For the first time since I was fired, I’m grateful that I’m homeless and unemployed.
Turning off my phone, I shove it in the back pocket of my jeans. An excruciating half an hour later, it’s finally my turn. The woman working the car rental desk looks ready to quit. Late sixties, judging by the frizzy cloud of gray hair and slight hang of her jowls. The name tag on her red long sleeve polo shirt reads, Delores.
Delores is not a happy camper. Her thin lips are pinched, accenting the smoker’s lines around them, and she has the vacant stare of a person who has dealt with way too much BS for one day. Whoever came before me has obviously given this poor woman a hard time so I decide to kill Delores with kindness and slap a smile on my face. It always pays to be kind.
“Hi. Hello, Delores. I need a car, the cheapest you’ve got please.”
No surprise, Delores is not charmed by my forced cheerfulness. She sighs tiredly and looks down at her computer screen. “Don’t have much left. And I should warn ya, storm’s coming. You won’t get far.”
My temper is on a hair trigger and it comes up quickly. It’s close to midnight, I haven’t eaten anything outside of a free bag of potato chips in ten hours, and I know I have a two-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of me. A debate is not what I’m looking for right now.
“I’ll take my chances,” I tell her, my perkiness and fake smile fading along with my patience.
“They’re sayin’ a nor’easter––a bad one.”
My smile drops like a brick. “Duly noted. Can I get a car please?” I shove my driver’s license and credit card at her in the hopes she’ll stop giving me the weather report and start printing the rental contract.
But Delores is not deterred. Oh, no. She adds a disapproving head shake to her repertoire and presses on. “With a cyclone bomb.”
“Look––” I start, taking a deep breath to bank my frustration. “Delores, right? I’m not some showboating tourist, okay? I grew up around here. A few feet of snow are a walk in the park for me. We’re good, alright?”
Delores and the patronizing look on her face are turning out to be more annoying than the grilled cheese kid.
“We got one econ rental left. It won’t be good in the snow, but it’s all we got.”
A smile of pure unadulterated triumph breaks across my face. “I’ll take it,” I nearly shout, close to double-fist pumping the air.
She hands me the rental contract on which is written…Nissan Cube. I glance up into Delores’s determined expression and it tells me that if I say one word, that precious Cube is no longer mine. Needless to say, I’m not taking any chances of getting stuck in Albany with my almost maxed out credit cards. I mumble a thanks, and ten minutes later I am hustling out to the underground parking garage dragging two large suitcases behind me to claim my bright orange Nissan Cube.
As I pull the Cube out of the underground garage, snowflakes fall gently on the windshield. It seems everyone is watching the same weather report because the streets of Albany are nearly deserted. The light from the street lamps catch the snow, the night alight with a romantic glow as I navigate the backroads to the thruway. There’s something magical about softly falling snow and a tickle of hope stirs in my chest. Or maybe it’s wishful thinking. It’s in my nature to be positive.
Life is a journey someone much wiser than me once said. And if that’s true, then maybe mine is destined to have few more twists and turns than most.
Every Day Is A Winding Road by Sheryl Crow comes on the radio. I turn up the volume, breathing a sigh of relief that for now the worst is behind me. And as the orange Cube chugs up the thruway, I sing along. Who the hell knows. Maybe Sheryl is onto something.
The worst is most definitely not behind me. In fact, it’s on me, over me, and under me. I’ll be picking it out of my teeth and underwear soon. Half an hour into my trip, I am getting creamed by the worst.
Let me just say this, a cyclone bomb is not something to trifle with. Officially, I am a showboating tourist. I am a trash-talking, know-it-all, showboating tourist. This is not the first time my mouth has gotten me into trouble––no surprise there––but it has never put my life in actual jeopardy before.
I don’t remember snowfall like this. Even though it has technically been eight years since I’ve lived here; I don’t remember anything like this at all. And here’s more bad news––it’s getting progressively worse the farther north of Albany I drive.
A two-hour trip turns into a hair-raising, anxiety-inducing four-and-a-half hour one, most of which is conducted in near whiteout conditions with me bent over the steering wheel, clutching it like it’s the last roll of toilet paper during a worldwide pandemic. The entire way I’m talking to the car. It’s all I can do to keep the nervous breakdown at bay.