“Then you know how to drive.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “They’re expensive. And I don’t need one. Public transport is good enough.”
“Not if you ever want to leave the city.”
“That’s why the train exists.”
“Yeah, and they steal your wallet and refuse to print you a new ticket,” Carla pointed out.
“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “But not everyone can afford… whatever this is.”
“It’s a convertible.”
He almost laughed at that. Almost. “Yeah, I know. I just can’t afford one.”
“There are other cars out there.”
“Yeah, but I don’t really need one,” he said, growing frustrated.
“Then why have a license?”
“Mostly so that I can borrow my parents’ car when I visit them,” he admitted. Trees flashed past, green and vibrant. Power lines wavered in the wind.
“I guess that makes sense.” She nodded. “What’s your family like? You like them?”
“Well, enough, I guess.” Jack glanced to the trees, dense alongside the highway. Far off in the distance, yellow aspens dotted the hills. The ocean had already disappeared behind the forest, and with it, Hidden Cove.
Hence the name, Jack supposed.
“Got any siblings?”
“A brother. You?”
“One sister.” Carla chuckled. “And we’re as different as we can be. She’s getting a Ph. D, and I’m getting fucked up.”
Jack was afraid to ask what that meant, so he watched the lines of the road flash by in the side mirror and kept his mouth shut.
Two hours passed in relative safety. The streak of break up songs was endless. In spite of himself, he began to relax. Nothing had happened yet. They were over a hundred miles away from Hidden Cove, and they hadn’t been zapped back into town, or chased by mobsters, or anything else he’d worried about.
The forest thinned into flat, brown fields. The sun low in the sky cast a rosy hue across the clouds. Traffic came to a standstill. Jack stared despondently out the window, wishing he’d had the foresight to ask Carla to pull off at the last rest stop.
Sooner or later, they would have to stop for gas, right?
It was almost as if she’d read his mind. “Next exit, we’re finding food,” she grumbled. She pulled her sunglasses off and threw them into a center console stuffed full of cassette tapes and faded receipts. “I’m hungry.”
Even through his queasiness, Jack could admit that he washungry, too. Eating probably wouldn’t untangle the knot in his stomach, but he could always hope. “Me, too.”
“What do you want?”
“Whatever you do. I only have one dollar?—”
“And fifty cents, I know. I’ll spot you. What are you in the mood for? Fast food? Italian? Thai?”
“Uh,” he said. It had been so long since he’d eaten out anywhere that wasn’t sponsored by Grover, Rowell, and Thursday. “Not Italian.”
