“Lloyd,” I said, trying to make it up to him, “both of us have been in bad spots before. You lost your mom, and I lost both my parents. You’ve probably had your share of bad love affairs and, well, we both know how my love life is going. But we can’t focus on the negative. We’ve got to be positive. Things are bound to look up.”
Lloyd didn’t seem too encouraged by this line of reasoning. He moaned, keeping his attention focused on the passing scenery.
“What I’m trying to say is, we’re survivors. We’ll get by.” My pep talk was starting to depress me, so I changed strategies. “What we need here is a little T.L.C and a fresh start. You’re going to like it where we’re going.”
I pulled the Camaro up onto A1-A and started to accelerate. Behind us, I could see the sparkling blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the sugary white sands that ran along the panhandle. It had been my oasis from the cold gray north, but no longer. I was leaving and maybe never coming back. I’d run away to Florida so I could find myself, so I could become someone else, someone I liked. What was I left with after six years of re-creating? I looked back at the ocean again. It had all been a mirage, a colorful, warm oasis that vanished when you stretched out your hand to touch it.
“Okay, Lloyd, it’s like Uncle Benny always says, ‘No matter where you go, there you are!’”
Lloyd belched.
“Okay, so he wasn’t the first to say it, he was just repeating it. That doesn’t make it any less true. I’m taking you home. We’ll go see Uncle Benny and Aunt Lucy. We could use a vacation, huh, boy? Maybe after a couple of weeks we’ll figure out where to go from there, all right? At least we left before they fired us. I could still work for another department. Maybe.”
Lloyd barked once and turned to look out the passenger-side window again. No matter where you go, there you are, I thought.
I reached over and switched on the radio. Granted, things were bleak, but that was a good thing, right? I mean, what was left to lose? What more could go wrong?
Ten miles later, Lloyd threw up his salvaged chicken-biscuit breakfast. It took another five miles to find an exit with a gas station and another thirty minutes to clean every crack and crevasse of the front passenger seat. By the time we got back on the road, I’d revised my opinion of our collective future. We were in the dismal swamp of life and sinking like elephants in quicksand. There was no happy ending and there would be no re-creating reality with pink-tinted glasses. Life just plain old sucked.
I turned the radio up and let Sheryl Crowe fill the empty space in my head. I didn’t want to think anymore. My logic was filled with more black holes than outer space, and thinking had become my biggest liability.
Lloyd must’ve agreed with me, because he didn’t say anything for the next 1,100 miles. We drove like participants in an around-the-world scavenger hunt, only stopping for gas and fast food. We slept in snatches at rest areas until at last, after twenty-eight hours on the road, we hit the familiar territory of my old hometown.
Lloyd woke up in time for our big arrival in Glenn Ford, Pennsylvania. He stretched and pulled himself up to stare out the windshield at the gray sky and billboards that advertised local businesses, whining a little and probably wishing I’d pull over and let him pee.
“Honest, Lloyd, it’s only two more miles. We’re about to cruise through midtown Glenn Ford. Look, there’s Banker’s Union. That’s where I had my first savings account!”
Lloyd was very unimpressed. When I turned onto the main drag I started the travelogue in earnest.
“Look, Lloyd, that’s Guinta’s drugstore. I used to stop in there every day on my way home from school and drink a vanilla soda.” Lloyd actually closed his eyes and shook his head softly. “Lloyd, there’s the place where they make the best hoagies! Lloyd! You’re missing small-town America. Come on, look!”
But Lloyd didn’t look and I didn’t have time to say another word. There was a loud explosion somewhere in the front of my car, and driving became difficult as the Camaro suddenly pulled hard to the right. Lloyd barked, and I gripped the wheel and with some effort pulled us up onto the tarmac of Carpenter’s Auto Body Shop, narrowly missing a rusted-out Oldsmobile.
I stared up at the sign. Carpenter’s Auto Body. Surely Jake hadn’t become a mechanic? I edged the car up a few more feet, felt the pull of the flattened tire and knew I had no other option. We were stuck here, Jake or no Jake.
I looked at Lloyd, then reached over and stroked his head. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I said. “We’re home. At least the car had the good sense not to blow until we made it.” I looked out the window at the unfamiliar auto shop and smiled. “Hey, we even broke down in a gas station! Isn’t it great? I told you life would look up!”
I swear Lloyd rolled his eyes at me.
The sign on the door of the shop said Closed in big orange letters. I looked at my watch; it was almost 11:00 a.m. How could it be closed? It wasn’t a holiday. I opened the car door, stepped out onto the tarmac and stretched. No sign of life anywhere. I walked around the front of the car slowly, obviously inspecting the right front tire. It was flat as a pancake.
I walked around to the back of the car, popped the trunk and stared inside at the space where the spare should’ve been, and then remembered I’d taken it out so I could fit my undercover equipment in its place. I shivered, realizing that the outskirts of Philadelphia were a lot colder than the Florida Panhandle in mid-November.
This was so not what I needed. A flat tire, no spare and me wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I stared back up at the darkened auto body shop. Maybe they were all inside drinking coffee and eating bagels. Maybe if I walked up to the door and banged, someone would take pity on me and come fix the flat.
I trotted up to the storefront and cupped my hands to the glass, peering intently into the darkened interior. A bald man wearing a grease-smudged gray uniform was in the room behind the cash register, sitting at the desk and looking intently at a stack of papers sprawled out in front of him. I sighed, relieved that at least he wasn’t Jake Carpenter, and knocked on the glass.
The man froze, looked at me, then away, as if he could erase my presence by ignoring me.
“Oh, come on, please!” I cried.
I saw his shoulders slump. He looked up, squinting with little coffee-bean eyes. “We’re closed,” he called, then turned his attention back to the paperwork in front of him.
“I know,” I said, “but my car’s front tire just blew and…”
He looked up again, frowning, clearly annoyed at the continued intrusion.
“I’m freezing! Come on! Really, it’ll only take a minute. Please, I’ll pay you double, okay?”
“Come back this afternoon and we’ll take a look at it,” he said.
This was not the Glenn Ford I knew. When I’d lived here the people were friendly, always ready to help a woman in distress. What was wrong with this idiot?
“Listen,” I said, pitching my voice as loud as I could without screaming at the fool, “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’d change the tire myself, but my spare is gone, and…” Words failed me. I felt tears queuing up at the edges of my eyes and knew I was about to completely lose it. “Damn it, I said please, I said I’d pay you double. Hell, if I knew how to plug a tire, I’d offer to fix it myself. Now what more is it going to take? Do I need to flag down a passing motorist and hope they have a spare my size? Do I need to call a tow truck, the police, EMS? What?”
The man’s eyes widened; clearly he thought a maniac was accosting him. He rubbed his oil-stained fingers across his bald skull and gave up.
“All right, all right, keep your shirt on!”
He stood up, walked around the desk and through the leaf in the countertop