Girl With a Past (14 page)

Carol gave me “the” look, but climbed into
the car. She flung two duffel bags over the seat to the floor
behind us as she said, “I don’t see why we don’t just wait for the
mechanic to finish with your car.”

“I’ll tell you why, cause that guy said it
would be ready two days ago, but today there were still parts on
the garage floor, and he said
maybe
by tomorrow. I really
want to go to the beach
today
.” I turned the ignition key
listening for the engine to catch. On the third try, the motor
started. “I, personally, was thrilled when Tom offered us this
car.”

“Yeah, real generous of 'im.” Carol was not
fond of any of my other best friend Jeff’s circle of male
friends.

"C'mon, it was. Just 'cause nobody uses it
right now, and his brother happened to leave it in our
driveway.”

“Funny, I was under the impression that it
broke down in
our
driveway.”

The car was moving along with just an
occasional sputter on the way down University Avenue. In the block
before the freeway, a row of hitchhikers held out thumbs and signs.
I pulled over.

“What’re you doing?” Carol asked.

“Didn’t you see that guy’s sign? It said
Point Reyes
.”

Carol sighed. A crowd of hikers swarmed her
side of the car. “Let me see your signs.” She pointed to the guy
with the
Point Reyes
sign. “You, get in.”

Carol turned around to watch the shaggy
haired guy move the duffel bags out of the way and slide onto the
back seat.

“Thanks chicks. Thanks for stopping.”

“We are not chicks.” Carol turned back,
stared straight ahead.

I fumbled with the radio dial until I found
a station playing local music, Dan Hicks and the Hotlicks sang,
“
How can I miss you, when you won’t go away?”
I put the car
in gear, and hit the road.

We made it over the San Rafael Bridge and to
the highway leading to the beach. On the off ramp, I hit the brake
pedal.

Nothing.

I pumped.

Still nothing.

A four way stop intersection loomed dead
ahead.

“Hold on.” I leaned down and pulled the
emergency brake. I came up with it in my hand, wires dangling free
off the end. “Shit.”

Carol looked at the item in my hand and
braced her leg and arm against the dash. Her other hand was on the
door handle. “Shit.”

From the backseat a yelp, and a “Holy shit”
preceded a loud wail.

We whizzed through the intersection.

But the next intersection was a two way. And
we were supposed to stop.

An eighteen-wheeler barreled down the road
to our right, timed perfectly to meet us at the intersection.

I hit the gas and zoomed through with inches
to spare. We sped on down the road that would soon turn into a
twisting nightmare.

I engaged the clutch, down shifted the
gears. A horrible grinding screech was heard over the scream of my
passengers.

I tried again. More noise, but no
slowing.

On the left was the steep side of an oak
studded hill.

On our right, a wood fence guarded a
pasture.

“Brace yourselves. We’re goin in.” I twisted
the wheel, hit the fence dead on.

The car flew over a hump. We were airborne,
then we landed with a thud that rattled my back teeth, but we
didn’t stop.

We were still moving.

My passengers were still screaming.

And I was out of ideas of how to stop the
damn car.

A second fence in a wide ditch loomed
ahead.

The nose of the car flew into the ditch.

Wham. My head hit something. Maybe the
steering wheel.

Blackness closed in.

* * *

“Carol, please stop slapping me,” I came to
sitting in the dirt, uncertain how I had gotten out of the car.
“I’m okay, I’m awake.”

Carol looked like she was unharmed, but as
pissed off as I’d ever seen her. “Now what, Miss-Trust-Me? My God,
when am I gonna learn?”

Wailing from the other side of the car
scared us both onto our feet. Our hitchhiker lay shaking on the
ground, screaming, his limbs thrashing.

Carol switched her gaze from him to me, “Is
he having a seizure? You can get those from hitting your head,
can’t you?”

“No cuts, what could he have hit?” I leaned
down to examine his head, at which point he jumped up, knocked me
over, grabbed his backpack from the open back door of the car and
ran screaming across the field to the road.

“I guess I scared him,” I said.

“You could’ve said you had no brakes.” Carol
stood next to me watching the figure grow smaller until he
disappeared around a bend in the road. “He must not’ve been
seriously hurt if he can run like that.”

“Wasn’t it obvious, about the brakes, I
mean?”

Carol gave me the I-am-not-amused-look
before she pried open the trunk to retrieve our sleeping bags. I
removed the two duffel bags from the back floor.

“What do we do about the car?” Carol asked
as she slung her purse and duffel bag over one shoulder and hefted
her sleeping bag under the opposite arm.

“When we get to a phone, I’ll call Tom.” I
checked the glove compartment for valuables and picked up my
things.

A VW bug rounded the corner at the same
moment we exited the field onto the shoulder of the road. As the
mustached driver pulled over, his bearded passenger asked, “Where
ya headed?”

Carol and I looked at each other and
shrugged.

“Point Reyes?” I said.

“Far out. So are we.” The passenger got out
of the vehicle, extended his hand to me. “I’m Dick, that’s
Andy.”

“I’m Lexi. She’s Carol.”

Dick opened the door. He threw in Carol’s
things, and waved her into the back seat.

Then he held open the passenger door for me,
and I climbed in holding a duffel and sleeping bag on my lap.

“How did you end up out here?” Andy
asked.

I explained what had happened with the
car.

“Far out,” Andy said.

In the back seat, Dick lit up a joint and
offered it to Carol.

“No thanks,” she said.

“What, are you two straight?” Dick passed
the grass to Andy.

“Not in the mood,” Carol responded.

“That’s the point, to get you in the mood.”
Dick chuckled, took the grass back from Andy and offered it to
me.

“No thanks,” I said, following Carol’s
lead.

Dick took an enormous toke and held his
breath while he handed off to Andy.

“You always smoke while you drive?” Carol
asked.

“Sure.” Andy giggled. “Why not?”

Carol raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think it
might impair your judgment?”

Dick finally blew out smoke and took a
breath. “Aah, his judgment is permanently impaired anyway.”

“Hey, cut that out,” Carol yelped. “Get your
hands off me.”

I turned to look in the backseat.

“Aah, come on baby.” Dick rubbed Carol’s
thigh with one hand, placed his other hand on her neck.

Carol swatted his hand off her thigh. With
all the bags in the seat with them. she didn’t have room to really
wind up a punch, but she gave her best and slugged him in the jaw.
Before he could recover, she jammed her elbow into his lap.

“Pull over,” I said to Andy in the shocked
silence that preceded Dick’s scream.

“Hey, I thought you girls were hip. What’s
the matter?” Andy actually looked hurt, as though we had insulted
him
.

He stopped the car at the side of the road.
Carol and I unloaded our things and ourselves.

Dick flipped us off with both hands as they
drove away.

We sat on our bags, and contemplated our
dilemma.

“I’m not getting into another car with a
stranger,” Carol said.

I looked around. We were quite literally in
the middle of nowhere. All I could see was winding road, oak trees,
dry grass, and a few cows. “We could camp right here,” I
offered.

Carol did not say a word, gave me “the” look
again. Her eyes glaring, the set of her mouth said without uttering
a word, “I am not amused.”

“We could walk to the beach,” I said.

Carol looked away.

“I could walk to a phone?” I stood up. “I’ll
leave you and our stuff here. I’ll come back for you.”

“Not a fucking chance in hell am I staying
out here in the middle of nowhere by myself.” Carol picked up her
things. “I hate nature, hate camping. I only agreed to this stupid
outing ‘cause I felt sorry for you and your goddamn broken heart.
But I’m not gonna get raped or killed to cure your lovesickness.”
She stomped off in the opposite direction of the beach.

I hurried after her.

We walked in silence for miles. I admitted
to myself that I had perhaps over dramatized my heartbreak over
Ted’s betrayal. If I’d been as hip as I was supposed to be, I would
have shrugged off his interest in other women.

But he was too damn attractive. Women were
constantly throwing themselves at him. There was always some
chickie flirting with him, making goo-goo eyes at him, rubbing her
breasts against him, throwing her arms around his neck.

Maybe I asked too much, expecting him to be
faithful. Faithful was an old fashioned concept.

Oh well, too late now. I’d burned that
bridge, told him to hit the road. No way I was sleeping with him up
until the day he left for Harvard.

It was for the best really. I was too young,
had too many plans to fall for the love of my life at this time of
my life. The events of the day had scared me back into touch with
the real importances in my life. Like how lucky I was to have good
friends.

“I’m sorry Carol,” I called out to her.

She ignored my apology, walked faster.

I called after her, “I’m sorry. I really do
appreciate your coming with me. When we get to a phone, I’ll call
Jeff to come get us. We’ll go back to Berkeley, back to
civilization.”

“Good.” Carol walked even faster.

I looked up a dirt road and thought I saw a
small house tucked in the trees. I pointed in that direction. “ Hey
look! Maybe they would let us use their phone.”

“You think that shack has a phone?” Carol
backed up to consider the dirt road. “Looks pretty creepy. Bad
vibes. With our luck, probably a crazy person, a serial killer
lives there.” She looked down the blacktop. No other sign of a
possible phone was in sight. She exhaled a deep sigh and walked up
the dirt road.

* * *

The people who lived in the small house
hidden in a circle of eucalyptus trees didn’t appear to be serial
killers, and initially, seemed only slightly crazy. Three skinny,
shaggy young men, clad only in boxer shorts, stood in a half circle
at the door to greet us. Apparently visitors to their habitat were
rare. Our arrival was a major deal. Soon another two men and two
girls joined the curious group surrounding us in the dark entry
hall.

“May we please use your phone?” I asked the
assembly.

“Sure. Of course. Yes,” answered the
chorus.

A slender, bearded young man, with tangled
hair trailing down his bareback, ushered me into a room furnished
primarily with mattresses and floor pillows. He waved at a phone in
the far corner on the floor. I sat down and picked up the
receiver.

No dial tone.

I looked up at the young man. “Uhm, this
phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Oh, yeah, it doesn’t work.” He smiled a
crooked, goofy grin.

“Do you have a phone that does work?” I
asked.

“Not really.” He continued to grin.

I returned to where Carol stood in the entry
hall. “The phone doesn’t work.”

“What?” Her look was becoming more of a
glare. “Where is your phone that does work?” Carol asked with
ineffectively forced politeness.

“We don’t got one,” said a young girl who
looked pretty close to normal. That is, she was fully clothed, but
in what looked like pajamas.

Carol sank onto her pile of belongings.

“Do you have a car we could borrow?” I
figured it was worth a shot.

“Yes, we do.” All of the inhabitants nodded
their heads in agreement. “Sure.”

“Great.” I nudged Carol and picked up my
things before they changed their minds.

Carol stayed where she sat. “Does it
work?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

“It runs?” Carol asked.

“Yeah, it runs.”

Pajama girl spoke up, “But it’s not here
right now.”

I addressed my next question to her. “Will
it be back some time soon?”

“Yeah,” She nodded. “Yuri took it to the
city. He’ll most likely try to be back before dark ‘cause the
lights don’t work too well sometimes.”

“Hey, wanna see something real cool.” The
guy who had shown me the phone waved his arm back to the mattress
room. A large, hot, potbelly stove stood a few feet off the far
wall.

Carol stayed put, I politely followed the
group into the room with the stove.

Three of the men took turns feeding wood
pieces into the opening to the firebox. In minutes the metal
chimney glowed orange and the circle of crazy people jumped in a
frenzy of excitement.

“Fucking great, huh?” one asked.

“Oh, yeah, great.” I looked up to where the
glowing metal flue pierced the wood paneled ceiling and wondered
when the wood would burst into flames. “A little dangerous, don’t
you think?”

“Nah, we do this all the time.”

Eight people danced around the circle of
heat and I realized why they were half-dressed. I tried not to
think what would happen if one of them were to fall against the red
hot glowing metal. I couldn’t look.

I returned to Carol’s side.

“From the frying pan to the fire,” she said.
“We gotta get outa here before they burn the place down.”

“You want to wait for Yuri to come back?” I
asked.

“What day might that be?” She stood, picked
up her belongings.