Carried Away - P. Dangelico Page 0,8
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.
“What a good girl you are. So handy and brave…Look at you, defying the odds…They said she couldn’t do it, but she persisted…”
Only by the grace of God do I somehow make the turn onto 73 west headed toward downtown Lake Placid. It feels like a race with time; the closer I get to my destination the more brutal the conditions get.
Inching my way down the two-lane highway, the snow banked up the sides gets higher and higher until it closes in around me and I can’t see the road anymore.
That’s when all hell breaks loose.
It happens very fast and simultaneously very slowly––like I’m stuck in a bad Fast And Furious take. The little orange car that can just can’t do it anymore. As my heart pounds with fuel-injected fear, the Cube starts fishtailing, the back wheels spinning and spinning. I freeze, unconsciously holding my breath, because doing anything else is beyond my pay grade.
This is where