When Kellen drops me off at AJ's at 6:19 PM he casts a glance toward the office and scowls. "Good luck with Stu. You got my number, right?"

I nod.

"If that asshole don't give you back your car, you can stay at my place tonight."

"He doesn't seem that bad."

Kellen rolls his eyes then drives away.

I squint up at the sky, watching the sun trying to burn its way through the clouds. I cross the cracked asphalt lot to the small brick office building. The air smells of cars baking in the unforgiving heat. I step over puddles of oil, gasoline, and automotive fluids like shiny multi-colored ovals. Through the front window, I see Stu leaning against a faded green file cabinet, using his index finger like a Q-Tip to clean his ear. He studies the clump of wax on the tip of his finger as I enter the office.

"I'm here for my car."

"Didn't think you were here to pick up your dry cleaning," he responds with a heavy dollop of sarcasm.

"Robiski. Phil Robiski."

He wipes his finger on his pants, adding yet another mark on his grease-stained saggy jeans shorts, then pulls open the file drawer. 

"Let's see here. You got your tow, your impound fee. Then twenty-five a day for the first five, forty-five after that." He punches numbers into a plastic desk calculator the size of a placemat. 

He scratches his hairy leg with a pen he withdraws from his shirt pocket. 

"So that brings you to sixteen hundred and eighty-five bones."

Bones? What is this? 1956?

"And we don't take no credit cards. Check or cash only."

"Fine. So I make the check out to who?"

"George Washington. Who the hell do you think?" He takes an aggressive tone. Kellen was right. Stu is an asshole.

"Do I make it out to AJ's? AJ's Towing and Car Hostage Lot? Just give me a name."

"AJ's Towing Yard will be hunky-dory."

Hunky-dory? 

I take a check from my wallet. 

"You got a pen I can use?"

He snatches the pen out of his shirt pocket but instead of handing it to me, he slams it on the desk. "What the hell is it with people like you? Come in here like Toot In Comma, and got no idea how to transact."

Toot in Comma? Seriously? Does he mean Tutankhamun? How does that even make sense? Why would King Tut come to a place like this? And what's the connection between an ancient mummified Egyptian king and being unprepared to write a check? There's no point in trying to connect the dots. Stu is a bona fide idiot. 

I fill out the check as fast as I can.

"Here. Here you go. Sixteen hundred and eighty-five bones."

He reads the check. 

"So how about the keys?" I extend my hand.

"You got yourself one additional problem that starts with wind and ends with shield."

"For God's sake!" I clench my fists. There's an auto glass place right down the street. I can practically see it from here."

"You don't hear too good, do you, Mister Robilatilski? No mechanical or body work permitted on the lot. Period."

"Can't we make an exception?" I offer a twenty-dollar-bill. He turns up his bulbous nose, crosses his tattooed arms over his shrunken chest and growls, "Rules is rules." 

Miraculously, the rules go out the window when I wave a fifty-dollar-bill in his face. Stu sells out for fifty bones.

I exit the office with phone-in-hand. I call the windshield repair place and, to no one's surprise, they're not busy. The guy says he'll be here in ten minutes. I find my car parked a short distance away at the end of the second row.

While waiting for the repairman to arrive, with my hand, I sweep small pieces of tempered glass and Cheez-It crumbs from the front seats. When I move to the back seat I am immediately aware of a pungent odor, an organic smell markedly different from the smell of the Trollamex chemical still embedded in the fabric of my car's interior. My guess is that it's raccoon urine or some other secretion from an animal in a heightened state of alert. The seats will probably need to be replaced. This smell is never coming out.

As the windshield repair truck enters the lot, I notice a rusted hacksaw blade protruding from beneath my passenger seat. I can't remove it. It's ensnared. I reach under the seat and feel an object made of fabric wrapped around the length of metal and the seat rails. Springs and sharp metal parts scratch my hand as I struggle to free the hacksaw blade. I discover that it's tangled in the straps of an old flesh-colored bra. 

The repairman exits his truck just in time to see me emerge from my car holding a metal blade with a stained bra, like a discount lingerie flag on a short rusted pole. Thankfully, he decides that the best course of action is to ignore it and begin the process of measuring the windshield frame. I toss the impaled bra beneath the car parked beside mine and jog to the office.

"I need the washroom," I say to Stu as I rush in.

"Don't use up all the tissue," he snorts. "TP don't grow on trees."

 I scrub my hands several times with soap and hot water trying not to think of how the bra ended up in the scrap barrel in the back of that truck bed. But I can't prevent disturbing thoughts from running through my mind. Please don't tell me that someone lost their bra during a frenzied hacksawing incident. 

                                                                                               #######

6:45 PM. I'm driving north on Route 77, heading home with only one functioning headlight. Through my newly installed windshield, I watch my mangled hood vibrating with each bump in the road. The bungee cord securing my hood to the front bumper strains with every bounce. I hope it holds tight for another hundred miles. 

The remaining pine air fresheners gently swing back and forth from my rearview mirror and door handles. With the windshield installed, the stench of the Trollamex chemical is far more pronounced. It's stifling. I roll down my windows.

I pull into a rest stop just off the highway. I'm not really hungry but I adhere to the motto of the highway traveler: You don't eat when you're hungry, you eat when you see food. 

                                                                                                #######

When I exit the men's room feeling a half-quart lighter, I notice a group of people staring at a television set affixed to the wall. They're watching news footage of a crowd of protesters confronted by a small army of law enforcement officers dressed in riot gear. 

The news report then cuts to a woman in a fitted navy blue blazer whose black hair appears to be lacquered to her skull. She's identified as Defense Commander, Resettlement Operations, Mother of Dragons. She snarls, "These ungrateful monkeys and cockroaches are knowingly violating the law and will suffer the consequences of their actions."

Wait. What? She's referring to American citizens as ungrateful monkeys and cockroaches? I turn to the man beside me who wears a placid expression as though he's watching a cooking demonstration. The woman standing at his shoulder is equally spiritless. In fact, no one in the small crowd demonstrates any human reaction to the news broadcast.

On the screen, a man wearing dark aviator sunglasses says, "These people were all given notice to evacuate the state of Utah. These buildings are no longer their homes. They don't get that? This is what happens when you don't speak English."

I'm infuriated. But, apparently, I'm the only one. Forget the food. I need to get out of here. I need to go home. I jog out of the rest stop and cross the parking lot to my car.

Whatever happened to basic human decency, behavior that conforms to accepted standards of respectability and morality? The word "decent" has been co-opted. It now refers to a hamburger, or a football player, or a television show. It certainly doesn't apply to a government official who calls people monkeys and cockroaches. Ungrateful monkeys and cockroaches. Why should they be grateful for being thrown out of their homes? 

I feel my pulse throbbing in my temples when I start the car and pull onto the highway.

Headlights in my rearview mirror attract my attention. A black sedan merges onto the interstate from the rest stop parking lot. It looks like the same car that was parked near mine. I didn't get a look at the driver. Is this guy following me?

Okay, I can admit that I'm feeling paranoid. But with good reason. Someone had eyes on me when I broke loose and took off on my road trip to nowhere. I was being surveilled. There's no other explanation. I threw my cell phone out the window, so they couldn't have used a phone tracker. So how did they record those interviews with Kellen's ex-boss and that Katz guy who was ready to beat me to a pulp for not taking my kid to Disney World? I wonder if they're going to interview Stu? Someone has been following me. Someone like that guy in the black car behind me. 

I accelerate and steer into the left lane. I pass a pickup truck and a motor home. Just as I pull back into the right lane I see him. The black sedan duplicates my maneuver. I swing out into the passing lane again and stomp the gas pedal. I pass a half dozen vehicles. I look down at the speedometer and see that I'm driving at almost 90 miles an hour. I better slow down. The last thing I need is another encounter with the police. I decelerate and steer into the right lane. There he is in my rearview mirror just a few cars behind me. The guy in the black sedan.

                                                                              #######

9:21 PM, I steer into the driveway in front of my house. I throw the car into park and I freeze, my eyes glued to the rearview mirror. The porch lights come on.

I get out of my car and look down the dark street. I don't see the black car.

Megs jogs outside to greet me. Her eyes are drawn to the deformed hood and the bungee cord.

One of your headlights is out," she says. "But I can see that's the least of your problems. When you said damaged, I had no idea." She sighs. She covers her nose and mouth. "Oh, my God! What's that smell?"

I can't contain myself. "What is happening in Utah? I don't understand why people aren't rioting in the streets."

"Let's not talk about Utah, okay?" Megan says in a soothing tone. "Wasn't it the Utah situation that set you off in the first place?"

Before I can respond, Jilly-bean, dressed in pajamas, skitters through the front door out to the driveway. Her smile wilts when she approaches the car.

"It looks like a dinosaur stepped on your car."

"Yeah, it kinda does."

Megs says, "Aren't you supposed to be in bed, young lady?"

I feel my phone vibrate in my back pocket. Maybe it's a missed call from Carl. I check for messages. Oh, crap. It's a 2-word email. From Brenna. It says: Call me.

Gulp.

"Uh," I stammer. "You know what? I'm gonna get some gas."

"You just got home." Megs' brow furrows.

"Yeah, but I'd rather do it now than mess around with that in the morning."

I feel Megs' suspicious eyes on me as I get into my car.