CHAPTER Four
Present Day
Clover left her phone in the apartment she thought she’d never see again and left her car in the exorbitantly expensive parking garage in Brooklyn, reasoning that criminals might have access to police resources and be able to arrange to have a bulletin issued. Even if she obscured the license plate with mud or forged a paper plate, which any person with third grade computer skills could do, easily, they might look for her make and model.
That had her thinking the choice to buy a ‘classic’ Jeep Renegade, vintage early seventies, painted school bus yellow, was questionable. Yes. It was cute as could be. It was also, arguably, the most uniquely trackable vehicle in the entire United States.
She couldn’t rent a car or use credit cards or the ATM. She knew this because, like any red-blooded American girl, she’d watched TV. And been to the movies. A lot.
No credit or debit or ATM left two options. Cash on hand and Greyhound. Luckily she had some cash. There wasn’t a lot left, but there was enough to get far, far away.
Trying to pare a life down to what would fit in a rolling duffel wasn’t easy. She made some hard choices. She couldn’t say she didn’t look back. She stood at the door of her apartment for a long time looking over things she’d never see again. Stuff from fire sales. Stuff left by the curb. Stuff she made herself. She tried to focus on the word that held the pattern together. Stuff.
She told herself the tangibles were meaningless in the big picture that included life and death, took a deep breath of resolve, fought tears back, and walked away pulling her duffel. It was the first time she’d ever contemplated that there might be an upside to not having a family, at least none who cared about her. None who would miss her or report her missing.
Just to be sure her landlord didn’t report her missing, she left a note.
Great job opportunity overseas, but I have to leave now. Please re-let the apartment and give away everything not wanted.
It was a hard note to write because everything left was wanted. By her.
A fresh bout of tears threatened to form, but she fought them back. She reasoned that there would be time to feel sorry for herself later. She bought a prepaid phone and boarded a bus bound for Texas. She didn’t know why she’d headed for Texas. It just seemed like the kind of place that would be anathema to the people who might want to look for her.
After a full forty-eight hours of watching alien landscape through a bus window, wallowing in the fact that she was completely alone in the world, she got off a bus in Austin, Texas. A bus ride from New England to Austin is ample opportunity to review options.
Clover’s assessment was that she was a person without much of a future before the ‘incident’. Now she was a person without a past as well. Exhausted and looking rough as could be, she’d asked herself a thousand times what she was doing and she always came up with the same answer.
Clover was not an adventurer. She’d never been further away from New Jersey than the eastern border of Connecticut. She liked routine and predictability. She liked getting her coffee the same way, at the same time, from the same barista, every morning. She didn’t like change and she didn’t like uncertainty.
What could motivate such a person to leave everything behind and hop a bus for parts unknown? Only one thing. Fear.
After claiming her bag she found the taxi stand and asked a woman smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, “Are you from here?”
“Yeah,” said the smoker.
“I need a motel kind of close by in a neighborhood that’s not too scary.”
The smoker grinned. “Not too scary, huh?” Clover nodded. “Turn around.”
Clover looked behind her. There was an America’s Best Value motel at the other end of the block. Turning back to the woman, she smiled.
“Perfect. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
The motel manager wanted to see ID. Of course. Clover explained that she’d lost her ID, but that she was paying cash.
“It’s policy, ma’am,” said the clerk, who was about the same age as Clover.
“I get that. And normally I’m all about policy, but I can’t produce an ID that I lost. I could pay a surcharge though. An inconvenience fee?”
She hoped the clerk was bright enough to take her meaning.
Apparently he was. “We might work that out. Fifty dollars cash is our normal surcharge for no ID.”
She glared at the guy. Fifty dollars would double the price of the room, but she didn’t have a choice and he was primed and ready to take personal advantage of that fact.
“I can’t argue with surcharge policy, can I?”
He smiled in a way that resembled gloating. “No, ma’am.”
She put a hundred and one dollars on the counter in front of him, two fifties and a one. She knew fifty of that wouldn’t make it to the cash drawer, but that was the deal.
After dumping her bag in the second floor room she got for fifty-one bucks, she headed to the IHOP next door. She was sure there was some great local joint close by, but she was hungry, tired, and something tried, true, and familiar seemed to fill the bill.
She grabbed a Greensheet out of the rack stand on the way inside. The greeter looked up, handed her a menu, gave a halfhearted wave toward the back and said, “Anywhere you want.”
Sliding into an empty booth next to a window, she took the side facing away from the room so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact. There were men in the world who thought that when a woman traveled alone or ate alone, it was an open invitation for company.
Her gaze was pulled away from the menu when she saw food go by that looked and smelled scrumptious. When the waitress stopped by her table and said, “What can I get you, hon?” Clover said, “What’s that they’re having?”
The waitress looked back over her shoulder. “Chicken and waffles.”
“Is it good?”
With a small shrug the waitress said, “Sure,” like she’d never given a thought to whether the food was good or not.
“Okay. I’ll have that. And a small salad. First.”
“Dressing.”
“Ranch. On the side.”
“What are you having to drink?”
“Water’s okay.”
“Back in a few.” She hurried away.
True to her word, the waitress was back in a few with Clover’s water and salad. By the time she’d finished her salad, the chicken and waffles had arrived.
While she ate she went through the Greensheet classifieds, which was really the point of the publication, for cars for sale. She knew what she was looking for. Something so common nobody would look twice. And cheap. Very cheap.
By the time she’d finished dinner, she was pretty sure she’d picked the one.
A 1993 Toyota Camry XLE silver sedan, with just one hundred eighty-three thousand six hundred and ten miles on it. Fully loaded, whether the bells and whistles worked or not, for just eight hundred dollars. AS IS.
Supposedly it had no accident or damage reported. One owner and regular service. One thing was sure. The price was right.
When she got back to the room she dialed the number in the ad.
“Yeah?” It was a youngish-sounding guy.
“I’m calling about the car?” she said. “The car for sale?”
“Oh. Yeah. I have a car for sale.”
“I know. This may be a silly question, but… does it run?”
“Yeah. It’ll get you where you wanna go.”
“How do you know where I want to go?”
“Well…”
“Never mind. I’m just, um, kidding. Why are you selling?”
“It belonged to my grandmother and she…”
“Stop! Don’t say any more. I don’t want to hear the rest. I want the car. I’ll give you eight hundred in cash.”
“You will?”
“Yes. But you’ll have to bring it to me.”
There was a pause. “Uh, where are you?”
“I’m at the America’s Best Value motel in Austin. It’s close to I35 and 290.”
“You’re really gonna buy the car?”
“I really am.”
“And you’re not gonna dicker?”
“No. I’m not gonna, um, dicker.”
“I guess I could bring you the car.”
“And the title.”
“Yeah. And the title. But you’ll have to give me a ride back to my other car.”
“And where’s that?”
“Dripping Springs.”
Dripping Springs. She liked the sound of it. “How far is that?”
“Miles? About twenty-five. Minutes? Depends on the time of day. Could be an hour. Freeways through town are slow goin’ these days.”
“You got a deal.”
“You better be there.”
“I will be. What time?”
“I can break away and come up there around eleven.”
“That works. Room 213. You’ve got to be here before twelve or I’ll have to pay for another day.”
“Yeah. No problem. 213.”
“You’ll call me if you’re going to be late?”
After two full days on a bus, Clover slept like the dead. She didn’t know if she’d always feel safe, but she felt secure for the moment.
At ten thirty the next morning she’d showered, had pancakes at the IHOP, repacked, and was ready to go when her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Yeah. This is Henry. The guy with the car.”
“Uh-huh?”
When Henry discerned that Clover wasn’t giving her name, he went on. “Somethin’s come up here and I’m not gonna be able to get away until later.”
“How much later?”
“Eight.”
“Tonight? Eight tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. Can’t be helped, but I feel bad about it. So you can deduct the charge for the motel from the eight hundred.”
“It’s a hundred and one dollars.”
“A night?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll sell you the car for seven twenty-five.”
She sighed. That seemed reasonable and Henry did sound sorry. “Okay. Eight o’clock. If they give me a different room, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, 213.”
The clerk, a woman she hadn’t seen, was happy to let her keep room 213. Since Clover was already checked in, the new manager made an assumption that she’d presented ID. So she charged just the daily rate of fifty-one dollars, with a smile.
On the way back to her room, she debated the morality of telling Henry that she’d only been asked for an additional fifty-one dollars. Then she decided that her new policy was to tack on a twenty-five dollar surcharge for inconvenience. She’d use the money for lunch and dinner at the IHOP.
Clover supposed four meals in a row would probably set some sort of IHOP record. I should get a plaque with my name on it.
The Texas map she’d bought at the stop in Waco was spread out on the motel room bed so that she could decide where to go after returning Henry to the car he wasn’t selling. There were a lot of assumptions in that exercise. She had to begin by assuming that Henry would show up with the car and then go further to assume that the car would make it to Dripping Springs. The words AS IS in capital letters kept flashing across her mind.
Saying that she knew nothing about cars was an understatement. She’d lived most of her life taking public transportation and barely knew how to drive, much less take care of a car. Or know whether it was likely to leave her by the side of the road.
“The price is right,” she said to herself out loud every time she had second thoughts. The price was right, the color was right, the age and shape was right. It was the perfect car to go unnoticed.
Since she had several hours and nothing to do, she decided to start out clean and laundered. She knew the motel had a coin washer and dryer because the clerk mentioned it when she extended her stay for another night.
After taking all the clean clothes out of the duffel, she was left with enough dirty clothes to fill a washer. Most of what she’d decided to take with her was in the hamper. It would be because her favorite things had been worn recently. She wasn’t anticipating a crisis that required a “go bag”. So she normally let laundry pile up until the weekend.
The clerk on duty in the office, whom she hadn’t seen before, exchanged a five dollar bill for some coins. On the way out of the office with her change she grabbed one of every sightseeing brochure in the rack, just so she’d have something to do while she was babysitting laundry.
Once the laundry was started she sat down with her brochures and read every one in detail. The idea of being a tourist was oddly appealing. She’d been to the beach and to amusement parks, but she’d never taken a vacation per se. Most people would ask how it was possible to get an anthropology degree without traveling. The bottom line was that she’d been good at school, but never had personal resources or family support to supplement travel. Without that, students on academic scholarships like herself weren’t going anywhere except to a second job.
She got hot sitting in the laundry room. There was no air conditioning. Or it wasn’t working. Either way, her hair was hanging limp around her face by the time she’d spent forty-five minutes listening to the dryer tumble.
She folded clothes, put them back in her rolling duffel so that it was ready to go and headed back to her room for a shower.
Henry showed at three minutes after eight. She opened the door and looked him up and down while he was looking her up and down.
“You’re Henry,” she said.
“Yeah. You’re my buyer. Right?”
“That’s right. You’ve got the title with you?”
“Uh-huh.” He looked over his shoulder. “I’m parked out here. You want to see it?”
“I want to do a lot more than see it.”
“Let’s go then,” he said.
She took a last look around the room as she was grabbing her purse, just to make sure she wasn’t leaving anything, and pulled the duffel out onto the landing.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to play gentleman and carry this for me, would you?”
Henry looked at Clover, raised his eyebrows, looked at the duffel, and smiled. “Sure. I’ll heft it.” He lifted it onto his shoulder easily. “This way.”
The car wasn’t much to look at, but it was exactly as represented. She’d find out if it worked or not because, according to her calculations, it was a forty-five minute drive from where they were to Dripping Springs.
Henry threw the duffel in the back seat and pulled the title out of the glove compartment. “It’s already signed,” he said. “Just give me the money and it’s yours.”
“Not so fast. We have a drive to make. That’ll give me a chance to make sure I’m buying a car that works. I’ll pay you when we get there.”
He huffed and rolled his eyes before saying, “You want to drive. Or me?”
Henry seemed harmless enough, but he was a guy, and one who was strong enough to lift her duffel like it was nothing. Her intuition wasn’t giving her any danger signals, so her caution was more policy than genuine concern. She reasoned that she’d be less vulnerable not driving.
“You drive,” she said.
“Fine by me.”
The car could have used a good detailing, but at least Henry wasn’t a smoker. And there weren’t used condoms all over the back floorboards. Always a plus.
He interrupted that train of thought by asking, “Where are you headed?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
For the next half hour Henry talked about life as he knew it. He was a Dripping Springs native who had no desire to be anywhere else.
“My girlfriend would be mad about me drivin’ you back if she saw how cute you are.”
Clover didn’t know what to say to that. So she said, “Have you done regular oil changes and maintenance?”
“Yeah. I know how to do that stuff.”
“Why are you selling?”
“My girlfriend and I are gettin’ married. We’re gonna share her car and use the money from this car for stuff.”
“Oh. Well. Congratulations.”
A light rain started to fall. Just enough to need the wipers on as they pulled into a crowded parking lot of a place all lit up with neon and string lights.
Clover leaned down to read the sign through the windshield. “Raze & Ruin.”
“Yeah,” Henry grinned. “It’s a roadhouse. Busy on weekends. Like tonight. Good food. Good drink. Good times.”
“Good times,” she repeated wistfully in a way that said she didn’t expect to ever know good times again.
“Well,” Henry prompted, “here we are.” He pulled the title out again and turned the overhead light on.
Clover looked it over. It seemed right. God. She hoped it was real.
“Okay.” She handed over the money. Henry took it and looked at it like he wasn’t sure what to do. “Go ahead. It won’t hurt my feelings if you count it.”
He smiled, looking relieved that he’d gotten permission. “All here. So have a nice trip then. Wherever you’re goin’. There’s over half a tank of gas. In this car that’ll take you pretty far.”
“Thanks, Henry.”
“I didn’t get your name.”
She glanced down at the title. The date was the seventh of April.
“Avril,” she said.
He smiled. “Nice doin’ business with you, Avril. See ya round.”
He left the key in the ignition, got out, and disappeared into the night.
Within seconds rain had obscured the view out the windshield giving the world an opaque, abstract look. She got out, ran around, and slid into the driver’s seat of her new ride. After moving the seat and back forward, adjusting the mirrors, and putting on her seatbelt, she turned the ignition.
The engine spluttered three times and died.
She sat there, gaping at the wipers, which continued to slap back and forth, operating on battery only.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said. Then shaking her head, “No. No. No. No. I refuse to accept this reality. This cannot be happening to me.”
Taking a deep breath she turned the key. For a second she thought it was going to start. Then it spluttered three times and died. She turned the ignition off and withdrew the key. With luck, maybe Henry was still around. Maybe she could catch him and get her money back before he disappeared. Or maybe there was a trick to starting the car that he forgot to mention.
She locked the doors, got out, and ran toward the lights wishing she had one of those cute little umbrellas that collapsed to practically nothing.