Road Trip

by Dan Taylor

  Up it goes.

  Geez, I just drugged my wife.

  We sit and watch her ten or so seconds.

  I don’t think it’s done anything, until her eyes shoot open, she looks around at her surroundings, her eyes bulging like a Chihuahuas’, and she says, “Am I in heaven?”

  “Relax, honey. You’re not in heaven. A long way from there.”

  Grace sighs and then looks down at her wound. “I’ve been shot.”

  “That’s right. But everything’ll be okay.”

  She looks at me. “Why are you speaking to me like I’m your seven-year-old nephew and why don’t I care?”

  Now I know. It was his seventh birthday for which I dressed up as a clown. “I’m just trying to be sympathetic, and you don’t care about that, because, well, wives expect their husbands to be sympathetic, and maybe take it for granted from time to time.”

  “Not that. Why don’t I care that I’ve been shot?”

  I think a second. “Morphine. Unadulterated, medical-grade morphine you wouldn’t want to put anywhere near a cake recipe. We gave it to you, at just the right dosage.”

  Officer Field interrupts us. “You two listen up. We don’t have time.”

  Grace looks at Officer Field for the first time since coming around. She smiles, says, “You’re the guy who shot me. Why did you do that?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “Okay. Do you have a cigarette I can bum?”

  “No.” And to me, “Jeff, you need to get your wife under control.”

  I refrain from telling him he’s the one who suggested drugging her, arousing her deep-seated and long-dormant nicotine addiction, and instead say, “It’s no longer the fifties, Officer, and we come from L.A., where she’s pretty much allowed to say whatever she wants.”

  He hadn’t been pointing his pistol at us, but now he reasserts its position pointing at my face.

  I say, “Honey, now it’s time to listen to what the kind man has to say.”

  Grace says, “Are we still on our honeymoon?”

  “Kinda.”

  She goes to speak again, but I shush her.

  With order in his classroom, Officer Field continues with the speech he started before all this cocaine business. “Jeff, Julie, we’re going to meet with the sheriff, and you need to do exactly what I say, because he’s a crazy son of a bitch. Crazier than a barn full of demented weasels. If he knows I’ve shot you, he’ll shoot us all. But there’s a way we can get out of this. You just have to play ball.”

  23.

  Oh, boy. If it wasn’t ominous already, with Officer Field holding us at gunpoint, Grace bleeding from a gunshot wound and in urgent, if not dire, need of medical attention, and me, the inadequate husband who can’t punch for shit and who can’t stop running my mouth, even when it means pissing off our captor. Now Officer Field’s talking about a crazy sheriff. Bat shit crazy.

  I raise my hand. Officer Field sighs and nods, indicating I’m allowed to speak. I say, “Why would he shoot us because you’ve shot Grace?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Make it all mysterious. I’m willing to play along with this little charade, if it means getting Julie to a doctor, but I think you owe us a little forewarning.”

  “You’re playing along because I have a gun pointed at your pretty face.”

  “That too.” I turn to Grace, unsure. “Was that a backhanded compliment?”

  She says, “I’ve always thought of you as pretty, but in a good way. I’m not sure.”

  I shrug. “I think he meant it that way.” I turn back to him. “Don’t you think it’s better that we know what this sheriff wants and what this is all about?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I want it to be a surprise.”

  I scratch my head. “Seeing as how our lives depend on it, and you want us to play along to the best of our ability, I’m guessing for your sake as well as ours… Have I got that right?”

  He nods. “We’re all dead if it doesn’t go well.”

  “I’ll take that as a yep. If that’s the case, why is it better that we go in blind, for this meeting with the sheriff or whatever it is?”

  “Because I don’t trust you to act surprised.”

  “Oh, now I get it. This is like those times when you buy a present for someone and don’t tell them what it is, so they can act surprised about what it is when they unwrap it, as opposed to the times when they find out what it is, and they feign surprise to not hurt your feelings.”

  He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “Like the normal scenario when you’ve bought someone a present, yeah.”

  “So when you said we have to do something, you meant just act like we would if we didn’t know anything about what the sheriff wants with us, which is what we would’ve done anyway?”

  “No. What I was going to say, before you raised your hand, is that you have to go along with whatever it is the sheriff wants you to do.”

  I sigh. “I don’t like this.”

  “I can’t reiterate it enough, he can’t know that I shot Julie.”

  Grace raises her hand. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Is it important?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then go ahead.”

  “Why are you calling us Julie and Jeff?”

  “If I may?” I ask.

  He nods.

  And then I say, “Remember when that fruitcake asked us what our names were? I told him Jeff and Julie.”

  “Which fruitcake?”

  “The hitchhiker.”

  She thinks a second. “So all this has got something to do with him?”

  I turn to Officer Field. “It totally has. Why didn’t I say that?”

  “That surprise, it’s getting ruined, guys,” Officer Field says. “No more questions.” He looks at Grace. “Julie, how’s that wound?”

  She looks confused. “It’s still… a wound. I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

  “I mean, is it bleeding bad?”

  She must be still high on the coke, as she doesn’t hesitate to check. Grace is squeamish and a hypochondriac. She once got a paper cut and asked, in her panic, if I knew how to make a tourniquet small enough to wrap around her pinkie. She lifts up her blouse, pulls out her pants so they’re tenting out, and pulls down her panties a little. Then she looks up and says, “It’s almost stopped bleeding. Is that a good thing?”

  Officer Field says, “Good. We dodged a bullet.” He turns to me. “Jeff, have you got a T-shirt on under that polo-neck sweater?”

  “I’m a little cold, but I think I’ll manage.”

  “Not that. Julie’s going to need to wrap something around her waist, to hide the blood on her pants.”

  “I have a vest on underneath it. An undergarment… underwear, really.”

  “Good. Take it off and pass it to Julie.”

  “Of course.”

  I take off my polo-neck sweater, and then my vest, and then I go to hand the latter to Grace.

  He shakes his head. “Not the vest, the sweater.”

  “What am I going to wear?”

  “Your vest.”

  Grace interrupts us. “I’m cool wrapping the vest around my waist.”

  I turn to her, “Thanks, honey. At least someone’s talking sense.”

  “She’s not and you’re not,” he says. “When have you ever seen anyone walk around with their vest wrapped around their waist?”

  “It’s my vest.”

  “Okay… When have you seen anyone walk around with someone else’s vest wrapped around their waist?”

  It’s been a long day, it’s late, and I’m stoned, so I ask, “What’s your point?”

  “Just pass her the sweater, Jeff.”

  “What am I supposed to do, go around in just my vest?”

  “You’re going to have to.”

  Grace interrupts again. “
I think you look really sexy in your vest.”

  “I might agree, if it were a vest obviously designed to be worn without another garment over it, but this thing looks like I’m wearing a pair of giant Y-fronts on my upper-body.” Shaking my head, I put my vest back on. And say to Officer Field, “If you can find a use for my pants, like, I don’t know, to clean your windshield with, I can gladly take them off and complete the look.”

  Officer Field goes to speak, but Grace gets there first. “You look like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. I gotta say, it’s kinda turning me on.”

  Officer Field sniggers, so I say, “I don’t know what you’re laughing at, Hans Gruber.”

  Grace wraps my sweater around her waist, apologizing the whole time she does, and then he says, “You kids ready to rock n’ roll?”

  “Yippee ki-yay.”

  24.

  A couple miles into the drive, I ask, “I take it we’re not going to an actual sheriff’s office?”

  “To all intents and purposes, yes, we are,” he says.

  “I’ve heard people say that but, if I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure what it means.”

  “In this case, it means you should think of it as such.”

  Grace and I look at each other and shake our heads. He doesn’t know either.

  I think a second. “Wait, is this the actual sheriff?”

  “Yes.”

  “This isn’t about me letting his tires down, is it?”

  He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You let a sheriff’s tires down?”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “How you do not intentionally let a sheriff’s tires down?”

  “You let someone else’s tires down, realize it’s the sheriff’s car, and then shit your pants.”

  There’s silence a second.

  Then Officer Field says, “Wait, did you do this in Pants?”

  I look in the rearview mirror to find him scowling at me.

  So I think it best to say, “Now that I think about it, that was in Hollywood.” I shake my head. “I had a little brain fart, then.”

  I start thinking of something, a realization coming to me, until a crow flies past the windscreen, carrying in its beak a training bra. We sit there and watch it fly past.

  And then the thought’s gone.

  Before we set off, Officer Field put us both back in handcuffs and says we have to get into character.

  Then I ask, “What characters?”

  “Jeff and Julie, the perpetrators of a hit and run,” he says.

  “Where are we from?”

  “L.A. or some shit.”

  “When asked, is that what I’m supposed to say? Should I specify where, like this: My apartment building’s on the corner of some shit and some shit?”

  “No, you just say Hollywood, where you’re actually from.”

  “So when you say get into character, you don’t mean like Daniel Day-Lewis, you mean more like Danny McBride?”

  “I don’t know who that is. Just act like you, but the versions of you that feel really bad about having committed a crime. Look worried or whatever.”

  “I get it. Say “sir” a lot, like I’m a suburban, non-hip-hop-listening teenager who’s in deep trouble.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  I notice Grace has gone quiet, so I turn to her, notice she’s gone white. “You okay, Julie?”

  “The drug, it’s worn off,” she says slowly. And then, “Jake, I don’t want to die!”

  I put my arm around her and start singing ‘The Isty Bitsy Spider,’ my go-to method for calming down my nephew when I fuck up and cause him an injury through negligence and coincidentally the method I use for Grace, a fully grown woman who should be more than capable of riding out the fleeting pain of a grazed knee.

  Officer Field looks at us in the rearview mirror, his eyebrow arching over the right lens of his aviator shades. I mouth the words “Don’t ask” in between… bars; is that the word?

  It isn’t having the same effect, probably because a bullet wound is slightly more unnerving than a nettle sting, so I say, “Chief, she’s going to need more powder.”

  “No way. I’m saving the rest for my wedding anniversary.”

  Many questions come to mind, but I ask, “You’re married?”

  “It’s stuck inside me, and I’m afraid it’ll never come out.”

  That was Grace.

  Officer Field says, “So, your name’s Jake?”

  “Don’t change the subject. You put the bullet in her, so it’s only fair you provide the pain relief.”

  “No can do. You know what I had to do to get this?”

  “Buy it from someone you don’t care to make small talk with?”

  “A lot. Let’s just say I had to do a lot.”

  “If you want her to act like she hasn’t been shot in front of this sheriff, you’re just going to have to celebrate your anniversary with mimosas instead.”

  He seems unconvinced, until Grace starts howling in pain.

  He rifles around in his pocket and passes it back to me. “Don’t go crazy. I want her feeling less pain, not ready to run a marathon.”

  “Got it. Are we nearly there yet?”

  “What are you, a five-year-old?”

  “I thought it might be smart to give it to her just before we get there.”

  “Oh. Smart.”

  “Well?”

  “We should be getting there in the next five minutes.”

  I look around. It’s hard to make out, because it’s dark, but we’re headed down a dirt road. Imagine trees flanking it of whatever variety comes to mind.

  “I’ll give it to her now, then,” I say.

  “Wait a second. I think I might have something else,” Officer Field says.

  He rummages around in the glove compartment, and a couple seconds later produces a box that looks like it contains medicine. He hands it to me.

  I take it and look at it. “Baby aspirin?”

  “They’re only smaller. Just quadruple the dosage.”

  “Which is what I might give her if she were suffering from a mild headache or a one-bottle-of-wine hangover. Looks like we’re still going with plan A.”

  He sighs. “Hand them back, then.”

  “It okay if I take a couple of these? You hit my head against the Winnebago pretty hard.”

  “Whatever.”

  I prioritize Grace, who’s rocking back and forth as she hums the tune to ‘Itsy Bitsy…,’ and decide to administer her medicine first.

  I open up the package and, making sure his attention is solely on the road, take more than he wanted me to and mime making a shushing sound to Grace. “You ready, honey?”

  “My wound feels like it’s simultaneously on fire and ice-cold.”

  “That’s totally normal. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  I give it to her, without having to hold her mouth shut or close one of her nostrils, this time.

  And then I fold the package back up and hand it back to Officer Field. And then I ask, “You got a drink up there for these baby aspirin? Maybe a glass of champagne? When I fly and don’t want to get deep vein thrombosis in my leg, I fly first class.”

  “I just got this, smart ass,” he says, and hands me a bottle of water that’s lying on top of the dashboard.

  I examine it under the small light shining down from the ceiling. “Is this sparkling?”

  “No.”

  “How long’s it been up there?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “You know, I think I can wait.”

  I’ve never been one of those people who can swallow pills, no matter how small, without the aid of a drink, and I’ve never been someone to just chance drinking water that looks it’s fermenting because of the food bits lying at the bottom of it. I’m quirky like that.

  I hand it back to him.

  A couple seconds later, just as I’m wondering what effect the mammoth dose I gave her will have, Grace says, “When this is over, I thi
nk we should make a night of it. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m having a pretty good time.”

  It’s working.

  “We’re nearly there. You two need to get into character,” he says.

  “On it,” I say.

  He says, “Julie?”

  “On it, too,” she says.

  “You’re smiling.”

  “I like the name Julie. I can’t help it.”

  “Jake?”

  “On it.” I turn to Grace. “Honey, we’re in deep trouble. I know you feel great right now, but that’s just the drug talking. You should be worried, really worried.”

  “I don’t remember what that feels like.”

  “It’s the feeling you get when handcuffed in the back of a police car, traveling towards a sheriff for mysterious, and definitely ominous, reasons.”

  “Right.”

  She puts an expression on her face like a mime artist’s fake-ass frown, minus the makeup. And then, still pulling the face, tries to say, “How’s that?”

  “Maybe drop the look and just rock back and forth like you need to pee badly.”

  “Is this good?”

  “Just about there. Make it more of a steady rhythm, and less to and fro. You look like you’re dancing to ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer.’”

  “I love that song.”

  “Jeez, Jake, how much did you give her?” he asks.

  “A smidge.”

  Grace interrupts, “He got it just right. Relax, funny man with the mustache. I feel great.”

  He sighs.

  I turn to Grace. “Look stoic, and don’t mention his mustache.”

  “Got it. No mustache. And stoic.” Then, a second later, “Stoic? Run what that means by me again.”

  “I didn’t do it a first time.”

  She giggles. “I think I got it.”

  She pulls a face.

  And then I say, “I think we’re good to go. She looks normal, at least. To look at her, you’d think she were just browsing iceberg lettuce heads in the fruit and veg section.”

  “What about you?” Officer Field asks.