The cataclysmic moment that would
prove a turning point in her life had not begun on a dark and stormy
night. And while she’d been driving
alone after midnight, she was not hunched over the wheel, peering nervously through
a rain-spattered windshield while the rhythmic thumping of the wipers attempted
to compete with a hauntingly foreboding cello piece on the radio.
Instead, she tapped her fingers
on the steering wheel and sang loudly and off-key with a favorite R&B tune
from her elementary school days. It was
Flashback Friday on K102.6, and Color Me Badd was a welcome distraction from
her exhaustion. She remembered singing
the tune on the playground with her girlfriends in fifth grade. Granted, she hadn’t then understood what they
meant when they sang about sexing someone up, but the beat had been lively and
had served as more than one song choice for their pre-teen dance routines.
She blinked her eyes repeatedly,
trying to eliminate the dry, grainy feeling that often accompanied eight-hour
shifts after an eight-hour school day.
Plus she’d been up late the night before studying for a Trigonometry
test and a quiz on Hamlet. Her mother had begged her to cut back her
hours at the café, but she needed the money for her prom dress that year.
“I wanna rub you down,” she
belted out, laughing to herself. She
wondered if anyone had found those particular lyrics romantic in the 1990s. Personally, she preferred the honest and
forthright words of Bel Biv Davoe’s “Do Me.”
No games there.
She rubbed her eyes and cringed
at the scent of stale coffee that seemed to have deeply permeated her pores in
the past year. She slapped her hand on
her leg to keep herself awake. Then she
cranked up the air conditioning. But the
A/C in her little Chevette left something to be desired. Instead, she leaned restlessly toward the
door and rolled down the window, enjoying the feeling of the hot, dry air
against her face.
Her parents had bought a new home
only a couple of years ago, and it had a great A/C system in it. Her room was always cool and comfortable,
even in the hottest and most humid summer days.
Even so, she kept an oscillating fan beside her bed so that she could
feel the soft breeze while falling asleep listening to the gentle hum of the
motor. She would give anything to be in
her bed at that moment, finally able to close her eyes and sink into sleep.
A cool sensation caressed her
skin, as though she had driven through a moist morning fog that gently misted her
face and bare arms. She saw the
windshield and road before her ripple slightly, as though a curtain of water now
separated her from them.
And then she was staring at the
ceiling of her bedroom.
Suddenly wide awake, she bolted
upright. What had just happened? Her dreams were never particularly
vivid. Certainly not that vivid. She mentally sifted through the events of the
previous night, trying to remember the rest of her drive home. She made the trip often enough that she
occasionally would pull in the driveway with the realization that the rest of
the ride had passed in a blur. But this
was different. She couldn’t remember
anything from the night before.
There was Color Me Badd.
There was the rolling down of the
window.
It had been dark.
She glanced at the window. It was still dark.
She turned to the alarm clock
beside her bed and stared at the glowing red numbers. 12:09.
That couldn’t be right. It was a
twenty-eight minute drive through the country from the café in the city to her
parents’ house in the suburbs. She’d
been pulling out of the café parking lot at 11:56. Her clock was off. It had to be.
She reached for the lamp beside
her bed and held her watch under the golden glow. Even before she could confirm the time, she
realized that she was fully clothed on top of her bed. She even still wore her shoes from work.
And her watch read 12:09.
“What the hell?”
***
He took a deep drag off of the
cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds before exhaling
slowly. He studied the curls of his
breath and flicked the cigarette automatically.
Tilting his head back against the old clapboard barn, he glanced up at
the stars. The sky was full of them
tonight, but he had never particularly cared one whit about the celestial
bodies.
He glanced at his watch in
disgust. He had four hours before his
mother would wake him and order him to get up and help his dad. Four hours before he had to break his back
shoveling slop and shit. Farming was his
dad’s thing. He had other ideas.
He was going to be a
preacher. The only thing that gave him
any pleasure anymore was going to church.
He’d look around the room and study all the sinners. Up front would be the Darnells, with him
cheating on his wife and her drinking her sorrows away. Their oldest daughter was a notorious slut and
their youngest son beat on his girlfriend on Tuesdays and every other Thursday. But they’d sit up front looking proper and
singing loud for the benefit of the entire congregation. They weren’t fooling nobody. But Reverend Michaels never did anything but
preach the word of the Lord. He never
made them confess to their wicked ways.
Mama told him that confessing was
for the Catholics in town, but what did she know? She was so ass blind that she worshipped her
only daughter, a spawn of the Devil himself.
In the silence of the night, he
heard a car approaching down the country highway that ran in front of his
house. People took this road straight
from the city into the suburbs, driving past at ungodly speeds.
As the car crested the hill and
came into sight, he raised his cigarette to his lips again for one final
drag. He was still exhaling slowly as he
dug the heel of his boot into the dirt beside the barn. Kneeling, he took the time to carefully bury
the evidence that would undoubtedly lead to an unnecessary and annoying
argument with his mother.
While he knelt, a barely
perceptible crackle filled the air around him, leaving him feeling unsettled,
as though he had just missed something.
He rose slowly, glancing back toward the house, half expecting his
mother to come barreling down the front steps and marching across the yard.
The glare of the approaching high
beams captured him as the car continued to bear down. Even as it left the blacktop and dipped down
into his yard, he began to move. And his
quick reflexes had him clear of the path made by the little Chevette that plowed
into the side of his father’s barn.
He knew that the cacophony would
raise his parents and bring them outside.
But he was drawn to the site of the hole in the barn and the small
smoking vehicle now parked haphazardly inside.
“Damn drunks,” he muttered,
picking his way through the splintered wood.
Standing beside the vehicle, he
was astonished to realize that there was no driver. Alarmed, he glanced around the barn for signs
that someone had already emerged from the vehicle even while he had to admit
that a driver couldn’t have possibly freed himself so rapidly.
The driver’s window was cranked
down and a sinful and outdated song was cranked up on the radio. Grunting in disgust, he knelt and reached
through the window to turn off the trash, noticing with confusion that the
seatbelt on the driver’s side was still buckled. On the passenger seat sat a woman’s
purse. Moving stealthily, he reached
inside and removed a wallet.
Hearing the front screen door
slam shut behind his parents, he flipped open the billfold and glanced at the
driver’s license. Eva Sokolov.
Before his parents rushed to his
side, he slipped the wallet back into the purse and moved back away from the
vehicle. He stood back and surveyed the
wreck with bewilderment.
“What the hell?”
