The rain drummed down on the Toyota’s roof. She wondered if it would leak. She remembered her old man talking about a car he’d had that was as wet inside as it was outside. The Toyota stayed dry, at least in the passenger compartment. That was one technology they’d managed to improve.
She crawled along. At last, through the curtains of rain, she saw cops—or were they Texas Rangers?—in slickers doing something with a truck and trailer on this side of the road that closed it down to a single, very cramped, lane. A little farther on, a VW Beetle—a new, postmodern one, not an ancient, funky beater—lay on its back, looking too much like an oversized dead bug. The roof was partly smashed. She couldn’t see who, if anyone, was still inside. That might have been just as well.
Because of the downpour and the wreck, she didn’t make it to the I-10 the first day, the way she’d hoped she would. She pulled off the Interstate in Cisco, still on the Fort Worth side of Abilene. There she discovered the Texas institution called the access road: the street full of motels and restaurants and gas stations paralleling the highway, with ramps leading on and off. They didn’t have those in L.A. or Denver. She found a place about on the level of the Super 8 she’d had in Oklahoma City and pushed greenbacks at the desk clerk.
As she paid, she asked, “Do they know when the storm’s supposed to stop?”
“Tomorrow? The day after?” the black woman answered. “Whenever it does. It’s in the Lord’s hands, honey.”
“Terrific,” Vanessa muttered. She’d hoped the Lord might keep her from getting soaked when she walked across the parking lot to the Applebee’s next door, but He didn’t seem cooperative.
And He wasn’t. Umbrella or no umbrella, she got good and wet by the time she reached the restaurant. She ordered a double gin and tonic to improve her attitude. The waitress carded her. From a guy, that might have been flattering. Here, it just pissed her off. Showing the deceased Colorado license alarmed her, too.
But the waitress cared only about the birthdate. She went away. She came back with booze. What more could you want? Vanessa chose chicken fajitas from the menu. “If I never see another MRE as long as I live, that’ll still be too soon,” she told the gal.
“You were in one of them camps?” the waitress asked. By her drawl, she’d never gone farther than a long piss from this miserable little hole in the ground.
“Afraid so,” Vanessa said.
“Lotsa folks are stuck in ’em, and they ain’t supposed to be real nice,” the waitress said. “You’re lucky you got out.”
“Tell me about it,” Vanessa said with feeling. What did they call luck? The residue of design, that was what. It sounded impressive, and as if it ought to mean something. Odds were it was nothing but bullshit, the way most impressive-sounding slogans were. Her luck was the residue of not being too fussy about whom she blew, and she’d tried her best not to think about it since she did it.
“Well, I’ll take your order to the kitchen.” The waitress hustled away. She was perky and built. A guy probably would have watched her ass. Vanessa concentrated on the level of gin in the glass. To her, that was a hell of a lot more interesting.
If you expected grand cuisine, Applebee’s was the wrong place for you. Better than MREs, it definitely was. Vanessa got outside of the fajitas faster than she’d imagined she could. She got outside of another double gin and tonic, too. She lurched when she went back to the motel. She got wetter than she had on the way over to the restaurant, but she cared less.
Next morning, the motel had donuts and granola bars and coffee in the lobby. The spread wasn’t exciting, but it was free. It was also fast. Vanessa wanted to get on the Interstate and make more miles. She hurried to the car. It was still raining hard. At least it wasn’t snowing. She hadn’t had enough practice with the white stuff to feel easy about driving in it.
I-20 was full of eighteen-wheelers. Every time one of them growled past her, it threw more water onto her windshield than her wipers could handle. For a few scary seconds, she’d go next to blind. Then the wipers would catch up. She’d be able to see . . . till the next honking big truck came along.
She wondered why a no-account stretch of Interstate through the middle of Texas was as truck-packed as the Long Beach Freeway coming up from the harbor. And then, all of a sudden, she quit wondering. These swarms of diesel monsters were heading for Los Angeles, just like her. Without them, L.A. would starve, to say nothing of running out of everything it needed besides food.
Somewhere a little farther along in west Texas, this highway would join I-10, and I-10 would take her home. Till she moved to Denver to be with Hagop, she’d spent her whole life in San Atanasio. If—no, when—she made it home, she vowed she wouldn’t live outside the city limits ever again, either.