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“What?”
He pointed toward the steering wheel.
Hanging from his ignition was a dodo bird-shaped keychain.
Mykeychain. I had evidently been so drunk that I had attempted to drive off in someone else’s car. An embarrassed heat rising to my face, I grabbed my key chain and pulled. Then pulled again. And then one last time for good measure.
But it was no use. My keys and his ignition had become one, united together in love for all eternity.
“Please tell me this is a joke,” he said.
I hid my face in my hands. God, this was humiliating. “I’m really, really sorry,” I said, peeking through my fingers. But he wasn’t looking at me. His elbows were on his knees, his head in his hands, and he was mumbling. I couldn’t quite make out his words, but I assumed he was saying something to the effect of:How have I offended thee, oh Lord,that thou hath smote me with this horrible woman?
He flopped back against the seat, his eyes staring blankly out the windshield. I might have been imagining it, but his face had gone pale, almost gray, like he’d given up all hope in life. I usually didn’t have that effect on a man until at least the fourth date.
“I’m really sorry,” I repeated. “I know it’s not much of a peace offering, but since we’re stuck here, can I at least buy you a bagel? Or coffee? Or anything just to get us out of this car before it gets any worse?”
He turned to me, his eyes pleading. “Oh my God, it could get worse?”
“No, no, of course not,” I said. “I just meant that—”
Before I could finish, something smacked against the windshield. The meter maid walked away without wishing us a nice day.
We both tilted our heads to read the damage on the orange-and-white parking ticket.
A hundred and forty dollars.
“I can pay for that,” I said. It was a lie. I rescued birds from polluted wetlands for a living. I couldn’t even afford the theoretical bagel I’d offered to buy him. But it seemed like the right thing to say.
“No!” he said, his annoyance returning full force. “For the love of God, please don’t do me any favors.”
“It’s my fault you got a parking ticket, why shouldn’t I—”
“Because I want to live, that’s why. If I spend one more second with you, a meteor is going to land on my car and kill us both and one of us doesn’t deserve to die today!” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and started thumbing through it. “Here,” he said, trying to hand me four one hundred-dollar bills. “Just take it and leave, okay?”
When I didn’t take it, he stuffed the cash into the side pocket of my purse, reached across me, and pulled the handle of the driver’s side door. “It’s been real,” he said, pushing it open. “Let’s do it again sometime. Ta.”
No sooner had I stepped onto the sidewalk than he climbed into his driver’s seat and slammed the door shut. I knocked on the window.
“Can I at least give you my address so you can mail me my keys?”
He rolled down his window. “Four hundred not enough?” he said, evidently not having heard a word I said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some more cash. “Here,” he said, handing me two wrinkled singles through the car window. “It’s every last penny I have on me.”
I came very close to stuffing the two singles, along with the four hundreds, down the sonofabitch’s throat. But four hundred and two dollars was four hundred dollars more than I had in my bank account, and I wasn’t in a fiscal position to be self-righteous or proud. I only wished every man who wanted to get rid of me gave me money with his parting words. I’d be a rich woman.
I stomped across the street to the only open store on the block, a very grungy twenty-four-hour bodega.
I was mad. At myself. At vodka. At the gods of about ten different religions. At the stranger who paid me four hundred and two bucks just to get me out of his car. But mostly at Tyler. I should be spending today joyfully dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s and making sure every little detail was perfect so that my wedding day was everything I ever dreamed it would be. Instead, I was in the toiletry aisle of a poorly lit convenience store at five thirty in the morning with nothing to my name but four hundred dollars and a twenty-year-old car that was, at the moment, missing in action. Perhaps it was in a back alley somewhere, serving as the new home for a band of thieves. Or perhaps the police, taking one look at it, had assumed it was a crime scene and towed it to their forensics lab for meth testing. If so, I didn’t blame them.
But first things first—my mouth felt like I had eaten a rat pelt for breakfast, and my head felt like someone had struck it with a crowbar. I tossed a two-pack of Excedrin into my handbasket, along with a travel toothbrush kit, a bar of soap, and a packet of wipes. And last but not least, a can of cold espresso.
I brought my goods to the register. “Nine-fifty,” said the cashier.
I handed him a hundred-dollar bill.
“Do you have anything smaller?”
“Sorry,” I said.
