their delicate legs getting knocked out from under them. Innocent animals, they were never meant to ride in an aluminum box. The truck labored up to speed, straightened out and headed toward Abilene.
Now Regan. Left hand signal light flashing, the truck slowly pulled up and over the ledge of asphalt on the shoulder, each tire rolling over it sent a lurch through the truck and trailer until all ten wheels were on the highway. The engine noise grinding to a higher and higher pitch until it slipped into the next gear automatically. The goose neck compartment over the truck slowly swung into place and the whole rig moved past like a ship. She turned to look at the capsule shaped tail-lights through the raindrops on her window.
Voices came across the police radio, scratchy, incomplete. Does the technology of police and taxi radio dispatching ever improve? She couldn’t make it all out but soon the officer responded with their location and his plan to take her to the hotel.
“Where’re you staying, by the way…chk, schk, chk, the irritating hen scratch from the two way…No I’m trying to get that information right now, hold on. Mrs. Cohen, your hotel?”
“Holiday Inn Express.”
“Holiday Inn Express, on Interstate twenty. No one’s hurt. She has denied emergency treatment so we’re on our way.”
“Mrs. Cohen, you’re gonna need to contact your insurance carrier in the morning. We’ll take care of the accident report.”
She was starting to feel sorry for herself and she hated herself for it. Tears began welling up in her eyes and there was that familiar tingling in the nose and under the eyes that preceded them. She was not going to let a tear roll down her cheek or sniff one up her nose. She started blinking. One single tear filled the corner of her right eye, stayed suspended there for a second, then fell over the edge. It rolled down the side of her nose and lost momentum when it reached her lip. She tilted her head back and forced the feeling out of her mind. Think of a funny thing or an angry thing. The tears that were marching to freedom, through a combination of will power and pressure from repeated blinking, were forced back into the tear duct to wait until later when they, and hundreds more like them, could flow freely as always.
The officer looked straight ahead and put the car into drive. He recognized the signs of a woman thinking about crying and did not want to help it along by asking if she was okay. Didn’t want to go there. No way. No how. It was never as simple as “Wrecking my car makes me want to cry.” He let her be and didn’t look over until they got to the hotel.
“Here we are. Abilene’s finest. The restaurant out front here’s pretty good. When the tow truck gets your trunk open tomorrow they’ll deliver your stuff here. I’ll make sure they know where you’re staying.” He handed her a wet business card. “Here’s their card if you wanna call them. They’re good guys. My brother-in-law’s one of the drivers. Anyway, I guess that’s about it. Anything else you can think of?”
She pulled the handle on the door and stepped out, the ankle still there. “Thanks for your help. G’night.” The car pulled away and she stood alone in the portico of the hotel.
Abilene, Texas. There was a wonderful smell in the air. Clean, west Texas air after a rainstorm. Some combination of ozone and miles of dusty roads soaking up the long awaited rain. She breathed it in deep.
That smell was something her mom defined for her when she was a kid. When it would start to rain they would go outside to smell the air. If they were driving, they would open the vents to let it fill the car. She, in turn taught her kids to love it too. “Turn on the vent, mom! Let’s smell the rain!” The longer the drought, the better the smell. The air from the vent would be steamy and fog up the window. She took a big breath and was smiling when the automatic doors opened and she walked into the lobby.
2
“Mrs. Cohen, right?” A thin, very dark, East Indian man was standing behind the counter.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“We do not have many people checking in tonight. You are the only woman, so I figured it was you.” He smiled and said in a pleasant lilting accent, “You’re going to be with us for a very long time, I see. You know your account has been covered and the only thing you will be responsible for is your long distance calls, laundry and any movies you might order. Is this your understanding?”
“Uh huh,” she replied absently. She handed him her credit card, he struck a copy and filed it.
“How many keys you will need?”
“One.”
He put a plastic card into the magnet, then slid it into a little envelope.
“You are in room two twenty-five, up the elevator, to the right. Continental breakfast is served every morning at six o’clock. There is coffee available twenty-four hours a day in the dining area. Will there be anything else?”
“Do you have a few things like a toothbrush and toothpaste? I was in an accident and my stuff is stuck in the trunk of my car.”
“Oh, my goodness! I’m so sorry! Is everything okay?”
“Yes, thank you. Everything is fine.”
“Of course, of course, we have some necessary things.” He handed her a simple blue toothbrush in a plastic package, the kind you can’t buy in a store anymore. Just dentist’s offices and hotels. There were a couple of aluminum packets of toothpaste, a small deodorant roller and a little brush. “Here you go.”
“Thank you. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight Mrs. Cohen. If there is anything I can do for you, please call. My name is Raghu Ramaswamy and my wife, Kala, is here during the day.” The soft voice was pleasing and familiar to her Northeastern ear. How did they end up in Abilene? He probably wondered the same about her.
She walked down the hall to the elevator. Mirrors with fake gold marbling covered the wall of the elevator and she tried not to look at herself, but she did. She looked like shit. Her curly hair was frizzing like a halo around her head. She had been nervously twirling it with her fingers so the strands by the sides of her face were clumped together and she looked…really…stupid. She made a squirrel face and squirrel sound into the mirror. The elevator door opened because she had forgotten to push a floor and an older couple got on. They probably didn’t see her squirrel face but she was pretty sure they heard the squirrel noise she made with her front teeth on her lower lip. She pushed two, they pushed three, the door closed and she leaned back into the corner, the naughty schoolgirl.
Her room was clean and as expected. She liked staying in cities where she could find a newer chain of hotels, the kind with inside hallway doors. She could barely hear the highway sounds, eighteen wheelers heading east and west, making time at night. She felt connected, in her own way, with those night drivers. Faceless, driving behind tinted windows.
Now she would go through the litany of thoughts which would bring back the tear soldiers. And come they did. It had been three years since the accident. She had put miles and months behind her but the intensity of her feelings never seemed to diminish. Big tears fell. She threw herself on the bed and lay there, face up. They rolled out the corners of her eyes, down into her hair, into her ears. Her nose became stuffed up.
When she was a kid she had stayed up one night and watched Twilight Zone. Hiding behind a chair, she
