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It’s meant to be a bolstering gesture, and at first it is. At first I’m grateful for the kind words and the human touch. Tears prick my eyes and I feel suddenly overcome with emotion. “Thank you. That means so much to me. Really.”
But then I look down at his hand. He hasn’t moved it. It’s still on my knee. I’m wearing my mother’s dress and am suddenly aware of how short it is on me because I’m taller than her. When I stood, looking at myself in the mirror at her house, it had come just above the knee. I thought it was completely appropriate and not at all suggestive. I’m always cognizant of this, because I work with teenagers, especially teenage boys. I didn’t think what would happen when I sat down, how the skirt would ride up to the upper thigh, though, to be fair, my legs are only ever under my desk when I sit. No one ever sees my legs.
“So where do you think he is?” Ryan asks. He strokes my knee. It’s subtle, just the brush of his thumb skinning my leg. I resist the urge to cross my legs, knowing it will only reveal more if I do.
“I don’t know,” I say, though my throat is dry and it’s hard to speak.
“Had he been having trouble with anyone, or was there an issue at work?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you think of any reason why he would go to Bridgeview?”
I swallow against a knot in my throat. “No,” I say, risking a glance at Ryan, conscious of his eyes on my thighs.
He catches me looking at him and his eyes shift from my leg to my face, where he stares at me, not blinking. He doesn’t move his hand. I feel the thrum of my pulse in my neck and I angle my body suddenly away, turning my knees toward the door. My gaze follows. I look out the window. Ryan’s hand slips from my knee, though for a second, in my peripheral vision, I see how it remains suspended midair, his elbow propped on the center console as if debating whether to reach for me again.
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.
