Say You'll Remember Me(40)

“I’m still figuring this thing out,” she said. “Getting the hang of it though. Last week I learned that when it starts to stall at red lights, you just need to keep giving it gas. When you stop, you gotta keep one foot on the brake and one on the gas and keep feeding it while you idle.”

“It stalls?”

“Only when it’s cold. Once it warms up, it’s good.”

“Does it get cold here?” I asked.

“It got into the sixties last week.”

“A car that stalls from the cold and the cold is only sixty degrees,” I deadpanned.

“She’s old.” She shrugged.

I looked at her gas gauge. “You’re out of gas.”

“No, the gauge is broken.”

I looked between it and her. “How do you know if you’re running low?”

“Hold on, I’ll show you when we get to a red light. Okay, here we go.” She turned the radio down and braked a little harder than necessary as we stopped. “You hear that?” she said.

There was a glug glug glug noise as the gas sloshed back and forth in the tank.

I stared at her. “Are you kidding me? This is how you know the car has gas?”

“Yeah, I’m really good at it. I’ve got the glug glugs down to a science.”

“How long are you driving this again?” I asked.

“Until the wheels fall off probably.”

“Why am I worried that’s actually going to happen?”

The light turned green and she pulled forward.

A dried leaf blew up from under the dash.

“At first I hated it,” she said, “but it’s kind of growing on me. It’s so cheap. The gas mileage sucks, but my car insurance is only like fifty bucks a month. And I really don’t go anywhere, so I don’t need anything nicer. There are entire days where I don’t even leave the house. Why spend money on a car that’s just sitting in the driveway?”

“Reliability, safety, comfort…”

She waved me off.

She got onto the freeway and turned the radio up. We wouldn’t be able to talk while we drove, it was too loud with all the windows down. Actually, it was loud even with the windows up. The car rattled. The weather seal wasn’t great either—there was a crack between the canvas top and the windows so it whistled—and the engine was noisy. There was no way this car was watertight. Good thing California didn’t get much rain…

Another leaf blew up from under the dash. Then another one. It twirled around the car in a flurry and got stuck to the front of my shirt.

I was plucking this off me when the warm breeze coming from under the dash suddenly stopped. It was still for two seconds, then like a shift in the air pressure a deluge of dried leaves dislodged and blew into the car. It hit the cab like a tornado.

“Oh my God!” she screamed.

The leaves whipped and circled around violently. It was blinding. I covered my face and looked around through gaps in my fingers. “Slow down and pull over,” I said calmly, putting on the hazards. “You’re in the right lane, signal and pull off to the side.”

“Okay, okay—Ah! There’s so many!”

The sound of a horn peeled past us.

“Just slow down, the hazards are on.”

When she slowed down the tornado did too. She pulled over and I leaned out the window to guide her onto the shoulder.

“Don’t get out and don’t get unbuckled,” I said. “Okay, stop.”

She threw the car into park and slumped against the wheel. “What the fuck was that?” she said, looking at me with wide eyes. “This thing must have been parked under a tree or something.”

“Have you ever opened that vent before?”

“No.”

I looked around the car. Leaves everywhere. Leaves in her hair, leaves in my hair.

The car glug glugged.

And then, like some strange cosmic joke, “Come On Eileen” came on the radio. The fiddle intro eked out of the lone speaker and we both looked at each other.

I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t funny, but it was.

She laughed a little. “Please don’t make fun of me for this,” she said.

“I don’t think I have a choice, unfortunately.”

She dragged leaves from her ponytail and I dug them out from inside my shirt.

“They’re avocado tree leaves,” she said. “It must have been parked in the driveway at some point. Gross.” She looked down at a large leaf on her thigh and froze. “Oh my God! NO! Xavier, take it take it! Ahhhhhh!” She flapped her hands.

I looked at her lap. It was a dead mouse. Flat and petrified, frozen in a toothy death mask. “It’s okay—”

“NOOOOOO! Get it! Oh my God!”

She started dry heaving.

“Samantha—”

“I need antibacterial wipes—” she said. Retch. “Hand sanitizer—” Retch. “We’re covered in dead mouse dust, I CANNOT—”

I lost it. Completely lost it.

I was laughing so hard when I picked up the stiff rodent by the tail to toss it out the window I could barely do it.

She started rummaging frantically in the center console for wipes, dry heaving and laugh-crying all at the same time.