“At the light, turn right onto Seventh Street.”
“Bloody, GPS. I already turned onto Seventh Street and then you brought me back here.”
Obstinate, yet obedient, Misty turned the wheel guiding the car back down Seventh. She slowed to a stop allowing a pair of pedestrians to cross the street illegally. One of the men had bright green hair, shaved into a Mohawk. The remaining hair had been twisted into spikes protruding down the middle of his head, greatly resembling some prehistoric dinosaur. The other man wore saggy pants and an equally saggy shirt, that revealed more than one tattoo carved into his person. Misty was careful to avoid eye contact with the men, peaking out of the corner of her eye at them, while double checking to make sure the car doors were in fact locked. The car was moving again before the men had stepped onto the sidewalk, soliciting an appraising look from both men.
Just ahead was Cadwell Street, one of downtowns main drags. It would have been a comfort to turn down that street, even with all the traffic it tended to produce. If the GPS insisted on repeating the same set of directions it had given Misty the first time, and it looked like that was more than a good possibility, Misty knew she would turning down Pinehurst. Not only was it an unfriendly street, but it was also temporary home to a broken down car that Misty had already passed by once.
“No,” Misty reassured herself “I’m sure they’ve gotten help by now.” Misty didn’t want to be considered a gawker, nor did she want to feel guilty for passing the family by, again. On her first pass a middle aged man, with dark hair, had waved at her, obviously asking her to stop. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and blue jeans, nothing too menacing there, but you couldn’t be too careful. Axe murders seldom look like axe murders, though they rarely toted their families around either. Misty’s knowledge of axe murders stretched no further than the movies she had seen, but those were enough. Fiction or no, the possibility seemed real enough, especially on a dark street, in a bad neighborhood. On passing the car, Misty had seen a woman in the front seat of the car bouncing a very unhappy baby in her lap. Instead of stopping Misty had accelerated.
“Sorry, but it sucks to be you.” She said without any rancor. It wasn’t meant to be a comment of cruelty, simply one of fact. Still, guilt pricked her as she recalled her words.
That had been her first time around this circle, though one might suppose the course she took was actually more rectangular in shape. The GPS gave the order to make the turn onto Pinehurst, shaking Misty back to the present and her own unfortunate situation. Being lost was one thing, being lost in an endless loop was quite another. Misty turned down Pinehurst, hoping in vain that the GPS would somehow magically produce the correct set of directions to the conference. For the last ten minutes her cellphone had been beeping at regular intervals. Text messages from her friends, no doubt wondering where she was. Misty hadn’t bothered to check the phone preferring to allow her friends to blow up her phone, while she kept two hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road.
As she made her way down Pinehurst she could see the broken down vehicle once again. The same man was standing on the curb, the same look of distress on his face. As she neared the vehicle, Misty saw a look of recognition register on his face. Given the general lack of traffic on this street Misty knew it was probable that the man recognized both car and driver. Recognition changed into hope and the man stepped from the curb once more, probably assuming that Misty’s return signaled rescue, it did not. Misty shook her head at the man, and once again hit the accelerator.
Why didn’t the family have a cellphone, Misty wondered to herself. These days it seemed like an anomaly that someone not have a cellphone. The beeping of her own phone had finally ceased and she gave it a small reassuring pat. Glancing at the GPS, Misty could see that she was in fact going to be making a circle. She decided to find a place to pull over on 27th Street, her next turn. It wasn’t much better than Pinehurst, only slightly. Misty’s inability to parallel park made life difficult in an area that demanded both residence and guests to be able to squeeze a car into the smallest spaces. If things continued the way they were in GPS hell, Misty knew she would take a right on 27th, then a right on Nantucket, then right back onto 7th. As if to confirm her fears the GPS piped up again.
“Travel 2.7 miles staying in the right lane. Turn right at the second stoplight onto Nantucket Street.”
In frustration Misty smacked the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. Damn it, now she would have to call her friends, how embarrassing. She had been so sure she could find the conference hall. She reached for her cellphone, but no sooner had she taken her hand off the wheel when an unfamiliar and somewhat frightening thunk noise starting coming from under her hood. Steam immediately followed the sound. By the grace of God, she managed to slide into an open spot, without too much squeezing and wheel turning involved. Disgusted Misty popped the hood only to release a plume of steam into the air. Cursing, she retrieved her cellphone. The phone, however, was black. The beeping she had heard earlier was not the comforting texting of friends checking her progress, but the sound of her cellphone alerting her to its impending death. Standing on the side of the road Misty thought, “Sucks to be me.”
