Time passes. I don’t know where he has gone. By agent, for some reason, I think he meant a news agent, and from his allusion to advice, I assume the news agent is some sort of worldly friend. More time. He does not return. I park my car in a better spot, further from the curve. The town, it occurs to me, is absolutely still. I look for the news dealer, find him, ask where the truck driver might have gone. The man is oddly evasive at first, seems to know nothing about the truck, the driver, or the events, for that matter, which have just taken place, in that stillness, on a curve just a few yards from his door. He waits. Suddenly, he says, Perhaps he’s gone to the police station. I ask where that is. And though the street is the only one in town, and though it has on each side at most ten small buildings, either he, and the other people in his shop, and two people I subsequently ask are incapable of giving directions, or I am too rattled and obtuse to follow them, but I cannot find the police station. More time. I walk more slowly. I notice a doorway over which there is a small blue porcelain medallion, lettered, perhaps in Gaelic. The windows are dark. The door is locked; it has no handle; and when I knock there’s no reply. Twenty more minutes. I’ve walked the length of the town, several times, returning always to the truck. I wonder how I’m going to manage without my rental agreement, but I give up. I start to walk, again, toward my car, when the truck driver comes out of I don’t know which door. Where have you been? I ask, in an almost apologetic voice. He says, I’ve been to the agent, for his advice, it’s all taken care of, there’s no harm done. Although, for some reason, I still don’t altogether distrust him, I say, You know, I’ll need that rental agreement back. He’s been walking toward his truck. He says, It’s all right, I believe the agent has it. And his eyes shift briefly, involuntarily, toward the doorway under the medallion. The door is now slightly open. I walk toward it. The driver turns to follow me, runs. We enter almost at the same moment.
At the right of the room, which is small and almost completely dark, sits a policeman, writing, by the light of a small lamp, in a huge, lined ledger, at a wooden desk. The back of the room is dark, with, darker still, in outline, what appear to be three chairs. At no moment so far, not at the airport, not when I thought I was lost, not even when I heard the slap of bumper and fender, or in the long wait since, have I felt the slightest rush of adrenaline. Now, for some reason, I’m a little out of breath. The policeman says, It’s all right, ma’am, it’s taken care of. I say, almost accustomed now to not understanding and feeling somehow remiss, Well, officer, how do you mean? He is wearing his helmet, and writing in his ledger. He says, We’ve already rung the rental agency, and they have said they’ll pay. I say, No, don’t you see, I didn’t sign for their insurance. Under the agreement, I’m the one who has to pay. The policeman continues writing, says, It’s all right, ma’am, I’ve spoken to them, and I’m nearly finished. I say, Well, in that case, don’t you see, officer, I’ll need your name, and the driver’s, and a copy of your report. It’s all right, ma’am, the policeman says, I’ve nearly finished it. I say, But you haven’t seen my car or even the truck. He does not reply. I say, Surely you’re going to come and see the truck. As though this were a new thought to him, he gets up reluctantly from behind the desk. His helmet has been on the whole time. And I am still, or again, deluded, perhaps because they both seem so slow and unintelligent, with a kind of idiot trust. At the door, the driver, perhaps by now embarrassed, says, The damage of course is nothing. I just didn’t want them coming after me about your car. In this matter of the commas. In this matter of the paragraphs. In this matter of the scandal at the tennis courts. Not right here, I think, not now.
We walk to the truck. When the policeman finally sees, after I’ve pointed it out to him, that the bumper is bent, he starts to press his own foot against it, pauses, steps back, says to the driver, I guess you’ll want to bend that back. The driver, sensing perhaps a loss of allegiance, looks at us both and says, very slowly, I’ll want to get an estimate. The policeman, as though recollecting himself, says, He’ll want to get an estimate. I say, Look, since I’m responsible, why don’t we go together for an estimate, and I’ll just pay. Silence. The driver says, Oh, I can’t go now. I ask when he might be able to go. He looks away and says he can’t say at the moment. Beginning at last to get an intimation, I say, Why don’t you simply tell me your own estimate of the damages, and perhaps I could pay it to you now. He hesitates, seems to calculate, says, No, I’m afraid I couldn’t do that. The policeman has been standing there, looking off into the distance. I ask, either of them really, what I ought to do. I ask whether I oughtn’t to see the truck driver’s license. No reply. I look toward the policeman. He asks me when I’ll be going back to the United States. I say, Friday, or Saturday. He says to the driver, Why don’t you give the lady your phone number, and she can call you Friday afternoon. I say, That’s fine, but you know, I really ought to have his license number. The policeman says, I’ll just write his phone number down for you; asks the driver; writes it down at his dictation. They walk away, as though the matter were at an end. I say, Officer, I think I’ll need that rental agreement, if you’ve finished with it. He says, I returned it to you, I believe. I say, Maybe we left it at the station; and start walking toward the door. I have been standing, as it happens, further from the truck and nearer the station, than either of them. The rental agreement is lying beside the ledger, on the desk. I take it. There is a moment of tension. Then the policeman says, He will have that estimate for you Friday afternoon. The driver smiles. We walk back to the road. As we part, the driver climbs into his cab, smiles again, and says, oddly, You have my word.
Quanta, Amy said, on the train, in that blizzard, in answer to my question. Hello, this is Medea. Wasn’t always. Well, he asked for me, you inquired after me, at the conference in the Motel on the Mountain. The motel has since become, what does it matter what it has since become. I don’t think they hold conferences there. It is where we began.
Driving onward, I simply do not understand it. What word. Why no exchange of license numbers. There was an undertone, certainly of complicity, but what could possibly have been the underlying calculation? It did not seem, after all, so very cagey to have given me his phone number; better, in some ways, I would have thought, to ask for mine. It was fobbed off, I suppose, in lieu of the driver’s license, and of the policeman’s actual report. But to what end? I still tend to mistake their apparent lack of intelligence or competence for guilelessness. The policeman never even looked at my car; and if they were planning, for instance, to say that I’d hit and run, why write out the phone number in the officer’s own hand? But I do know this: that I ought not to be in the hands of the driver, and the rental agency, and the estimator, for what I’ll have to pay. At one point, the driver had said, You know, the damage could be as much as twenty or forty or eighty pounds. I said, surely not as much as that. The policeman said, with a little laugh, You don’t know our Irish repairmen. They may have to replace the entire bumper with a new one. And even then, the driver had rejected my offer to pay, whatever it cost, right then and there. I don’t know what to do. I would normally call the rental agency, but if the officer has really already called them, that seems redundant; and why was I not called in, why did he not call them in my presence, or look at my car? I have an odd feeling that somehow they do plan to say I’ve hit and run. But that can’t be right. Not when I have that phone number in his handwriting. I know I now need to find an honorable repairman, who will not look at the rental sticker, and proceed to think, as the driver thought, of the agency’s insurance. The car, after all, is not due back at the agency for a week. Maybe somebody at the castle will know a repairman. Or maybe Captain Walton, whom the ambassador had mentioned as a special friend and neighbor. I have a small intimation now of danger, and of being, within seconds, entirely at the mercy of unfamiliar people. And I think, Thank goodness it was nothing serious; from one minute to the next everything is changed.