Drive

by Stephanie Fournet

  “Soun’ sorrowful.” The second voice, high pitched and nasally, could only be one other person.

  “Morning, Floyd.” Jacques nodded to their next-door neighbor and Pal’s closest friend before turning to his grandfather. Floyd usually popped in two or three times a day, but he rarely missed his after-lunch cup of coffee with Pal. “No words yet. I’ll play it for you when it’s ready.”

  Pal shrugged mutely at Floyd. Jacques ignored their silent conversation. “How’s Mrs. Netty?”

  Floyd Cloutier pursed his lips. His face was a bed of wrinkles, but his eyes always shone. “Not too good. Better dan most. Dat hip’s a bother.”

  “Words for the day?” Jacques asked, moving to the refrigerator for a soda. He grabbed his favorite. Swamp Pop Satsuma Fizz.

  “For you? Books, bags, and blues.” Floyd tipped his chin toward Pal. “Albert didn’t like his words none.”

  Jacques had known Floyd and his wife Netty as long as he could remember. Floyd had a gift that defied understanding, but no one who knew him questioned or doubted it. For every person he’d meet on any given day, Floyd rattled off a list of three words that — as he explained it — just came to him. Those words were a kind of premonition for the day. Always alliterative, and often confusing, it usually gave people a frisson when the foretold words popped into their lives.

  It had happened to Jacques on countless occasions.

  “Dollar, D, and Dalmatian” had been particularly grim. He had been a junior in high school at the time, and he’d lost the first in a stupid bet. He made the second in chemistry. And he’d killed the third in Emmie Hartfield’s driveway that afternoon. The bet, with his best friend Brady, was over if he could work up the courage to ask Emmie to Homecoming before lunch. He couldn’t. The D was scrawled in red ink across a test on covalent bonds and, disgusted with himself over his cowardice and his stupidity, Jacques had driven to Emmie’s house. The girl had been the object of his crush since the first day of school — and he’d shown his affections by hitting Tonks, Emmie’s Dalmatian puppy, who had darted from the bushes into the path his truck as he pulled into the drive.

  Needless to say, Emmie did not go with him to Homecoming.

  Floyd’s three words usually weren’t so damning, but it was about a year before Jacques asked for his predictions again. But by then, he’d won Emmie’s heart. It had only taken six months and a purebred Cocker Spaniel Jacques had worked all winter at Subway to purchase.

  Emmie had named the puppy Olive because she was Jacques’s peace offering. And then she’d dated him for three years.

  Jacques shook the unbidden memory from his thoughts. “What were his three words?” he asked Floyd, grasping for anything to clear his head.

  Floyd snickered through his nose, a squeaky sound he often made. “Pipes, pills, and piles.”

  Pal threw up his hands. “What you doin’ dat for? Why you gotta tell him I got piles?”

  Floyd’s laughter ran away with him. “I didn’t. You did, mon ami!”‘

  “Piles of what?” Jacques asked, frowning.

  Floyd scrunched up his eyes and hooted at the ceiling. “You don’ know what piles is, cher?”

  Scowling, Pal swiped at Floyd and caught his knee with a smack. “Quit bein’ coo-yon,” he grumbled, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “You had piles before you was even twenty-five?”

  Wiping his eyes, Floyd sobered. “Naw, I guess maybe not.” Then he frowned at Jacques. “Boo, piles is—”

  Jacques shot out his hand. “Wait. Never mind. I don’t want to know,” he said. To his relief, his phone chimed with a ride request. He clicked Accept and quickly popped the top on his soda. “Gotta go anyway.”

  Within six minutes, he pulled up in front of a rustic modern house, its walls unpainted cypress, and its inset porch spilling over with potted plants. A steady morning rain had darkened the natural wood, setting it apart from the rest of the neighborhood as much as its architecture did. The other houses on Oakview behind Fatima Church were more stately and traditional. But this one had character.

  No one was waiting outside for him, which didn’t surprise Jacques since it was raining. He picked up his phone and looked at the fare info. The rider had no rating information, and the spot for the first name just listed R.M., so Jacques guessed it was a fairly new account. He tapped the clipboard icon to call his rider, and just as he did, Jacques saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

  A flash of black. Boots. Skirt. Umbrella.

  And then the rear passenger door opened and glittering hazel eyes met his.

  “Are you Jacques?” she asked, frowning a little, her plump lower lip vanishing between her teeth.

  Jacques cleared his throat, his voice — the best thing about him — suddenly AWOL. “Uh… yeah… that’s me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, wrinkling her pixie nose. “I’m not really sure how this works. I’ve never Ubered before.”

  He watched her slide into his back seat, and he craned back to keep her in view. “The hard part’s over,” he said. Jacques glanced back at the house. A Mini Cooper sat in the open garage, but no one else emerged from the front door.

  “Just you?” he asked, watching her retract her umbrella and shut the passenger door. She had a weighted-down backpack on one shoulder and a long-strapped satchel over the other.

  She scooted into the middle seat and shook off the straps of both bags. “Just me,” she said, and her eyes flickered to his before she looked away. “And I hate—”

  Jacques waited, but she didn’t finish. “You hate what?”

  The girl gave a tight shake of her head and put on her seatbelt. “Never mind.” Then she muttered almost inaudibly. “Let’s get this over with.”

  So she was cute and maybe a little nervous. Both were reasons enough to keep her talking. “Let me guess,” he mused, putting the car in reverse. “You’re headed to Lourdes, so I’ll bet you hate hospitals.”

  “Well, I mean… yeah, I don’t like hospitals…” She scanned the back and side windows as though she were the one driving.

  Jacques made sure the road was clear before pulling out. There wasn’t a car in sight, but his passenger looked around like they were backing onto the Autobahn blindfolded.

  He put the car in drive, but he allowed himself to steal a glance at her as he wove through Twin Oaks. Most of his riders weren’t interested in small talk. They were content to keep their eyes locked to their phones and thank him quietly once they reached their destinations. Some, of course, were the extroverted, chatty type, and he was just as happy to humor them. He gave his passengers what they wanted, which was probably why he could boast a 4.9 rating on Uber.

  This girl might not want to talk, but it looked like she needed to. This became obvious when he made a left onto Johnston Street, and he heard a smothered whimper from the back seat.

  “You okay?” he asked, meeting her eyes in the rearview. He could see far too much white around her irises, and her lips had all but disappeared, but she nodded anyway.

  So she was cute, nervous, and a terrible liar.

  “You sure?”

  This time she nodded before speaking. “Could you turn up the music, please?”

  When he drove, he usually kept his music on shuffle, the volume turned low, and the balance in the front of the vehicle to keep from disturbing his passengers. And when he turned up the sound on Radiohead’s “Karma Police,” the last thing he expected to see was the easing of her face. The girl’s eyes closed softly, and her shoulders lowered a fraction.

  “Classic,” she said under her breath, her eyes still closed. “I saw them in Austin in 2012.”

  Jacques felt his brows climb in admiration. “Cool. So, like a year after King of Limbs released?” he asked, coming to a stop at the light on South College.

  “Yeah… Hearing ‘Codex’ live moved me to tears.” The softening in her voice made him glance up. In the reflection, he saw her gaze had moved to the left window, but he could tell that she
wasn’t seeing the scenery. He thought about the lyrics of the song, the way Thom Yorke sang of innocence — as though he missed innocence like one misses a friend.

  When they stopped at the light at Doucet, he saw she still stared, seeing something he couldn’t. She didn’t look nervous anymore, but whatever had claimed her eyes — a memory, a feeling — didn’t seem happy, and Jacques found himself wanting to lead her away from it.

  “I’ve never seen them in concert, but that wouldn’t suck,” he said, and he watched her blink back to the present.

  She offered him a half smile in the mirror.

  Even by half, she had an arresting smile that hit Jacques with a jolt.

  Her phone bleeped with a text then, and she pulled her eyes away. He drove. “Karma Police” ended, and his iTunes library, which held more than eight hundred songs, switched over to Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe.” Jacques fingered the opening chords on the steering wheel and hummed along with Eddie Vedder.

  The light rain fell, slowing traffic, but at least the roads were clear. As the song reached its refrain, Jacques realized he was singing, not humming. He stopped and glanced in the rearview mirror to find the girl’s eyes on him again. The look they held was penetrating but unreadable. Had his singing annoyed her? He silently cursed himself. Uber riders didn’t want a serenade. His steering wheel wasn’t a microphone.

  But right after he clamped his mouth shut, she spoke up. “You sound just like him.”

  Jacques’s cheeks grew warm. Other people had compared his voice to the American rock god that was Eddie Vedder. It had never made him blush.

  She’s prettier than other people, he decided. And she was pretty. Beautiful, in fact. Her honey-brown hair was pulled into a barrette, but a single loose curl fell against her cheek, the forerunner of those that spilled down her back.

  “Thanks,” he managed, his eyes connecting with hers again in the rearview.

  “It’s a good song,” she added. She was right. For some reason, Jacques had never thought of covering it, but picturing it now, the idea flung a blanket of chills over his shoulders. With the right crowd in the right place, it would bring down the house.

  He brought his eyes back to the road an instant before a red Dodge Durango knifed into his lane, tires screaming. Jacques hit the brakes, and the rear of the Impala sailed over the wet asphalt for a terrifying moment before he steered into the spin and corrected. Horns blared around them, and he narrowly missed the car one lane over, but he didn’t miss the cry of fright from his passenger or the sound of objects tumbling and spilling onto the floor of the back seat.

  “Jesus,” he hissed. When he knew it was safe, he looked back at her, making sure she was okay.

  Her eyes were closed, her face the color of ash.

  “Hold you ‘til I die… Meet you on the other side…” Eddie Vedder sang.

  She did not move. She just sat, rigid and pale, wearing a look of trauma. Jacques considered pulling over. “Hey, you okay?”

  He watched her eyes flutter open, but they didn’t lose the look of terror.

  Jacques put his focus on the road and immediately ground his teeth as he spotted the Durango ahead of them, weaving in and out of traffic, the driver oblivious to the threat he posed on the wet roads. “You’re all good… right?”

  Shifting his gaze between the traffic and the mirror, Jacques caught her blinking half-a-dozen times. Drawing in her lips, she gave a jerky nod, but she looked far from okay. The urge to reassure her overtook him.

  “I promise, I’ll get you there in one piece,” he told her. He forced a smile at her reflection, and the tightness around her mouth and eyes softened.

  “I was sure we were going to hit him,” she said on a shaky breath. Then she blew out a sigh. “We should have hit him. That was some quality driving.”

  His own relief surprised him. Not because they’d missed an accident, but because she clearly knew the near miss wasn’t his fault. That he had not been careless. Because as far as Jacques as concerned, there were few worse things than being careless while in control of two tons of metal.

  Behind him, she folded over and began picking up the items that had spilled onto the floor. A quick glance showed him they were paperbacks. Romance novels, by the looks of the covers. Steamy romance novels.

  Bodice rippers.

  He couldn’t remember where he’d heard the term, but bodice ripping was definitely what those book covers promised. The stack of books she now stuffed back into the backpack was far from small.

  Had she read all those books? Would she read all of them? Did she read them for the bodice ripping?

  This onslaught of questions — and the image of the beautiful girl in his back seat reading bodice rippers — left him almost dizzy, so Jacques swallowed and tried to focus on the music. “This is How it Feels” by Richard Ashcroft followed Pearl Jam, and he made himself hum along. The light rain became a squall just as he pulled into the hospital parking lot. Luckily, Lourdes had a covered drive in front of the entrance.

  He came to a stop near the automatic doors and turned, facing the back seat. He wanted to say something to her, to find out more about her, but the right words abandoned him. She slung the straps of both bags over her shoulders and cast her eyes around the car, finally meeting his, frowning.

  “Do I… What do I do now?” she asked, looking a little lost. “I don’t have to pay you, right?”

  Jacques smile had a will of its own. “Nah, you’re good. Hopefully, you’ll give me five stars on your app.”

  She smiled back at him, and the sight of it made his chest rise. “I’ll give you five stars,” she said with certainty. She opened the door and started to scoot off the seat.

  “Don’t forget your umbrella,” he said, nodding to it on the seat beside her.

  He watched her cheeks color. “Right.” She bent to retrieve it and met his eyes again. “Thanks, Jacques.”

  And then she was gone, but the sound of his name in her voice seemed to linger in the car. In spite of himself, Jacques watched her trot to the hospital doors — her boots light and fast on the concrete, her skirt dancing with a tempting swish — and then she disappeared inside.

  He’d never hesitated after dropping off a fare, but he hesitated now. Sighing in resignation, he pressed the gas pedal, and the car moved forward.

  And something in his back seat slid back along the floor before stopping with a curious thunk.

  Jacques pulled the Impala to the curb, threw it in park, and craned back for a look. And there, unmistakable, lay a bodice ripper. Without hesitation, Jacques reached around his seat, snatched up the book, and killed the car’s engine — not caring in the least that he’d stopped in a No Parking Zone. In the next instant, he was out of the car and running full tilt toward the hospital entrance.

  As soon as he was through the automatic doors, he scanned left and right for her black-clad figure. He moved farther in, following the signs for the elevator.

  “Hey—” he called as he watched the elevator doors close in front of her. She’d been looking down at the control panel as the doors met. He doubted she’d even heard him. Jacques stopped in front of the double doors, watching the numbers above light up.

  The elevator halted on the fourth floor.

  He waited and then watched as it moved down to three. And then he took off for the stairwell to his right, taking two steps at a time until he emerged breathless on the fourth floor. Corridors stretched out in front of him in three directions. Panting, Jacques scanned the first two, seeing no sign of her before moving his eyes to the left and spotting the girl all the way at the end of the hall before she turned right and slipped away again.

  He thought better of breaking into a run. Running in a hospital might attract unwelcome attention. And if someone questioned him, what would he say? He didn’t know her name. He didn’t know the reason she was here. All he had was a romance novel. He looked down at the book in his hand. The cover featured a couple in period dress wrapp
ed in a passionate kiss, behind them a stormy sea. The man, a hulking beast with jet-black hair, had his hand behind the woman’s raised, white-stockinged thigh, a hint of bare flesh peeking out from her emerald skirts just beyond his fingers.

  The Wayward One, the title proclaimed, surely referenced the swooning blonde. She looked pretty wayward. Jacques wondered if the girl he chased longed to be touched like—

  “You lost, honey?”

  A nurse in blue scrubs had come up from behind him. Jacques watched her take in the book cover before giving him an amused smile. “Well, that looks interesting.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m not lost… and it’s not mine.”

  The nurse, still grinning, gave a sigh. “What a shame,” she murmured as she continued her way down the hall.

  Jacques unglued his feet from the floor and followed the hallway. He slowed when he reached a dead end, expecting to see another hallway where the girl had turned right, but he was met with a row of private rooms. Had she walked all the way to the last one? The second to last one? He studied the names on the patient doors as if this would give him some kind of clue. The last one read “H. Smith” and the second to last “B. Reeves.” He stared, frozen.

  What the hell am I doing?

  He was about to turn on his heel and leave when the second to last door flew open.

  “It must have fallen under the seat.” The girl burst from the room, phone in hand, facing backward and talking over her shoulder. “There’s an Uber Help Li— Oh!”

  She saw him then and halted in her tracks. The heavy hospital room door swung closed behind her, knocking her forward. Jacques caught her by the elbow before she could slam into him. And for an instant, she braced a hand against his chest.

  “Sorry—” She righted herself. The hand over his heart was gone, but he could still feel it.

  “You okay?” he asked, making sure she was steady before releasing her elbow. When he did, he could still feel that too.

  “Yeah, I’m—” Her eyes flew to the book and then back up to his. “Oh my God. Thank you! You’re a lifesaver.”