Just the Nicest Couple(74)

Time slows down. I hold my breath in anticipation because once is an accident, but twice is intentional.

But then, he reconsiders. He pulls back, setting both hands on the steering wheel, and I’m left to wonder if he meant something by the physical touch or if I read too much into it, if it was nothing more than a friendly gesture and I’m just being hypersensitive because of all that’s going on.

It gets quiet in the car. The car becomes airless and for an entire minute, neither of us speaks. Traffic in front of us comes to a sudden stop. Ryan doesn’t notice at first, because he’s looking at me and not at the street. But when he does notice, he has to step hard on the brake, just narrowly avoiding a fender bender with the car in front of us. It’s not his fault. The car in front of him stopped suddenly, because of something that happened further up ahead, like an accident or a gapers delay. I get pinned in place by my seat belt.

He says, “I’m sorry,” keeping his eyes trained to the road now at first.

“It’s not your fault. That car stopped too fast.”

He looks sideways at me, examining the profile of my face. I can feel his stare. I flick my gaze in his direction. Ryan holds my eyes. He has nice eyes. Kind, soulful eyes, but for the first time, I wonder if there is something insincere and unkind in them too. Traffic begins to flow again and my seat belt unleashes me. Ryan looks away, releasing my eyes. The relief is immediate. When I can, I tug down on the hem of my skirt.

We pull off the expressway and onto some two-lane road with more semitrucks than cars. We drive along the road, quiet, neither of us speaking. Eventually we come to a gravel lot where the words Auto Pound and a phone number are written on a sign on a gate.

Ryan pulls into the lot. “You can just drop me off here,” I say, pointing to the office for the auto pound, which is in a trailer.

“Let me park,” he says. “I’ll come in with you.”

But I don’t want him to come in with me. I want suddenly, more than anything, to be alone.

“No. Please don’t,” I say, “I’m fine.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Nina,” he says, leaning forward in his seat to take in the auto pound. “Look at this place. I can’t leave you alone here.”

“I’m not alone,” I say because there is an attendant in the parking lot though, from the looks of things, I’m not so sure he’s not an ex-con. Ryan slows to a stop. I don’t wait for him to park. I open the car door and I step outside, leaning my head back in to say, “Seriously, I’ll be fine. You’ve done me a huge favor. Now go home. I’ll text you and let you know when I’m safe.”

I let the door slam closed. I turn and walk away, hoping he doesn’t stay anyway, despite me telling him to leave. I listen to his idling engine, grateful when I finally hear the sound of tires moving across gravel. Only then do I turn back just in time to see him pull from the lot for the street, the gravel upset so that dust rises into the air, obscuring my view of his car.

I exhale. My shoulders relax. I still feel his hand on my knee.

The auto pound is wedged between train tracks in a very industrial part of town. The air becomes reverberant when trains pass by, which they do, many times while I wait for Jake’s car. The air smells putrid, like sulfur from nearby factories, as black smoke rises up into the sky.

I take in the broken down and damaged cars around me, conceivably hundreds of them, which have been abandoned by their owners or confiscated by the police.

I don’t have any trouble getting the car but, between the impound and the towing fees, it costs me almost a thousand dollars to get it back.

The police searched Jake’s car. They didn’t need a warrant to do so because it’s routine, I’m told, for impounded vehicles to be searched. But they found nothing of concern, nothing indicative of foul play and nothing to tell me where Jake is.

When I finally see it, Jake’s car looks so dirty and unfitting in this lot. I gasp at the sight of it before opening the door and letting myself into the car, sinking into the seat where Jake should be.

I drive home, through rush hour traffic. I stay cognizant of the cars behind me, convinced a pair of headlights follows me almost the whole way home. I signal and switch lanes, hoping to lose this other car, but it only mimics my movements, following me into the other lane. Instinctively, I lift my foot off the gas. Jake’s car slows, from sixty miles per hour to fifty. I wait for this other car to get impatient and go around me, but it doesn’t. Like me, it drops speed, and then, when I speed up again, it drives faster. The car keeps enough distance between us that I can’t get a good view of the driver or the car, but not so much distance that it risks losing me.

My exit approaches. I wait until the last minute to signal and switch lanes, and then leave the expressway, spinning down the exit ramp, slowing. This other car does the same. I watch this other car in growing dismay, my eyes more on the rearview mirror than on the street in front of me, so that I drift from the edge of the road and onto the rumble strips, making noise. Startled, I jerk the car back into place, my hands shaking on the steering wheel.

Just off the expressway, I merge onto a four-lane highway. I signal again and move into the left lane. I watch in my rearview mirror, as three cars back, this other car copies me, pulling behind a pickup truck.

The cars in front of me slow to a stop. I don’t know where I find the nerve. I think it has something to do with all the cars and how I don’t think anyone would do anything to hurt me with so many witnesses watching on.