A few months back, Mike and Tracy had been at the grocery store picking out some Starbucks coffee. Mike was in heaven smelling the wonderful aromas of the different beans and spices.
‘You know,’ He began. ‘If God told me I had to give up either beer or coffee, I honestly don’t know what I’d do.’
Tracy had thought the dilemma was easily solved. ‘Beer.’
Mike looked at her. ‘All right then, God says coffee or cigarettes.’
Tracy now saw the point.
After they had filled up the backseat of Mike’s Jeep and were heading out of the parking lot, Tracy had asked him, if God said this Jeep or me, how hard of a decision would that be for you.
Mike’s answer came swiftly. ‘Oh Hon, that wouldn’t be hard.’ But he hadn’t elaborated and she more than half believed his non-verbalized implication.
“Any better ideas?” Tracy asked.
“Well, we do need cigarettes,” Nicole smiled sickly. More than once in her rebellious youth she had wanted to ‘borrow’ her father’s Jeep when she had snuck out of the house, but she was unruly, not insane. The Jeep had stayed safely tucked away in the garage.
Nicole cautiously climbed up into the passenger seat, half expecting some form of theft deterrent to activate. No matter how much she adjusted the seat and her posture she could not get comfortable; guilt was a difficult suit to wear. Her mother didn’t seem to be wearing it any better than her. The Jeep started loudly in the confined space. If not for the seat belts strapped across their laps, they both might have jumped out. Tracy slowly placed the car in reverse.
“Um, Mom, you might want to open the garage door.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Tracy smiled weakly.
This expedition was getting off to a memorable start, cigarettes or no. Nicole wasn’t sure about the wisdom of this crusade. The door rumbled open, Tracy jerkily popped the clutch, stalling the Jeep. “Oops,”she commented.
“Great,” Nicole muttered under her breath. The next three attempts at reverse didn’t go much better. Then there was first gear to contend with.
Tracy rolled up to the main gate, hopeful they would open it before she lost momentum and had to mess with first gear again.
Igor waved them to a halt.
“Dammit,” Tracy and Nicole muttered at the same time and both for the same reason. Nicole had nearly got her nose broken on the dashboard as the Jeep bucked like a pissed off bronco.
“Vat’s a matter vit you Talbots? You not like it here?” Igor asked.
“Igor, do you know where the boys went?” Tracy asked concernedly.
“They say to help their Da but I could tell they was full of it,” he answered helpfully.
She wanted to yell at him for letting them go, but his job was who to let in, not out.
“They be all right, Missus Talbot, they were armed for bear,” he finished when he saw the look of apprehension on her face. “You two should stay here and wait for them to return. It’s too dangerous to go out there.”
“Did you give the boys the same speech?!” Tracy lashed back.
Igor stepped back and motioned for the bus to move. He’d learned a lot of things since he had moved to the States. Women were not subservient like in Russia, and it was best not to stir a hornet’s nest with a short stick. “Have a nice day.” And he walked back towards the bus to get some heat.
Tracy stalled the Jeep twice more at the mouth of the gate. The bus driver seemed on the verge of panic. He was gesturing wildly for Tracy to get out of the entrance way.
“What the hell is he so worried about?” Tracy asked hotly, driving, or actually stalling Mike’s Jeep was getting her flustered. “There isn’t a zombie for miles!” She was wrong, very, very wrong, but they were definitely out of the line of sight. “Keep your damn shorts on!” Tracy yelled as she successfully ground through first and out of the way of the bus. “God, Mike always makes it look so easy.”
“Mom, are you sure we should be out here?” Nicole couldn’t put her finger on it but something didn’t seem right. Her foreboding grew as Little Turtle diminished in the rearview mirror.
Tracy was too busy concentrating on shifting gears to notice anything. It was possible her difficulties with the clutch were stemming more from her subconscious than her foot to pedal interaction. “Huh, got it!” Tracy said triumphantly as she pulled away from the intersection of Havana and Evans with nary a rattle. Now, as she surveyed her surroundings in earnest she had to agree with Nicole. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. She had endangered her daughter and herself and for what, she hadn’t a clue which way her boys had gone. Driving around without a purpose was tantamount to suicide. Sure, they were armed, but neither one of them had shot more than a half dozen bullets and none of those rounds had impacted with the desired targets.
Tracy felt exhausted from the stress of this brave new world, her husband gallivanting all over the place and now her boys were God knows where.
Tracy’s head slumped over the steering wheel as she looked over at her daughter. “Nicole, I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going. Mike will kill us if he finds out about this and not only because we took his Jeep.”
Nicole had never seen her mom so defeated. She had to think of something fast or her mother might just shutdown completely. Nicole had lost her license to drive last year. Not that any patrolman would be stopping to check, but the fact remained that she could barely control an automatic transmission. A clutch was out of the question. The sense of foreboding that she was feeling had not diminished in the least. She had no wish to walk back to the complex.
“I sure could use a smoke,” Nicole said, looking out the corner of her eye, hoping for some reaction besides despair from her mother.
Tracy picked her head up, anguish clearly visible on her taut features. There was also something else…resolve. She was a little bit more than pissed at herself that she should be able to pull out of her funk over a cigarette, but old habits don’t die easily. They can be suppressed or even forgotten for a while but they can and will always rear their ugly heads at the most inopportune times. This, however, was an opportune time. Tracy wasn’t sure if she was mad or grateful that Nicole knew which buttons to push with such precise precision, but after all, she had been practicing for the last eleven years.
Tracy put the truck in gear. “Sounds good to me. Contracting lung cancer is the least of my problems.”
Nicole would have laughed if the thought wasn’t so macabre. Somehow at this point lung cancer was the safer alternative. How the hell did that happen? They drove in silence for only a minute or so as Tracy pulled into the nearest service station a half-mile away. There were a couple of cars in the bays, but they were unattended. Tracy did a lazy figure eight through the parking lot looking for anything that might make this visit not worth their while. Besides spilled gas there were no imminent threats. The lights inside the convenience store were out and the opaque glass masked everything. Tracy parked in front of the store, the Jeep idling quietly. She and Nicole peered intently into the gloom looking for any movement.
“Keep the car running. I’ll run in and grab a bunch of packs,” Nicole said as she began to open the door.
“Wait a minute, I’m not letting you go in there!” Tracy yelled louder than she meant to.
“Mom, I’ll be fine, I’m just gonna run in and run out.”
“No, if anyone should go in it should be me. I’ve already got two kids, God knows where. You stay here and I’ll run in,” Tracy said, convinced this was the correct maneuver. “If anything happens to me, you just take off,”she said as she began to open her door.
“Mom!” Nicole yelled.
