“These will be perfectly fine roads,” Katharine said. “They’ll just be more real, that’s all.”
I too was sick of the Interstates, and was not at all eager to repeat yesterday afternoon’s grinding experience of driving hour after hour directly into the sun, but on the other hand I knew this was simply another of Katharine’s stalling techniques, and I thought the only honorable thing to do under the circumstances was be devil’s advocate, so I said, “Katharine, you’re just trying to delay things a little more.”
“No, I’m not. This wouldn’t be much longer at all. In the first place, Route 70 does this long loop around to the north, and we’d be going straight west, and a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.”
“I’ve heard that someplace.”
Ignoring my dumb levity, she said, “And in the second place, you know how the cities always slow us down, and Denver would be the same thing. If we take one of these roads — see them? — if we take one of them, we’ll bypass all the big cities. Denver to the north, and Colorado Springs to the south. Then we’d connect up with Route 70 again somewhere on the other side.” Putting the road map down, she said, “Come on, Tom, let’s get off the highway for a while.”
I was weakening. In fact, I was defeated, though I fought back feebly one last time: “Call Barry,” I said. “Try the idea on him. If he says it’s okay, then it’s okay with me.”
“Come on, Tom,” she said. “You know I can get Barry to say yes.”
“I just want you to go through the process.”
“You just want to avoid the responsibility,” she said accurately, and went away to twist Barry around her little finger.
27
The cab wouldn’t start. Here we were with dry clothes on our bodies and clean clothes in our luggage, the rain replaced by wet shiny sunlight, the newly clean taxi gleaming like a Technicolor movie, and the damn thing refused to start. “Grind, grind,” it said, and then, ominously, it said, “Click.” It had never done that before. I released the key, then turned it again, and once again the starter said, “Click.” I waited, holding the key in the ignition, but the starter had nothing else it wanted to say at this time.
Katharine, up front with me, frowned and said, “Something wrong?”
“Maybe not,” I said, inanely. I manipulated the key twice more, being rewarded with one additional “click” each time, then finally gave it up and sat back to give the dashboard a look of dislike.
“What is it?”
“The starter,” I said. “Or it could be something in the electrical system, but I think it’s the starter. Here we are in Fat Chance, Colorado, on a Sunday, in a Checker cab, and we’re going to need a new starter, or a new generator, or some damn new thing, and a mechanic to put it into the car, and I think we’re in trouble.”
“Oh, dear,” she said.
“I’m sorry about this.”
“It isn’t your fault.” She gazed forlornly out the windshield at what was essentially an alien land; that is to say, a typical American town. “Barry’s going to be so upset.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I offered.
She considered that, then slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll have the mechanic talk to him. That is, if we find one. Let’s see if there’s a phonebook in the laundromat.”
There was; a tiny thing, about the size of an expensive paperback edition of Romeo and Juliet, with a small round hole in the upper left corner through which a long dirty string tied it to a nail in the counter under the payphone on which Katharine had just extorted Barry’s agreement to our change of route. In the yellow pages at the back of this book I found Automobile Repairing & Svce, phoned All Ready, Best Bros, Deep River Recking, Folonari, Kahn-Do, Kuhn’s Kwality Svce, Motor Hotel, Pinetop Highway Garage and Smith’s Svce, where at last a ringing phone was answered, by someone with a pleasant but gruff voice, saying, “More trouble.”
“That’s right,” I said. “My car quit. I think it’s the starter.”
“Does it go gruh-gruh-gruh?” The sound he made was uncannily like a car when the battery is low.
“No,” I said. “It goes click.”
“Sounds like the starter,” he admitted. “For openers, you’re gonna need a tow.”
“For starters,” I punned. Or tried to.
“You’ll need one a them, too, like as not. What make? Nothing foreign, I hope.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “One hundred percent American.”
“Well,” he said carefully, “nothing’s one hundred percent American anymore. What are you driving, my friend?”
“Nothing at the moment. Until it stopped, a Checker.”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“A Checker,” came the subdued voice.
“It’s American,” I pointed out, rather defensively.
“So’s Bigfoot,” he said, rallying, “but I never seen one. Checker Marathon, eh?”
“Well, sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“Checker taxi, actually. It’s about the same as a Marathon, a few alterations. Nothing under the hood, I think.”
“One Bigfoot’s about the same as another,” he said. “Where is this creature?”
“Parked about two doors away from the Atomic Laundromat. I don’t know what street, it’s—”
“I know where it is. Yellow taxi?”
“That’s right.”
“Just like in the movies. Be there in ten minutes.”
“Thanks,” I said, and hung up, and stood frowning at the phone.
Katharine was watching my profile, and after a moment she said, “Well? What do you think?”
“I think,” I said, “either he’s going to be the most wonderful experience of our lives, or the worst disaster ever to befall a helpless New York City Checker taxicab.”
28
The towtruck driver wasn’t the same person I’d talked to on the phone, I knew that the instant I saw him, with his skinny body and his small oval head and his big mouth full of huge mismatched teeth. And it was confirmed an instant later when he spoke, in a high-pitched nasal voice, saying, “You the fella with the taxi?”
“That’s right, Jerry,” I said. He was wearing one of those dark green workshirts with your name in red script in a white oval on your left breast. His said Jerry.
Jerry pointed at the cab; the only yellow Checker taxicab in the state, probably, and certainly the only one in sight. “This it?”
“Sure is,” I said. Was his partner going to be this smart? The fellow’d sounded sort of all right on the phone, but Jerry was increasing my sense of unease.
In any event, Jerry understood the workings of his own towtruck, and in less time than you could say “Jack Robinson” twice he’d hooked up, invited us into our cab for the journey, and we found ourselves sailing along through town with nothing in front of us but our own up-tilted hood; as though we were in some land-based variant of the motorboat.
“I’ve never traveled like this before,” Katharine said, looking out cheerfully at the rain-fresh sidewalks, waving to children who giggled and waved back. “It’s sort of fun.”
“I have,” I said. “And it’s never been fun before. Of course, the other times it’s always meant lost time and lost money.”
“It’s still lost time,” she said, with a sunny smile.
“You’re incorrigible,” I told her.
Smith’s Svce was a big sprawling concrete block building painted white and surrounded by blacktop. Gas pumps were in front, wheeled display racks filled with tires were to one side, and a lot of disreputable looking automobiles were parked here and there around the fringes. We stopped between the pumps and the building, Jerry yelled for us to get out, and out we climbed, down onto the blacktop, blinking in the sunlight and looking around.