Road Trip

Alexander's ride from the rideshare app turned out to be a young woman in her mid-20s driving a tan, beaten down Ford Taurus. She wore a tank top, bleached jean shorts, and a face - curtained by wavy, shoulder length blonde hair - that was deadened and lifeless, like a house that had been boarded up.

They met on a clear July day at a Chevron near the interstate in North Salt Lake. The sun was just peeking over the valley's mountain peaks, casting its rays through the light morning smog.

"I'm Annabel, you can call me Bel," she introduced herself.

"Alexander," he said, nodding.  

They slung his backpack into a tight space behind the driver's seat as the entire trunk and most of the backseat was filled with piles of her belongings. As they started off, she explained she was heading home after a college summer quarter, and Alexander acknowledged he was a recent graduate moving for a new job. During this exchange he noticed that his seat was not reclined at all, but in a ramrod-straight, vertical position. He reached for the recline lever.

"Oh don't, please, sorry Alex, there's a fish tank behind you, it's glass." 

Alexander pushed back a few millimeters, as far as he dared, until he felt significant resistance from the object behind his seat. She glared at him. 

"It's Alexander," said Alexander somewhat shortly, who disliked nicknames for their brevity and informality.

She ignored this. They drove past squat glass and concrete office buildings, supermarkets, and sprawling RV lots as the sun rose steadily higher. Its rays skirmished the car, and, even though it was still early, it became obvious the car's weak air conditioner was losing the battle. Alexander began to sweat a little. His back started to ache from being held perpendicular for so long and he shifted in his seat to try and relieve the pressure. 

"Man, it's like ten times hotter than when I drove home this time last year," she said. 

"Did you know, relative to the sun, we are in the same spot we were this day a year ago? Despite traveling at terrific speeds through space, we have effectively gone nowhere in an entire year." 

She blinked at this unsolicited fact. "Oh," she replied.

"My father was an astrophysicist," he explained proudly, oblivious to the awkward pause. 

"You must be really smart." 

"Fairly, yes," he wiped some sweat from his brows. 

She stared at him for a bit, registered that his arrogance was genuine and completely unperturbed by her incredulity, and promptly cranked up her music. Alexander could feel each beat drilled into his spine as Nicki Minaj, Lil' Wayne and others rapped relentlessly through the morning. He made to say something, but she surreptitiously turned it louder. The windows thrummed. Alexander could feel air puff at the back of his head every time the bass thudded. He folded his arms and resigned himself to staring out the window. 

The suburbs dropped away, and they climbed Soldier summit, swimming through rolling oceans of sagebrush and cheat grass.

Mid-morning she pulled into a rest stop. Alexander, who believed that any stop on a road trip besides refueling was a criminal waste of time, scowled at the dashboard and refused to enjoy the brief silence.

They rolled through the wastelands of southern Idaho next, with huge flat swaths of brown grass stretching out on either side of them that were broken only at the horizon by distant mountain ranges. There was a brief respite from the sun as huge purple thunderclouds crawled across the plains, but near Mountain Home, the sun returned in full glory. Bel stopped at a rest stop there, and then again forty minutes later near Boise. When they got back on the road, Alexander, with his back aching from his cramped position, sweating profusely, and dizzy from the deafening roar of her music, reached over and swatted the radio off. 

"I cannot stand that stuff," he sniffed.

"It's my car, Alex," she said, flipping it back on. 

Alexander flipped it off again. She switched it on. For a few moments they struggled with the knob as she swerved through Boise traffic. Bel gave in and threw up her hands. 

“Ok! OK! It's off," she snarled. Then she abruptly pulled into the next rest stop. Alexander breathed a low sigh of frustration. 

"Oh good, I did not really want to get there anytime soon," he growled.

"I have to pee."

Alexander paced around the car while he waited, trying to cool his thoughts. The dazzling sun, baking black top, and endless traffic buzzing nearby on the freeway did not help. Bel took a full twenty minutes. Alexander was ready to do battle when she returned, but was surprised when she said, "I'm sorry, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Can we try again?"

This sudden reversal disarmed Alexander, and he agreed with a sigh of relief. 

"I'm sorry I've got so much junk, maybe I could rearrange it a bit?" 

"No, that is ok," said Alexander, eager to get back on the road. "I am sorry I turned your radio off. I do not really mind your music, however I do not like losing my hearing."

"It's alright, we'll compromise," she said cheerily as she turned the radio on low. "So what's this new job you got?"

"Software engineer. I actually graduated a year ago, and this will be my third new job in the last six months."

"Oh?" she raised her eyebrows. 

"My coworkers at my last two jobs, they... we did not agree much, and they carried grudges - they actively tried to force me out. I am hoping this one will be different."

"Oh man, sorry."

"It is alright," Alexander shrugged. "You know what my father does - what about you, what do your parents do?"

"Nothing. My dad used to grow hay. One year a competitor forced him out. We were going to move, but while he was carrying a couple boxes out our door, he twisted funny and broke his back. Now he's a paraplegic in a wheelchair."

She explained this in a detached manner. Alexander felt slightly horrified that such a terrible reversal of fortunes was even possible, and stammeringly tried to offer condolences.

"He loves aquariums now, he sits and watches the fish for hours, every day. He has all kinds, iridescent blues and reds, hues of green and orange. He gives them all names and personalities."

Alexander suddenly understood the tank behind him. "That is nice of you, to get him another one."

"Some of them got broken," she shrugged, then shook her head, "That's not really true, I broke some of them. Seeing him there every day, stuck, so trapped, spiraling around his limited routine, and all the while he could have been out doing things if something so simple hadn't..." she broke off and took a deep breath, "it's just, he could have gone places, done things, you know? Now he goes nowhere."

Alexander didn't know what to say. She continued.

"Before his accident, in the summers my dad would use spare bales to make huge forts for us. We'd spend days camping out in them, sleeping under the stars, running our hands over their prickly walls and breathing in the smell of the fresh cut grass. We looked forward to it every year."

Alexander smiled pleasantly at this. "I used to love days like this,” he said. “My grandmother had a pool with a kind of astro turf around it. It was unusual, most people have concrete you know, but I loved to lay on that soft, bright green turf, dip my feet in the cool water, and count the cirrus clouds whipping by way above."

The small peace that had settled between them helped Alexander relax slightly. They gassed up in Ontario, but when they got on the road again the air conditioning seemed noticeably more pitiful.  

Soon Alexander's back began to ache with sharper pains, and sweat dripped off him in earnest as the afternoon sun shot through the windshield. He regretted declining her offer to rearrange the fish tank. As the silence stretched on she turned up her music a bit more to fill it. Alexander pushed back on his seat, desperate to gain an inch, until they heard a faint crackling. 

"Seriously?" she said. She pulled off on the side of the road to inspect it. Alexander drummed his fingers in impatience. 

"Lucky," she said, "it's just the plastic rim." She rearranged some items, and got the tank farther back, so that he could lay back a couple inches. It took her nearly fifteen minutes to carefully replace her stuff, and Alexander sighed loudly more than a few times. When they got going again she increased the volume again. Alexander complained but she pretended not to hear. Oregon, punctuated by small towns with large green trees, slipped by as the afternoon wore down. 

Alexander remembered something. "I misspoke earlier," he had to talk loudly over the music. "I said we had gone nowhere in the past year - just around and around. But really, our galaxy has been moving this entire time. From that perspective, we have travelled great distances."

"Don't care," she fumed. 

"As time goes on we move farther and farther away from center, light from other galaxies gets dimmer and dimmer. We get further and further into empty space."

They were in pine forests, nearing Meacham. 

"Is that me? Is that what you're trying to say? Petering out into nothing?"

"No I -"

"At least I'm not you, going nowhere in circles. Third job is the charm? Ask yourself what the common denominator is sometime." She had snapped before she could stop herself. 

"Oh man, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean -" but it was too late - Alexander rammed his seat back as hard as he could. The fish tank shattered and glass splattered over the seat and onto the floor. Bel slammed her car to a stop on the shoulder. 

"Out," she said, shaking. Alexander snatched his backpack, hurled the door shut, and stepped out into the sunset. He stood on the side of the interstate, and watched Bel drive away as the tree tops projected black silhouettes against the burning orange sky.

Bel looped around and found him later walking in the dimming light. He got in and hugged his backpack to his chest. She had shut the music off, and as they drove they listened together to the hum of the world flying past, hurtling along lines and arcs, never still, lapping up mile after mile.  

"Are we there yet?" he asked.

"I don't know," she sighed.