“Ah shit,” Alder broadcasted, looking down range on the highway to see four lanes of brake lights.
“What's wrong?” Maria asked while entertaining Matthew not having to worry about Michelle, who had fallen asleep as soon as the minivan began to move.
“Traffic. And damn it, we just missed the exit to get off and try to detour this crap.”
“Are we going to be late?”
Alder glanced at the clock on the dash of the minivan. “We may now.”
Finally managing to exit the highway in hopes of bypassing the congested swarm of cars, Alder found himself driving in an unfamiliar area of Los Angeles. His attempt to navigate in a parallel course to the highway became unsuccessful when two-lane streets became one way and took tangent angles mimicking the nearby river. Alder became upset with himself that he hadn't replaced the faulty GPS device sooner. “Damn, we're lost,” he thought.
“Great, now we’ll definitely be late,” Maria jabbed.
Alder wasn’t too happy with the disparaging tone of her comment. “Is something wrong?”
“If you don’t know, I don’t have to tell you.”
“What type of sense does that make?”
Maria decided not to answer and remained quiet the remainder of the trip.
To forget about how annoyed he was with his wife, Alder thought about trying to contact his co-worker and friend Stephen to let him know they would be late. Then he remembered that Stephen probably wouldn’t be able to answer his cell phone since there were restrictions on bringing personal devices capable of taking pictures. Alder wasn’t aware of the lifted restrictions.