling like I just got kicked in the head.
“Shit!” she shouted and opened her door, jumped out.
“What happened?” I said and got out of the car rubbing my head.
She was scouring the area, ran toward the freeway exit we had just passed.
“What is it?” I asked more urgently.
“I think I ran someone over!” she exclaimed. She was turning and turning, frantic to find the struck person.
“No you didn’t, I’d have heard and felt the impact.” I caught up with her saying, “Honey I think you imagined it. It’s getting late and you’re tired, emotionally exhausted. Nobody would be standing on the freeway in the middle of nowhere.”
My words didn’t calm her down in the slightest. I took her in my arms and hugged; she was rigid. “I’ll drive, Norrah. Okay?”
“Jay…” She met eyes with me. “She was standing in the middle of the off ramp.”
“She?”
Norrah nodded. “A little girl.”
“A little girl,” I repeated. “Did she look familiar at all?”
“It happened so fast. I don’t know. It might have been her.”
I surveyed the area before concluding there was no victim in this ordeal, walked hand in hand with Norrah back to the Tahoe which was idling on the shoulder of the freeway. I got in the driver’s seat and adjusted it.
“If I didn’t imagine it,” she said, “then she was real. And if she was real, she’s… well she’s not here anymore.”
“If she was real, it was Magdalena. Is that what you’re thinking?”
She nodded. I put the car in reverse and drove back toward the exit that Norrah had swerved away from.