This is a work of fiction and any resemblance by any character or situation to any actual person or event is purely coincidental. All characters presented in this narrative are over the age of 18.
Chapter Three
It was a fitful night, sleep captured in swatches of maybe an hour or 90 minutes at a time as the brutal cold and the intermittent noise of pissed-off motorists outside intruded mercilessly on our efforts to remain warm and conserve body heat while stretching our precious, limited fuel supply for the duration -- however long that might be.
You'd think that by 1 a.m., drivers of cars that had been stranded and immobilized on the frozen stretch of interstate for what had already been eight or more hours might have figured out that yelling and honking horns was the height of futility, but ...
Then again, there were Good Samaritans, people offering to share what they had and help out those who were in worse shape. One man stuck in the queue a hundred yards or so ahead of us was checking on cars to see if anyone had run out of fuel or had old people or young children and needed to take shelter in the warmth of his RV, replete with propane burners. A trucker some distance ahead who was hauling a load of bread offered to share some of his cargo with those with nothing to eat.
It was the best of humanity and the basest of it at the same time.
Around 12:30, I had awakened with a raging need to piss. That Lisa was asleep lying against me applying added pressure to my bladder didn't help. I jostled her awake and told her I needed to avail myself to the same arrangement she had used earlier in the night to create a patch of yellow ice just outside the Expedition's passenger-side door.
Given our anatomical differences and my considerably lower regard for modesty, I told Lisa she could remain in the relative warmth of the cabin while I used the two doors absent the blanket to form an impromptu urinal stall in the great outdoors and loose a steaming stream toward the shoulder of the road without dropping my trousers.
The temperature reading on the dash said 14 degrees. And when I opened the driver's side door to walk over the crunchy frozen-slush surface, the cold took my breath away. I stood behind the passenger side front door and in front of the right rear door facing away from Lisa, unzipped, fought through two layers of undergarments to find my spigot and let fly. The groan of relief at my long-overdue micturition is something Lisa didn't find endearing.
"Gross," she said. "Are you urinating or climaxing?"
"I could always turn around and show you," I retorted.
"Hard pass," she said.
I zipped up -- much to the relief of my shrinking member -- and hustled back to the other side of the truck.
"We should rethink how we're arranging ourselves," I told Lisa. The steering wheel was interfering with the ability of both of us to recline and your ability to stretch out, I told her. We might be more comfortable in the back seat where we could cover ourselves more thoroughly and efficiently and better share warmth when the engine was off by spooning. She saw the logic in it, and we shifted from the front to the back. As soon as we closed and locked the doors, I started the engine again with the keyless fob and let the cabin warm up. We used the occasion for a midnight snack of ham-biscuits, Tostitos and Diet Coke, As the warmth permeated the interior of the SUV, the event felt more like a cross between a picnic and a pajama party -- the two of us seated facing one another with the food laid out on a paper sack in the seat between us. We listened to WTOP's continuing live coverage of the event and news that Virginia State Police and VDOT crews were hampered in reaching disabled or wrecked vehicles by the worsening road conditions and the sheer volume of vehicles clogging the road and its ramps. The upshot: no relief in sight and the National Guard had not been activated.
The news wasn't received gladly, but at least by now we had a sense of confidence that we had a plan for coping until whenever help did arrive.
Tiring of the discouraging news, we switched over to the vehicle's Bluetooth controls and turned on Lisa's Spotify shuffle, heavy on old blues music which I found strangely enjoyable, considering my predilection for country. I expected Lisa, now wide awake with the caffein from a Diet Coke in her belly, to resume her chatterbox role from the daylong drive, but she was remarkably sedate, perhaps a little bit resigned.
"You ever been in love, Jake?" she asked. The question threw me. I shrugged.
"Oh ... I was engaged once a couple of years ago. Was that love? I don't know. Probably not because we didn't go through with it and I'm honestly glad now that we didn't. It became clear to the both of us that we weren't right for each other," I said pensively. "Why do you ask."
"Just curious, I guess," she said. "I keep trying to figure out what this is between Peter and me. There are days when I can see us together and days like ...
this
. I can't say it's love. I can't make my heart believe it is."
"Then it probably isn't," I said. "So you suspect he's seeing someone else?"
"I don't know for sure, but it feels like it. The other night at the Peach Bowl, he kept checking his phone and wandering off somewhere to either talk of text. I asked him who he was talking to and he said it was work. I suppose that's possible, but at nine o'clock on New Year's Eve?" she said, shaking her head. "And when he was sitting there beside me, it's like his mind was a billion miles away."
"Well, he's an Ivy Leaguer, so they don't take their football seriously," I mused. She replied with a
Hmmph
.
"We've been dating for almost two years now. There are times when he'd go dark and I'd hardly see him for a month or more. I know he works for a defense contractor and that he sometimes has crazy hours and has to keep a lot of what he does secret, but ...," she said, shaking her head. "Something's off."
"You going to confront him? Sounds like time for a frank face-to-face," I said.