Road Trip

by Dan Taylor

  We’re all losing our heads, I feel. I’ve been slapped, Grace is hysterically documenting the whole… what is it that’s happening? And Marlboro Man is threatening my wife, a lady.

  I hold my hands up and say, “Now everyone hold on a minute. I think it’s important we establish what’s going on here before we all lose our shit big time. Grace, put down the phone.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “Just do it, and then I can speak to this gentleman about what he wants in a civilized manner. And without him coming over there and slapping you.”

  “Jake, that man is a murderer and slash or rapist. And I’m making sure we’ll be able to ID him.”

  I sigh and then turn to the guy. “Marlboro Man, please tell my wife here that you’re not a murderer and rapist, so she can put her iPhone away and we can have a civilized, maybe even cordial, conversation about what it is you want.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Gentle man. Gentleman is what I called you. Now please, if you wouldn’t mind…” I lean back in my seat so Marlboro Man can address my wife, and we can start getting this misunderstanding, or whatever the hell it is, out of the way, and get back to enjoying our honeymoon.

  He says, “Missy, I’m a murderer and rapist—”

  I interrupt, “Buddy, you missed out a word: not. Not a murderer and rapist.”

  “Nope. I didn’t.”

  “Okey dokey. Then if you wouldn’t mind,” I say, and flash him a smile, as a way of subterfuge, before I start frantically rolling up the window.

  A second later, he realizes what I’m doing and puts his arm through the gap and starts clawing at my face. I lean back, so my face is out of harm’s way, and roll up the window so that his arm’s crushed between the glass and the frame. He shrieks in pain for a second, and then starts laughing. I’ve always said that if I came across a psycho with bad intentions, I’d prefer one who isn’t amused by pain.

  He knocks on the window with his free hand and asks, “What ya’ll gonna do now?”

  He’s right to point out our predicament, but I’m sure there’s advantages to having him stuck to our vehicle, just in my panic I can’t think of them.

  Still leaning to my left, I start turning the ignition and pumping the gas. You can go ahead and assume that everything I do from now until we’ve gotten away from this psycho is in a frantic manner, to save you from reading the word frantically over and over, which could get annoying.

  I try it a few times, but produce that noise again, the giraffe-choking-on-a-peanut sound. Grace, by the way, must have a good couple minutes’ worth of footage, more than enough to ID the guy.

  Marty McFly style, I bang on the steering wheel while saying, “Come on, baby, start!” which is somewhat drowned out by the sound of my repeatedly hitting the horn.

  I go back to turning the ignition and lightly pumping the gas, concentrating extra hard on my jimmying technique, until Grace says, “Jake, he’s getting loose!”

  I glance to my right to see that she’s right. He’s getting his denim-clad forearm free. I take my attention away from starting the vehicle for a second so I can roll up the window, securing his arm to our vehicle again.

  Remind me again why this makes sense?

  Never mind, Grace seems to think it does, and in my panic I’m convinced this is the right thing to do… Oh yeah, that’s what it is. I don’t want that psycho letting a tire down while I’m starting Winnie, or getting enough distance away from us so that he can get enough leverage to put his elbow through the window.

  Marlboro Man finds it hilarious, that his arm is stuck, though he’s a little angry, too. Or maybe he’s angry and that’s hilarious. Not knowing which of the two I prefer, I turn my attention back to getting Winnie up and running.

  A couple turns and pumps of the gas produce the same result. And then I remember: Holy shit, I’m freakin’ high right now! I also remember something else: The wires probably need jiggling again.

  Shit.

  I turn to Grace and say, “Do you think you can put your phone away and go out there and give the wires under the hood a jiggle?”

  “With that psycho out there?”

  “He’s trapped, and we’re not going anywhere until it’s done.”

  “How about you go out there and I’ll keep his arm trapped? Uh, Jake?”

  “What?”

  “He’s going for the car keys.”

  She’s right, so I smack his hand away, not in a dissimilar fashion to how a wife might smack away her husband’s hand from a tray of freshly baked cookies. He’s still grabbing for the keys, so I push his hand away using the combined strength of both my arms, my back, and little bit of strength from my buttocks, and it’s still only just enough to overpower the strength he has in his left wrist. If there were ever a good time to question the existence of God, it’s when contemplating why He would make this clearly deranged man inherently strong as a roided-up gorilla, so as to make carrying out his wicked and sinful pastimes a breeze.

  If worse comes to worse and I have to go out there and fight the lunatic, I sure hope he’s a leftie.

  Holding his wrist up, I say, “What do we do now?”

  “Ya’ll should just come out here. I don’t quit,” he says, a little bit of rapey vibe in that last sentence.

  “Not you, Marlboro Man. That question was directed at my wife.”

  “I’ll lean over and try to start the engine,” Grace says.

  “Good idea. The woman’s touch.”

  Grace leans forward and dips under our arms and turns the key. Her effort produces a worse noise than before, no noise.

  “Jake, you need to pump the gas at the same time.”

  “I can’t see when you turn it.”

  “Then we’ll do it on three.”

  “Okay.”

  “Three,” Grace says. And then, “You didn’t pump the gas.”

  “That’s because I was expecting a count of two before. I’m a little silly like that.”

  “How about I say turnip, and you pump it on the occurrence of each second syllable?”

  “You’re going to say what? Turn it?”

  “No. Turnip, like the vegetable.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “So we can time you pumping the gas with me turning the ignition. I’ll say it like I’m the cox of a competitive rowing boat.”

  That sounds way more complicated than it needs to be, but I say, “Okay, whatever. Just hurry up. Marlboro Man’s wrist is stronger than my thigh.”

  Grace starts saying turn-ip, turn-ip, and I pump the gas each time she says “ip” and take my foot off it every time she says “turn.” And what do you know, it works!

  This puppy’s up and running.

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  “Drive away,” Grace says.

  “With his arm still stuck between the window and the frame?”

  “Yeah. We’re going to catch him.”

  So that’s why Grace wanted his arm not to come loose.

  “What speed do you expect us to go while we drive to the police station?”

  Grace thinks a second. “Thirty?”

  “I’m pretty sure a giraffe fleeing a pack of hungry lionesses can’t run that fast. We’ll end up dragging him along. His legs will look like hamburger meat by the time we get there.”

  “So? That motherfucker deserves it.”

  During the conversation we had, Marlboro Man struggled to grab at the keys, not saying anything. But upon hearing Grace’s plan, he goes wild, starts pulling his arm away, nearly popping the window out of its frame.

  Grace says, “Go! Before he gets loose.”

  I’d sooner just let the guy go, rather than drag him along by his arm all the way to the police station, or the next patrol car, which isn’t only a logistical nightmare, but a pretty sure-fire way of maiming the guy, if not killing him. Sure, there’s the whole dilemma of him getting away and potentially doing this fucked-up shit to someone el
se, but I reckon he might’ve learned his lesson. Besides, Grace has a video of the guy. How many guys can there be who wear both a denim shirt and jeans and have a gold tooth in this part of the country… Okay, there could be quite a few, but I still fancy the police’s chances of identifying him based on Grace’s video.

  I think about how to word my argument, knowing full well that Grace won’t like it, and knowing that we’ll most likely end up having our second full-blown argument as a married couple, and in front of a stranger, no less. Even though he’s a probable serial murderer-rapist, I’d feel henpecked nonetheless.

  But before I get a chance to state my argument, or think about how Grace knows what the nerd’s called who shouts out the rhythm to rowers in a boat, a police car pulls into the parking lot and heads our way.

  15.

  I’ve never been happier to be blinded by the glare of a police car pulling up to the vehicle I’m driving. This sure beats the time one of LAPD’s finest mistook that scantily clad window washer for a strung-out hooker, and me, none too pleased about getting an already clean windshield seen to on the corner of Tucket and Main, as the inexplicably handsome consumer of the product Detective Numb Nuts thought she was offering.

  The police car slows to a halt, the beams still blinding me, and a silhouette gets out, says, “What the hell’s going on here?”

  Grace winds down the window on her side and sticks her head out, says, “Thank God you’re here, Officer. This man was attacking us.”

  Silence a second. “That man with his arm in your vehicle?”

  “Yeah. He admitted he’s a rapist and murderer.”

  “Keep your head inside the vehicle, ma’am. I’m comin’ over.”

  Lacking a sense of urgency, the officer comes over, heading for the driver’s side, and when there, he takes in the scene from behind a pair of aviator sunglasses way too big for his face, keeping a safe distance away from our would-be attacker. While I’m describing him, I might as well say he has a flattop, high-and-tight haircut, the haircut I pray I’ll never walk out of a salon having paid a hundred and twenty dollars for.

  The officer looks at me, Grace, and Marlboro Man, and then back at me. “Are you the driver of this vehicle, sir?”

  Suddenly aware that I’m conversing with law enforcement while high as a motherfucker, I say, “That’s right, Officer. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. You should arrest this man. He was attempting to gain entry to our vehicle, and as my wife said, he admitted to being a murderer and a rapist.”

  He turns his attention to Marlboro Man, who’s strangely quiet for a man accused of committing a felony. And says, “That right, boy? Were you trying to gain entry to their vehicle, by force?”

  Marlboro Man replies, all respectfully, “No, Officer, I wasn’t,” his arm still stuck in the vehicle he didn’t try to gain entry to.

  “I captured the whole thing on my iPhone. He’s lying, Officer,” Grace says.

  He looks at Grace, smiles a little, and says, “You did?”

  “Yep. I started filming right after he slapped my husband.”

  “Why that’s fine work, ma’am.”

  “Thanks, I suppose.”

  I raise my hand, wanting to speak. He looks at me. And I say, “Are you going to arrest this man, Officer? I’d kinda like to have his arm away from my head.”

  The officer smiles. “That’s a good suggestion, sir. I think I will. Let me just go over to my vehicle and get my handcuffs.”

  We sit there in silence, Marlboro Man standing still, as the police officer goes back over to his car, again lacking a sense of urgency, and gets in. It’s difficult to tell because of the high beam, but it looks like he retrieves them from his glove compartment.

  He then comes back over to the driver’s side, cuffs Marlboro Man’s one free wrist, and then looks over the rims of his aviators at me, says, “You can go ahead and wind down the window now, sir. This shit bag isn’t going anywhere.”

  I do. And the officer cuffs Marlboro Man, without too much of a struggle, apart from Marlboro Man complaining the whole time, saying that sticking his arm in my vehicle was merely an act of self-defense. Of course, the officer’s having none of it. He leads him away to the squad car, does the whole shtick of telling him to watch his head as he guides him into one of the back passenger seats. When Marlboro Man’s inside, the officer gets into the driver’s seat.

  Grace says, “What’s he doing?”

  “Arresting him, I think,” I say. High, I continue our discussion, “I’ve had a stone in my shoe since yesterday and I haven’t taken it out yet.”

  A couple minutes later, the officer gets out of the car and comes over. Instead of coming over to my side, this time, he goes over to Grace’s.

  “This yours, ma’am?” he asks, holding up the keycard to the motel room.

  “It is.”

  She takes it.

  He says, “Good thing I came along when I did. Looks like that guy could’ve been a little bit of nuisance.”

  I raise my eyebrow upon hearing the word ‘nuisance’ and go to say something, but Grace gets there first.

  She says, “What now? Do we need to make a statement or something?”

  “We’ll get to that. This film, can I see it?”

  “Sure.”

  He takes the phone from Grace, moves a couple feet from the Winnebago, and starts looking through her phone. After a couple seconds of this, Grace says, “Officer, would you like me to find it for you?”

  Without looking up from the screen, he says, “That won’t be necessary. I’ve found it now.”

  Grace and I sit in silence as we watch him watching the film. He watches the whole thing unemotionally, bar a wry little smile when Grace calls Marlboro Man a motherfucker.

  He comes back over to Grace’s side and presents the phone to her, which she takes, before he stoops down, resting his forearms on the window edge. Still with the aviator shades on his face, he takes in our appearances again, and then says, “It’s a little shaky, the camera work, but it’s clear that the person in the video is definitely that shit bag sitting in the back of my cruiser. What happened before you started filming?”

  “Nothing, really. We were headed for a midnight drive—” I say, before he holds up a hand, quieting me.

  Then he says, “Did you start filming, sir?”

  “No.”

  “I asked what happened before you started filming. Meaning your wife.”

  Grace takes over. “As he said, we were headed for a midnight drive.”

  “You were just headed for a midnight drive?”

  “Yeah. And the guy, he came up to Winnie.”

  “Back up a little bit. Why were you folks headed out for a midnight drive?”

  “We couldn’t sleep, and we wanted to relax a little before trying to go back to bed.”

  “Makes sense. What’s Winnie?”

  “The Winnebago. That’s my nickname for it.”

  “Cute. What did he say when he came up to the car.”

  “He asked us if we were leaving. I thought, or I think we both thought, that he was maybe working the nightshift and we were bailing.”

  “Bailing?”

  “On our motel room, not paying the bill.”

  “Which you weren’t?”

  “No. It drives my husband here crazy, but I struggle to drift off. I drive this puppy for a half hour at night and I can go straight to sleep.”

  Silence a second, during which Officer Pedant nods his head slightly repeatedly, seemingly processing what he’s heard.

  Then he says, “I thought you said you both couldn’t sleep.”

  “I—I couldn’t sleep, which means, as a consequence, my husband couldn’t sleep.”

  “Carry on.”

  “He asked for our key, and we assumed, based on how he was acting—”

  “How was he acting?”

  “Like he was skeptical about what we were doing at night, going for a drive.”

  “Underst
andable.”

  “If he was the night manager or whatever, but he isn’t.”

  “No, he’s not. Then what?”

  “My husband handed the key to him.”

  “The keycard?”

  “Yeah, and then he asked, creepy as hell, if that’s the key we use to start the car.”

  “Strange question to ask.”

  “That’s what we thought. I guess alarm bells started ringing, there was a short discussion between my husband and him, and then he slapped him.”

  “Who slapped who?”

  “The guy, he slapped my husband. And then the rest you can see in the video.”

  Officer Pedant has a short, neatly trimmed mustache, which he runs his tongue across as he nods. Then he says, “Your husband, he didn’t curse at the shit bag back there?”

  Grace feigns thinking a second. Then says, “Nope. Not that I can remember.”

  “Your husband didn’t provoke him or nothing?”

  “He might’ve acted a little confrontational, after he found out the guy was randomly asking us about leaving.”

  “For a midnight drive?”

  “Yeah, asking about us leaving for a midnight drive.”

  I interject. “Officer, what’s this about, the questioning?”

  He looks at me but doesn’t say anything for what feels like ten seconds. And then he says, “I’m just trying to get what happened here straight before I decide how to proceed.”

  “Isn’t it clear in the video what happened?”

  “Not the events leading up to the shit bag trying to gain entry to your vehicle it isn’t. I’m guessing there’s no video of that now, is there?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. But it went down more or less how my wife said.”

  “More or less?”

  “A few details might be wrong, is all. Look, it’s late. Can we do this tomorrow?”

  “If you want me to arrest this man tonight, then no, it has to happen now. The shit bag back there could have, what we call, reasonable grounds for reacting the way he did.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me…” My voice trails off, and I sigh. “Then I suppose we’ll be on our way. Thanks for your time, Officer.”

  “Well, if that’s the way you want it…?” He nods at us both, says, “Ma’am, sir,” before he stands up straight and turns to walk away from us.