October 16 - You're driving in your car

The wet light on the pavement was thin and shimmering in the rain. She was fairly sure she shouldn’t be driving, but she couldn’t remember why. Rain sleeted down against her windshield and the wipers whipped to and fro with ferocity, making a thudding whomp whomp sound with each rotation of the tires. Her fingers flexed nervously against the wheel.

“I shouldn’t be driving,” she said out loud, then began to sing along to the radio, a tune from the seventies that reminded her of college and sit-ins and wearing her hair down to her butt. Shouldn’t be driving, but she was, and she remembered why now. She had gone to the bar with Bill, and he had laughed over his first bottle of Stella, his second, his fourth, his sixth. On his seventh, he had growled at her to shut up when she tried to make a joke. On the eighth, he had lunged across the table and grabbed her collar so her sweater tightened about her windpipe. She liked when he did that at the moment of orgasm; not in public. He had stuffed his face close to hers, the alcohol fumes leaking from the sweat on his brow.

“Bill,” she had choked in protest. People had averted their eyes then, as they did when, on his tenth beer, he grabbed her bicep roughly and pulled her into the hallway that led towards the restrooms, slamming her head against the wall.

“Don’t you dare look at him,” Bill had ordered. Look at who, look at who, she had pled, because she hadn’t been looking at anybody, but Bill didn’t believe her. “I’ll fucking kill you if you look at him again.”

Bill was scary drunk.

So the moment he got up to order his twelfth beer, she snatched up the car keys, got in the car, and she drove. It was either leave with him and risk a beating, or leave without him and risk the road.

Whomp whomp went the wipers. Sheila squinted because she knew she was drunk, and the rain looked like it was shooting up from the pavement, not splattering down onto it, and it made her dizzy. She was glad no one else was on the road, and she decided if she just drove slowly, she’d make it home okay.

A burst of red entered her vision, and she saw the cop lights behind her.

“Shit, oh shit.” She considered putting pedal to the metal like they did in chase movies, but knew she’d end up in a ditch. She inched to the side of the road and grimaced when the officer tapped on her window.

“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked casually, snapping bubblegum in his teeth.

“I’d say a bit over the speed limit, officer,” she said with a guilty hiccough.

He frowned. “Fifteen miles per hour. In a forty zone.”

“Oh.” She blinked and couldn’t decide where his suit ended and the air behind him began. She considered grinning to show her contrition. The cop snapped his gum again.

“You’re driving in your car.”

“Yes, officer,” Sheila agreed. “I can see that.”

“But you’re wasted.”

Sheila raised a protesting hand, waved it around in front of his face. “No you see… You don’t understand. My boyfriend, he was threatening me back there in the bar, and I thought I’d be safer, see, to risk driving” – shouldn’t have used the word risk – “than to go with him, see, so I… See?” He didn’t look like he saw. Or he looked, his eyes wet and vapid, staring into the neckline of her sweater. Sheila coughed, tugged it up a bit higher, but his hand snaked out and grabbed hers until her fingers let go.

“That’s better, see,” he said. Snap snap went the gum. Whomp whomp went the wipers. “Now let’s say you and I here make a deal.” The officer said finally. Sheila squirmed in the car seat.

“A deal?”

“I’ll let you off without a ticket or an arrest or any of that nonsense, if you do me a favor tonight. All right, sweetheart?”

“Favor?” Sheila was sure she was supposed to understand, but the sound of the wipers was giving her a headache. She raised a hand to her temple. The police officer was unbuckling his belt. She watched in horror as the zipper flap opened and he fell out to hang in front of her face like a limpid noodle, the wrinkled skin shining in the streetlight. Sheila shook her head.

“No thank you, officer,” she stammered, suddenly feeling a bit more sober. “I think I’d like to drive on home now. Or drag me into the station if you must.”

“Aw, go on now,” he said, his voice suddenly soft. “Bill won’t mind.”

Something he had said tugged at her. She thought she had it, groped for it, it was gone again. The rain sounded very loud on the windshield.

“...and if you don’t,” the officer was saying, “I’ll tell him you did anyway. And I don’t think Bill would like that any. Can’t imagine what he might do to you.”

That was it. She sat up straighter. “How do you know his name?” she asked. “I never told you his name.” The silence was filled by the rain drops. Sheila saw him, then. Remembered the man who had sat with one leg up on a chair most of the night, in the corner, slowly nursing a pint of Guinness, no more than two or three all evening, watching over the rim as Bill had laughed, watching as he had grabbed her sweater, watching as he had slammed her head into the hallway wall. He knew. He had known she was drunk when she got in her car, and followed her this far because he knew he’d find her here on the empty road, and he knew she had no choice.

Risk speeding away drunk in the dark or risk what this man will say to Bill if I don’t.

She leaned her head forward. “Go on now,” said the officer. “There’s a good girl.”