by Leah Atwood
She wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes and took the phone. “Good morning Mitchell! I don’t have a rental car yet. Do you know anything about that?”
He cleared his throat on the other end of the phone. “It appears there was a bit of a mix-up. They went to the newspaper office to collect you. When you weren’t there, they called the number on the reservation, which was my cell. They didn’t reach me, so they cancelled the reservation. I called them as soon as I got the message. Someone should be by to pick you up soon.”
“Okay…” Something in his voice lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. “Should I be worried?”
A muffled cough came across the line. “They’ve assured me everything will be fine, but if it’s not, you’re going to have to make the best of it. The admin assistant who booked the car for you said she’d used this rental agency before and that they’re good for the price. I just made a couple calls to some other places to look for a Plan B, but they’re all either closed for the holidays or booked up. Apparently everybody north of the fortieth parallel decided Albuquerque is the in place to be this Christmas.” Avery could picture him reaching a finger into his collar and pulling the material away from his neck the way he did whenever he had something to say he knew wouldn’t be well-received.
Great. “Where exactly is our reservation at anyway?”
“Uh, Mom…” Eli’s voice came from the living room. “You might want to come see this.”
The doorbell rang, and she moved to a side window to peek out through the blinds. A van was there to pick them up. It had a ghastly kelly green and peanut butter brown logo. Beside it, in black and yellow, was their motto. We Do Cars. CHEAP.
She held her phone up to the window in order to take a picture of the offending van and in the process managed to hang up on Mitchell.
Nodding to Eli to go ahead and answer the door, she quickly sent the photo to Mitchell with a text that read, You owe me. BIG.
“Uh, Mom. Are you sure this is the way?”
Avery, too, had been watching their surroundings as they presumably got closer to the rental lot. They had passed from a sunny neighborhood into one that was a little less cheerful. Then into the one with bars on the windows. Next they started to see bars on the doors and windows of homes as well as businesses. By the time Eli had spoken up, they were somewhere between the homeless shelter and the railroad tracks, not exactly Albuquerque at its best.
She’d once done a write-up on the shelter. When asking about their location, she’d been given a simple answer. “If you want to help the homeless, you need to be where they’re at. That’s nothing more than good business. Meet your customer where they have the greatest need. You don’t sell golf clubs on a tennis court, do you?” The explanation had rung true. One question, however, had remained. After so many years, was it possible that the homeless population now came to the area because the shelter was there rather than vice versa?
To-ma-to, To-mah-to.
The sign at the rental lot was as horrible as the one on the van. She hadn’t heard back after she’d texted the picture to Mitchell. He was probably smart enough to know he wouldn’t want to hear what she had to say at the moment. Before the van could pull into the almost-vacant rental lot, they had to wait for a man wearing one shoe and pushing a shopping cart to move out of the way.
“Mom?”
She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Honestly, Eli. It’s not the man’s fault he’s homeless. And I’m sure this was an affordable piece of property. That’s why the rental agency is here. It’s about business and the bottom line. Nothing to worry about.”
He gawked at her the way he would a rhinoceros barking like a Chihuahua. “Everything is not going to be okay. I forgot the charger for my phone.”
Avery swallowed. The telltale pinpricks along her neck and cheeks told her she was blushing. Here she’d been worrying Eli was concerned because he didn’t feel safe. That anxiety in his voice, however, had been all about his music. Where had she gone wrong?
The van pulled to a stop, and the driver, who had remained quiet during the entire drive, got out and opened the sliding door for them. “I need to go pick someone else up. Haul your luggage in with you so I’ve got room for the next group.”
Looking from the two suitcases, oversized duffel bag full of snacks, and case of bottled water back to the driver, Avery lifted her eyebrow. “Perhaps you could assist us?”
“I gotta go take a whiz before my next pick-up. You’ll have to get your bags yourself.”
Closing her eyes, Avery counted to ten. Then fifteen. Then thirty. By the time she had counted high enough to feel calm again, she opened her eyes only to see Eli had already moved their luggage into the small outbuilding and was holding the door, waiting on her.
Avery stomped her way along the dirt parking lot to where her son waited. She vowed to remember every tawdry detail of this trip so she could hold it over Mitchell’s head for years to come.
An entirely insincere smile pasted on her face, Avery took a deep breath and tried to relax her shoulders as she stepped into the miniature office. “Hello, I’m Avery Weston, and I’m here to pick up a vehicle. The reservation was made by Mitchell Jones, or might be in the name of the Albuquerque Times.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Weston.” The short blonde behind the counter didn’t bother to look up, and Avery didn’t bother to correct her about her name. Maybe it would help get the process moving along if the woman thought there was a Mr. Weston who might come knock some heads together if things didn’t go smoothly.
“Unfortunately, there’s been a problem with your reservation.” The woman didn’t even have the decency to look sad about it.
“I know there was a problem. You went to the wrong place to pick me up. As a result, it’s no longer morning, but rather a quarter after twelve. Nevertheless, I’m here now, and I’d prefer to collect my vehicle so I can get out of here and on the road.”
“Yes, well, because you weren’t where you were supposed to be this morning, we had to give your reserved vehicle away to someone else.”
She did not just say that. Or did she…?
“Okay, that’s fine.” Stay calm. Don’t yell. Catch more flies with honey. Blah, blah, blah. “Then please give me another comparable vehicle.”
“Well, that’s the thing, see…” The woman, whose glaringly pale hair had to come out of a bottle, gave an indifferent shrug. “We don’t have anything left in the SUV class.”
“I’ll settle for a large sedan. That’s fine.”
“We don’t have any.”
“A medium-sized sedan then.”
Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.
“We don’t have any.”
Avery closed her eyes and began counting again. One, two, three. Four, five, six. Seven, eight, nine. She would ask the question as soon as she calmed down.
“Can you tell us what you do have?”
Her eyes popped open in time to see the blonde smiling at Eli.
“Well, young man, it so happens we have a brand new cherry-red Zeon with less than two hundred miles on it.”
Avery slapped her hands over her ears as her son hooped and hollered. If he did that fist pump thing any harder, he would dislocate his elbow.
“No!” Both Eli and the blonde gaped at her as if she’d been gushing over how beautiful the company logo was. They clearly thought she’d lost all touch with reality.
“But Mrs. Weston, this is quite an upgrade for you, and we won’t charge anything extra at all.” Avery was finally able to get past the reflective tinge of the woman’s hair to notice the two-inch long fingernails. Each painted a different color. With designs on them. Working there couldn’t pay well enough for nails that extravagant. Or could it? Maybe she was in the wrong line of work.
“I understand it’s an upgrade, but a Zeon is out of the question.”
“Is i
t a convertible?” Eli asked, his eyes glowing with excitement.
“It has the removable top panel so it can be easily converted to topless.”
I’m going to throw up here and now on her office floor.
“A Zeon is not an option. I assume you have other selections for us to choose from?” Through force of will, Avery managed to make it sound like a polite question rather than a drill sergeant’s command. What kind of woman used the word topless when speaking to a teenage boy?
Eli and the woman stared at her.
“What exactly are you doing with a Zeon here, anyway? This isn’t a high-end car lot, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Good. Avery’s voice was back under control. She’d managed not to yell.
The petite woman stood an inch or two taller, thrust out her chest, and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll have you know, we have rental facilities in different locations across the city. We rotate vehicles between all of them, and the Zeon happens to be here today.”
“Right. With less than two hundred miles on it, it got sent here to this lot. What’s wrong with it?”
The woman’s mouth snapped shut. Then she pivoted on her heel and stomped her way into a back room, slamming the door behind her.
“Mom, what’d you go and do that for?”
She hadn’t heard that whine in his voice since he was eight years old.
“Eli, there’s no way we can fit three people and all our luggage into a Zeon. We already had this conversation. It can’t possibly come as a surprise to you that I said no.”
“You’re crushing my dreams. I’m going to be in therapy for decades because of this, you know that, don’t you?”
“That’s fine. Do me a favor, though, and wait till you’re paying for your own insurance before you have the mental breakdown, okay?”
He rolled his eyes at her and then threw himself into the one chair in the small waiting area. The drama of his little fit was ruined when, with a loud snap, the chair leaned drunkenly to the side. Eli’s momentum forced the chair’s tipped pose into an all-out flip, landing him on the floor with the chair above him, pinning him into place.
How on earth had it managed to flip over like that? And without hitting a light fixture?
The back door opened, and the woman returned. Her hair was the same unrealistic color as before, and her nails were still too long for her to hold a pen. At least her chest wasn’t sticking out as far this time. Avery cringed at the thought. Apparently too much coffee and late nights didn’t just make her cranky. They made her catty, too.
With a big sigh and a lower lip that stuck out like a two-year-old’s pout, the blonde reached for a set of keys hanging on a peg. “We have one other car that might fit your needs. Follow me.”
She didn’t bother waiting for her customers to accompany her. Instead, she exited out a door on her side of the office counter and was gone before they could do anything. “Stay here with the bags.” Avery sent the shout over her shoulder as she sprinted out the door they’d come in and ran around the building trying to find the woman.
She didn’t dare leave the woman alone with their one remaining usable car. Avery wouldn’t put it past the woman to key the car and blame her for it.
When she caught up to the woman, Avery scowled at the virtually vacant lot. “Okay, so where’s our car?”
“There.” The woman pointed. With her two-inch long fingernail.
“No, seriously. Where’s our car?”
The woman’s chin jutted out, and she shook a finger at Avery. “Now see here, Mrs. Weston. You weren’t where you were supposed to be, and this is the best I can do. It’s either this or the Zeon. This one’s at least been around the block enough times you know it works!”
Avery lifted her hands in the air and backed away. “Okay, okay. Didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers. This one will be fine. I need to get on the road. As long as it runs and can seat more than two people, I’ll find a way to make it work.”
A few minutes later, they were back inside and filling out paperwork. She shot a quick text off to Mitchell: I haven’t heard from Gavin. Where am I supposed to pick him up? BTW, you’ve earned my undying promise of revenge.
When the woman shoved the papers across the counter for her to sign, Avery scanned them. The woman hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said the car had been around the block. It had over a hundred thousand miles on it according to the paperwork. Lord, please let that mean it’s reliable. At least give me that much here.
“Get the luggage out the door.” Avery pointed at Eli. “I’ll go grab the car and bring it up here so we don’t have to haul the suitcases.” Then she took a deep breath and went to collect her assigned vehicle, praying it would start without any trouble.
When Avery returned to where Eli stood, she tried to force her lips into a positive grin as she got out of the car to face him. She caught sight of her reflection in the office’s front window. Ugh. She looked a lot more than a woman grimacing in the throes of childbirth than she did a woman smiling before a road trip with her son.
Thankfully, her failed attempt at a smile was lost on her son. He couldn’t take his eyes off the car. Circling, he examined it from every angle. Then he walked around it again, shaking his head. By the time he lifted his eyes to look at her, Avery’s palms were sweaty, and her heart was racing.
“You got us a decade old hatchback with less room in it than the Zeon would have had.”
Decades, probably, but she didn’t bother to correct him.
“It’s so old and faded, I can’t even tell what colors it’s supposed to be. It looks like puke.”
Mustard, maybe, but definitely not puke.
“Does this thing even have seatbelts, or does it predate them?”
Now he was just being facetious.
Avery grunted as she pulled the trunk open. “Okay, I admit it. It’s awful, but we’re stuck with it, so let’s get the luggage loaded. We need to leave.”
A return text finally arrived from Mitchell. Gavin’s at the coffee shop on Central between Edith and Arno.
Clicking her fingers on the phone, she sent another message. How will I know him?
He’s sitting outside. Grey stocking cap. With luggage.
A short while later, Avery pulled their car up in front of the coffee shop. Only in Albuquerque would a coffee shop be painted the color of terra cotta and have dried chile peppers hanging from the ceiling.
She got out of the car and gazed at the front of the shop. It was the twenty-third of December, but even in New Mexico, there was only one man brave enough to endure the weather outside. A nip in the air had encouraged all other patrons to enjoy the indoor atmosphere of the establishment.
Avery took note of the man as she approached. He was younger than she’d expected. With the stocking cap pulled down low, she couldn’t get a look at his hair to see whether or not it had any grey in it. The scruff on his cheeks and chin was black as night, however, with no indication of aging. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but he had an angular face, a strong chin, and… he was drinking a fruit smoothie.
A bright yellow frozen beverage. At a coffee shop. In December. I’m going to have to make allowances for his artistic temperament. I get it. But is this necessary, God? Sticking me with a man who goes to a coffee shop and doesn’t order coffee? You’re laughing at me, aren’t You?
Pulling her it’s-okay-if-you-don’t-love-coffee smile out of storage and dusting it off, she approached the man and held out her hand. “Mitchell sent me. Ready to go?”
The man put down his blindingly bright beverage and ran his eyes up and down her figure. His sunglasses kept his eyes concealed, but his perusal still made her uncomfortable. When he made no move to shake her hand, she began to wonder if she had the right person. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Gavin. Who are you?”
Eyeing his luggage, she took note of the oversized backpack and two large hard-sided cases she assumed held camera equipment. This
had to be Gavin, but what if it wasn’t? What if this guy had murdered Gavin and stuffed him in an alleyway, then sat down in his spot to lure her into a false sense of security so he could do away with her and Eli, too, at his leisure? Homicidal tendencies might explain the yellow drink.
Before the man had time to sneeze, Avery whipped out her cellphone, took a snapshot of him, and texted it to Mitchell. Is this him?
She imagined the man blinking his eyes in surprise behind his dark glasses. Artsy was definitely not the first word that came to mind when she looked at him. Or the second, for that matter. He was wearing black jeans, a grey jacket hanging open to reveal a like-colored sweater underneath, and a grey scarf wrapped around his neck a couple times. She’d always thought artists wore lots of color. That’s what she got for assuming. He would make a great beatnik.
Avery’s phone chirped at her, and she glanced down at it. Yep. That’s Gavin.
Again frowning at the man’s fruity beverage, she tried to shake off the feeling of dread swirling through her stomach. Straightening her shoulders, she held out her hand for a second time. “Hi Gavin. I’m here to pick you up and head to Nowhere.”
He cracked a smile this time. “Heading to Nowhere – isn’t that a country song?” He looked behind her. “So, where’s Avery?”
She stole a look at the mustard-not-puke colored car. What had he expected? A limo? Granted, it wasn’t much, but still… “I’m Avery. Avery Weston.”
Gavin jumped up out of his wrought-iron chair, knocking it back. “You can’t be. Avery’s a man.”
Avery scratched her head. “I’ve been accused of a lot of things, but that’s not one of them.”
He turned the tables on her then, taking her picture with his phone, presumably to verify her identity with Mitchell.
Eli, evidently tired of waiting in the cramped confines of the car, climbed out. “What’s the holdup? At this rate we won’t make it to Nowhere till two in the morning. Come on, people, daylight’s burning!”
Gavin glanced from her to Eli. Then his phone vibrated, and he peered down at it. The part of his face she could see through the pseudo-beard flushed. His hand clenched around the phone in a death grip before relaxing.