“This isn’t adventure. This is necessity.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
A chuckle escapes me. It’s pained but not … painful.
“Take the next left for E-470 South,” I tell her.
“Can you just put the route into my phone?”
“I’ll plug my phone in,” I tell her, unhooking her phone from the console and plugging mine in. The map pops up a moment later.
I watch her eyes flit down to look at the map. “Can you hit ‘go’ on the map?”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Her cheeks are getting red, so I turn down the heat on the console.
She turns it right back up, her hand bumping mine. “Just press ‘go.’”
The air between us swings from cold to hot again.
“Why do you care?” I ask.
“Why doyoucare? I’m the driver!”
“It’s my rental car!”
“We co-rented it,” she argues, “and I don’t drive like this. I need the map to be functional tome, not functional to you soyoucan be functional to me.”
“I hate the voice,” I admit. “It’s so bossy and patronizing. And these things are useless in bad weather. They don’t know what roads have been plowed or if their alternative route is paved with black ice.”
Poppy makes a sound like she’s being strangled.
I finally tap “Go,” and that robotic voice speaks up:“In 1.2 miles, take exit 28 for E-470 South toward Colorado Springs.”
Poppy looks visibly relieved as she eases into the exit lane. “Was that so hard?”
The voice pings again—“Continue on E-470 South for 14 miles”—and I can already feel myself going crazy from the incessant updates.
My teeth grind. “You have no idea.”
For miles, I listen to that dumb voice give Poppy turn-by-turn instructions until it finally says,“In one mile, take exit 5 for CO-83 toward Parker/Franktown.”
“And to think,” she says in a voice stuck halfway between vexation and teasing, “that voice update could have been yours.”
“It’s not just the voice,” I tell her, because if we’re going to be stuck together for two full days, I’d rather her think I’m not, in fact, crazy. “It’s that it doesn’t tell you anything beyond the next step. I need to be able to see the road ahead so when something happens, I can adjust instead of hoping it can adjust for me.”
“So it’s about control,” she says.
“No,” I say, irritated by the characterization. “It’s about information. When you only plan for one outcome, everything collapses when that scenario fails.”
She nods quietly, eyes back on the road. Fine snow starts to fall, flakes pattering the windshield.
The voice directs us off the exit ramp, and then it follows with,“Stay on CO-83 South for 8.2 miles, then turn left onto CO-86 East toward Kiowa.”
“It sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” Poppy says.
I shrug. I do that a lot, especially when I don’t want to talk about something or don’t know what to say. It’s a cliché for a reason: sometimes words fail. That’s where the shrug comes in.
