Engine Failure

Engine Failure

By

Peter Alexander James

It was the worst thing I’d ever said to a human being—and I said it to Lucy.

A heavy silence settled between us, underscored by the rain bouncing on our car’s roof and down our windshield. I glanced over to her; as I did, she hid her face in the collar of her jumper, breathing heavily to ease her urge to cry.

I turned away, but my gaze caught us smiling back at me from a picture on my keychain. It was taken on a road trip we had done a while back. The Nowhere Tour, she had called it. A surprise five-day road trip with no destination, purely to spend time together.

Lucy was always drawing up plans and adventures for us.

“Say yes to life,” she’d say, and grin that toothy grin, the same she had flashed me the night we met.

I often thought of the night we met. Especially when we were upset with each other.

We don’t argue more than other couples—if there is one silly thing we do argue about, it’s that I’m a washer, she’s a soaker.

I just wash the pots. She will allow them to soak in the sink as if our kitchen was a spa, and the pots were in need of a relaxing bath to the sweet sounds of Van Morrison.

But this wasn’t a silly kitchen squabble. It was a Saturday afternoon in the mall’s car park.

Again, I turned the key in the ignition.

The car churned and groaned but could only ignite the check engine symbol on the dashboard. She sighed as she pulled her face from her collar.

I flicked the key back and rested my head on the window. On the glass, I could feel the rhythmic tapping of the rain, like a metronome.

It was raining the night we met too. I’d left work late and was driving home. It was Halloween, so even though it was pouring down, the streets were buzzing with movie costumes and horror characters.

Stopping at a red light gave me a moment to enjoy the various characters stumbling about. As the light changed from red to yellow, my back door was yanked open, and a girl scooted across the back seats, pulling her drunken friend into the car. Another woman outside the car was pushing her in and saying her goodbyes.

I spun round. “Hey.”

“Don’t worry, she’s fine,” the first girl said. “She isn’t gonna throw up.”

The girl clipped her friend’s seatbelt and gently pushed her head against the window. She then looked back at me and gave me an address.

“I’m not a taxi!”

“I know, you’re our Uber.”

“I’m not an Uber either!”

“Why are you parked outside the bar then?”

“I was waiting at the lights?”

She looked around the car; when she realised her mistake, she started laughing. I did too.

As her laugh died down, she asked, “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

“If I were, would I tell you?”

“That would be the decent thing to do.”

“True, I’m not.”

“Promise?”

A car behind us honked, so I got into gear and drove through the green light. I thought about pulling over at the next safe place and getting them out, but as I looked in the rear mirror, this girl sent me the prettiest grin. It was toothy and so genuine that I felt my cheeks rush with heat.

“What’s your name?” she asked, leaning forward.

I told her mine, and she told me hers.

“Seems like you both had a great night, Lucy.”

“She did,” she said, nodding at her friend.

“You didn’t?”

“Nah, Halloween parties are always awful, but this one had its moments though.”

She pulled on the front passenger seat to get closer to me; I could feel her face close to mine as I drove.

“There was this annoying dead hippie guy that had kept that stereotypical hippie voice up all night. Until his girlfriend, the slutty cop, was caught making out with a death row prisoner in the coat room. Then he broke character and resorted to crying in his own voice.”

We giggled, and I answered, “Shame he broke character, I’d have respected that level of commitment to a role.”

“My thoughts exactly.” She touched my shoulder approvingly, then added, “Turn at the next right.”

I did as she asked and rolled to a halt at the given address. She unclipped her friend’s seatbelt; her friend moaned but didn’t wake.

“Look, I’ll give you some money if you could wait like ten minutes and take me a little further.”

“I don’t know, I shouldn’t really be doing this.”

“Say yes to life, _______,” she said, and again flashed me her grin.

I turned the car off without a word of protest. She pulled out her friend, and I watched as she supported her up to her apartment.

My hand traced the spot on my shoulder where she had touched me, and I couldn’t stop smiling, no matter how hard I tried.

As promised, she was back within ten minutes. She jumped in the front next to me.

“Thanks.” She fixed her seatbelt and gave me an address.

“Are you serious? That’s like five minutes from where I live?”

“Shut up, really? Do you know The Tiny Soldier?”

“The bar on the corner?”

“Yes.” She beamed.

“Yeah, but I’ve never been in; it looks terrible.”

“You have to! It is terrible! Wanna grab a drink? I’m buying.”

That night we drank bad beer in a crappy bar and listened to old country songs that seemed to crawl out of an old jukebox.

And I, I wouldn’t have wished to be anywhere else that night.

We talked for hours; she told me about how she played drums in a punk band, she read me her favourite poems, we shared the same music taste, and she could quote movies, like good movies.

“Can I see you again?” I asked, struggling to focus as the beers and the twinkle of the neon lights in her eyes were hitting me hard.

“I’m leaving town for a few weeks; I’m on the train to ______ tomorrow at 10.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” her smile dropped, and she started to pick at the label of her beer bottle.

“Need an Uber?” I asked.

And that was all it took.

From then on, I drove three hours every weekend, just to see her.

Some couples merge their savings, their book collection, even their friends. Lucy and I merged our playlists. Within the first six months of us hanging out, our playlist grew so long that we calculated we could drive to the border of Kazakhstan without hearing the same song twice.

Some days we drove without purpose, aim, or goal, just to listen to our playlist or chat about anything and everything. I remember how her eyes sparkled with glee when she played a newly acquired song. Her excitement bounced and spread throughout the car as light did when we passed street lamps.

We never had a bad drive. Not once. Not until today.

The light faded as darkness crept over the sky. The car park, now almost empty, was dyed a sickly orange hue by the exterior lights. I kept checking my phone for updates on when the tow truck would appear.

“It can’t be long now, are you cold?” I said, trying to produce a word from her lips.

She pulled her jacket tighter and stared out towards the parking lot.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” I murmured, staring blankly through our windshield.

Before I could say another word, a heavyset man running to his car to escape the rain distracted us. As he approached his car door, his feet skidded and slipped, toppling him backwards. He landed on his backside in a large puddle.

On our side of the windshield, Lucy broke first. She burst into a fit of laughter, and I followed. I’ll admit I laughed longer than I normally would. It was nice hearing the sound of her laughing, and I wanted it to last for as long as it could.

In the end, our laughter caused condensation to spread rapidly across the glass, and the windshield fogged over, obscuring the outside world and sealing us in.

As her laughter slowed, it gradually changed to something that hurt more than silence—sobbing. I leaned over and pulled her to me; she hid her face into my chest, her tears bleeding into my shirt.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

Her sobs faded until it was only silent tears, their stillness broken by small sniffs.

“Do you really think it was my fault?” she whispered into me, holding her breath for my answer.

“God no, sweetheart.”

I squeezed her tighter, as if I was trying to absorb those words back into me. I pulled her from my chest and looked into her face, searching for the eyes that had twinkled in the bar and sparkled on those long drives. They had to be somewhere behind the tears and the hurt.

“Mike and Sandra, they’re having a baby, a boy I think. Let’s give them his stuff, yea? Pass it on. We’re torturing ourselves going back to that shop. I couldn’t begin to explain that none of the clothes or toys are used,” I said, and let go of her to wipe a tear from my cheek.

Her face softened when she saw my tears. “What about us?” she sniffed. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re gonna hurt for a bit, sweetheart. Then we’re gonna go for a drive.”

I swallowed hard to fight the tears.

“I don’t know where, but we’ll get there, somehow.”