the plot of “Cannonball Run,” except
that these people are old, they drive
very slowly, and some of them just
might die tonight. Eventually, James
explains, if we go far and fast enough,
we should find some part of this hell-
ish country that is not afected by this
storm and has plenty of empty beds.
He would like to express confidence
now, I can see that. I imagine that he
wants me not to worry. If only he could
do it without making me worry so
much more.
The roads may still be packed, he
says, and who knows about the weather.
Around us there’s a fringe of rain and
the sky is black, and there’s that sound,
a kind of pressurized silence, as if the
orchestra were about to start playing.
The conductor will tap his baton and
all hell will break loose. We figure we
should get out of here, head further in-
land, and maybe there will be some
food and a nice clean bed in a room
where we can lock the door. It sounds
decadent and delicious to me, and I
sort of cannot wait. We are a team, and
it feels as though we’ve just broken out
of jail together.
We pull onto the highway and I
check the news on my phone. “They
are calling this storm Boris.”
“Boris,” he says flatly, as if I’ve just
told him the name of a distant star.
“What’s the thinking there?” I
wonder.
“They needed a B name.”
“Yes, well then, Boris, of course.”
“And they practice a kind of diversity.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure they want to
be inclusive.”
“Not to trigger anyone by using a
regular name?”
“Boris is a regular name,” James says.
“In several parts of the world. With
huge populations. Possibly more reg-
ular than John, worldwide.”
“Then let the storm go bother them.”
“I’m sure there are people named
Boris over here.”
“Oh, I’m sure. I can smell them from
here.”
“What is wrong with you?” James
is grinning. I don’t think he minds my
moods when they’re not directed at
him.
“Plenty. I’m hungry and you won’t
let me eat. We just have to drive and
drive. I’m going to hurl myself from
the car.”
James smiles, and he pretends to do
math, wetting his finger and tabulat-
ing an imaginary problem in the air in
front of him. “Fifty,” he says.
“What?”
“I definitely think that’s at least fifty
times that you’ve threatened that. At
least since I’ve known you. I can’t be
sure about the time before that, but
something tells me you had a penchant
for it in your early years, too.”
He may be right. I don’t care to
reflect too far back, particularly on the
threats I may have needed to utter as
a girl in certain stifling situations,
which, unsurprisingly, very often oc-
curred when I was a passenger in a car.
I used to think about it more seriously,
imagining myself rolling like a weevil
along the edge of the road, finally free
of torment. And of course the most
delicious part of the fantasy was what
would happen in the car after I’d ejected.
The shock, the panic, the deep, abid-
ing respect. Even the jealousy. Some-
one had finally done what everyone
else could only dream of.
“Booyah,” I say. “Perhaps a more in-
tuitive name.”
“Beelzebub.”
“Bitch Face.”
“Bronwyn.”
“Bald Mountain.”
“Boredom.” And we both laugh.
“Boredom the storm is barrelling
down on the coast. Boredom brings
destruction in its wake. Coastal villages
are still recovering from the deadly
efects of Boredom.”
The road is kind of gross. There’s
a wild, erratic rain, as if some man
with a bucket were hiding in a ditch
and occasionally hurling water at us,
like on an old film set. A series of men,
I suppose it would have to be, since
we are puttering forward, however
slowly. It all rings false to me. We have
the news on, and we’ve texted some
friends. Everyone is everywhere. A
few of them did opt for the cots back
at the shelter. “What could it hurt?”
they wrote. “And they’ve come around
with snacks!” Our plan is to push on
to the next town, but it’s hard to see
how that will happen in this rain, in
this darkness. It’s two hours or so in
normal driving conditions, and whenI look at James, squeezed into an awful,
tense ball behind the wheel, gnashing
his teeth like a cartoon character, it’s
hard to believe that he has hours of
driving left to give. Poor thing. This
is the statistic that is looking to claim
our aging, musty bodies: the danger
that befalls people in flight from other
danger.
“I’m happy to drive,” I say.
“You don’t like how I’m driving?”
“I’m ofering to help.”
“I’m good. I’m great.”
Sure you are. James is like some ha-
rassed sea creature, hiding behind a
rock. I rub his neck, smooth down the
back of his hair. I need my driver alive.
My poor, poor driver. By taking care
of him I take care of myself.
“Thanks,” he says. “That feels good.
If only I could see. I mean, right? I feel
like I’m playing a broken video game.
What you could do is call some hotels
or motels up ahead, to see if we can
get a room.”
There’s a Holiday Inn and a Motel 6
in the next town. Both lines are busy
when I call. I keep trying, and mean-
while I pull up the map on my phone,
but my signal is getting spotty, a sin-
gle bar flickering in and out, and the
image of where we are never quite
comes through. It’s loading and it’s
loading and it’s loading. I see our blue
dot, moving slowly over the screen, but
there’s no terrain beneath it, just a gray
block, as if we were floating in space
over some bottomless void.
James pulls over at a gas station and
we get chips. Lots of them, the sort we
rarely allow ourselves at home. All bets
are of. I would inject drugs into my
face right now. I would drink gas from
the car with a straw. Inside the store,
the single-serving wine bottles look
exceptional to me—golden bottles in
their own gleaming cooler, a shrine to
goodness—but it’s not fair to James,
who has to drive. I don’t want him jeal-
ous. I’d prefer to keep his feelings to a
minimum.
We can hardly see anything save the
lights and the black slashes of rain
streaking past, but the same sign keeps
appearing on the side of the road, every
mile or two: “Exit 49 Food.” The third
time it crawls past, close enough to
grab and shake, to possibly dry-hump,
I start to salivate. I picture plates of