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“Oh...” I peered up at the house. “That one, right? The one right there?” I looked around: a desolate road, a forest, out the back window, down a way, a few ramshackle businesses.
It was the opening scene of a horror movie.
He said with a big smile, “Yes! This one!”
“Okay, great. Thanks... this must be it.” I stepped out of the car.
He drove away, and I half-rolled, half-dragged my bag up the gravel drive to the front porch. A lockbox hung over the door handle. I had a vague recollection that there was a code and checked my pockets for my phone and pulled it out.
I hit the home screen and for a split second there was life and then it went dead.
Damn it.
* * *
I definitely sobered up as I dragged my suitcase along the shoulder of a deserted country road. There was a symphony of bugs and — what was that noise?
I tripped over a can, falling to my knees in the dirt, then clambered back up and tried to dust off my jeans as a car approached, its headlights casting my shadow long. I stepped into the grass. The car slowed, went by, sped up, and zoomed away.
I made it to a little convenience store, just as a lady was pulling the gate across the windows and doors.
“Excuse me!” I called as I jogged closer, my suitcase careening wildly. “Do you have a place where I can charge my phone?”
The lady said, “Nah, my shift is over, ten-thirty, we closed.”
“Oh.”
She locked the gate.
I looked up and down the parking lot. It was lit by one lone street lamp, a beat-up Nissan Sentra parked under it. I glanced down at my rolling suitcase. “My phone is dead... I’m not sure what to do.”
She shrugged. “I completed the slide on the gate and locked it all up. It’s too late, nothing I can do. Your poor planning is not my emergency.” She started walking to the car. “I got a kid to pick up from their grandma’s and she’s a total bitch.”
“Who, the kid, or the grandma?”
She smirked.
I followed her, asking, “Has anyone ever told you you look like Bette Midler?”
She stopped in her tracks, causing me to stop short. “Who the hell is Bette Midler — the lady from that witch movie?”
“She’s been in a lot of things,” I continued, “her roles are usually comedic, but she’s also often the helpful older women who—”
“Well, I ain’t helpful. Why are you talking about Bette Midler?”
“I’m a talent agent, if I was casting a movie...” I was feeling desperate; she had her hand on her car door handle and was about to leave. “Can you sing?”
“Nah, I sound like a goose in heat, least that’s what my grandma the bitch told me.” She wrenched her car door open with a loud metal on metal screech.
“She sounds lovely, but hey, if you were me, your phone dead, no car — what would you do?”
She huffed, hands on top of her car. “See that bar over there?”
I stepped closer to see the direction she was pointing. Around the corner there was an old wooden building, one car, three trucks outside, one light. “I’d ask if they’ll let you charge your phone. Now I’m late, I gotta go.”
She climbed into her car and started it. I stepped back, stumbled over my rolling luggage, and — time slowed down — my phone flew from my hand, end over end in a wide arc to the pavement where it landed in a puddle, and then the Nissan reversed and drove right over it.
The convenience store lady, completely oblivious, drove away.
I scooped my phone up from the puddle. It was cracked, nope, more like crushed, and dripping wet. No way was it working anymore.
