Part 3 |
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Friday came and so did the snow. Roads closed, schools closed, drifts came up to my knees and I wondered if I'd hear the call that we'd have to reschedule again... but hark! I am not the only crazy one on the road! The buyer comes with his father and a check and a shovel and all is right with the world only two hours after our scheduled time-frame but I could care less for he has come to take the Demon Car away! 
"Can I borrow a screwdriver?" I wonder if I'm just stupid for following the rules. According to my husband and both fathers, the answer is "Yes" while my agent, my mothers and my sister say "No." Says something about the world of law, but I can't make out what that might be. The Demon Car is gone! Right then: now that the minor miracle of satisfying all aspects of state law had passed, I was on my way to purchasing my new vehicle. Jon and I left for New York far later than we should have and, since we somehow lost the direct route while spacing-out mid-drive, arrived far far later than we should have...somewhere around 3:30 AM. Not a good time for clear thinking, which is probably why both of us failed to set an alarm. 
The sun shone brightly down upon our heads, bathing the guest room in its golden glow (which was normal seeing as it was 10:00 AM). Jon's first words were, "Did you call the dealer yet?" Thanks, hon. "No, I just woke up too." I groaned. I was the quicker for getting out of bed, giving kisses and greetings to Dad and then munching on real New York bagels for breakfast. Dad would drive us over to the dealers and we'd be able to hit the road by noon. Jon's one request was to be able to visit his foreign host family, a couple who adopted him during his year abroad in Asia, who were now living in Queens. I had an uneasy feeling about the timing, but Jon assured me that we could visit for an hour before leaving with plenty of time to get to the theater. With nothing more than queasy gut-feeling, I acquiesced. Stupid, stupid me. The dealership turned out to be the elderly couple's home, the car turned out to be a solid black box which, while not exactly what I had envisioned, was at least a vehicle which ran smoothly and did not fall to pieces -- perfect by me! I signed the papers, turned the key in the ignition and headed for the open road. My plan of attack for the perils of infamous New York driving was simple: stick like glue onto Jon's back fender and stay there. (This plan worked 90% of the time, the other 10% found me cursing in panic as folks drove sideways to cut us off or Jon disappeared through a yellow light around a corner, not to be seen again for minutes at a time. A few hysterical outbursts clarified that right up and he slowed down to a crawling "Midwestern speed.") |
Queens is a myriad of twists and turns mostly consisting of one-way roads going just the opposite way of where we wanted to go. The rat-maze ate more time than we wished, but we were able to share a smile, some tea and some deep-fried biscuit-thingies (?) before we had to apologize for needing to go since the show began at 3:00 PM. We all walked to the door and stopped. Jon was searching his many pockets for the keys, but couldn't find them and a contagious panic was upon us. He emptied each coat pocket, each pant pocket, nothing. He tromped back upstairs and searched his seat, the floor, the bathroom: nothing. We tromped out to the car: nothing along the way, couldn't see anything in the car (even with Jon standing on the hood and peering in)... he began rifling through his pockets again. I had the sinking feeling I knew why I didn't want to make this stop before the show. "Do you have them?" he suddenly turned on me. Now we were both annoyed and keenly aware the clock was ticking past our mark. "Well," he said, "we can either make the show or not." Into the new car, sans plates or a New-Yorker driver, we drove along in silence broken by a smattering of jokes that at least we were in one car and at least we were together and at least this would make another lively Grumble article and so on. Optimism swelled even as we passed 3:15 and headed deeper into half-past. That's when we realized neither of us remembered the address of the theater -- the information was still locked in Jon's car. Refusing to give up, we remembered the name of the Imperial Theatre and the number 110. Guessing it was on 110th street (turned out to be wrong...) was our only lead. At every stoplight, we'd ask a cab. Jon spied a Barnes & Noble, so I pulled over and hit the blinkers. As minutes ticked away, I relieved my anxiety by getting out and asking other cabs and then passers-by. A Yuppie couple in smart fur coats knew where the Imperial was... downtown in the Theater District absolutely nowhere near Uptown in the Financial District, which is where we were at present. The young woman whipped out her cell phone and dialed information as the man kindly explained how to get there. "You're not from around here right? Jersey?" "Um...No." (I must have missed the obvious ramifications of New England regionalism.) Jon marched out at that moment with matching information, we thanked our wealthy benefactors (thank you!) and headed out to 45th via 7th. Easier said than done. Not that traffic in the Theater District was any worse (or terrifying) than usual, but blocks 48th-40th were roped-off with police waving people past. I began screaming as the pile-up began, trying to make sense of a sudden cut-off of our destination when we were finally so close we could see the floorlights. It was simple, really: unusually warm weather melted the snow and ice from the skyscrapers and billboards and there were giant icicles plummeting to earth upon the unsuspecting below. Apparently, this was a city health hazard. I watched as an icicle as big as a man and as thick as my leg fell almost lazily to earth, the air currents buoying it in lazy swings before it crashed to the pavement lost in the noise of New York. Okay, I could see being diverted for this. By the time we got around the block-off sections AND found a parking garage that wasn't full AND found the theater's main entrance (instead of the closed, rear one which we went to first), we were witnessing the death of Fontine and the verbal confrontation between Jean Valjean and Javert; quite a pinnacle point if you knew the story. Unfortunately, Jon did not. We tripped and squashed through our aisle to get to our seat... and then I tripped and squashed everyone to get out again once the call of the Little Girl's Room became too much to bear. The cursing of the lady on the end of my aisle kept me sheepishly standing in the doorway until Intermission. I tried to bring Jon up to speed as we milled through the mobs and back to our seats to join the Revolutionaries at the barricades, our worries momentarily forgotten in Marius' plight and Jean's redemption. Jon, no fan of musicals, was still taken by the set and the storyline. It made me feel a bit better. |
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Show's over. We had smiles on our faces and a return trip to Queens on our minds. I prayed that the keys were in the car. If not, we had quite a little adventure on our hands. I preferred not to think about it until we knew about the keys. We checked-back at the apartment, anything? No. There was a fire station nearby, we'd ask for the nearest police station. The fire fighter who answered said he had a Slim Jim and he'd be willing to give it a shot. It took nearly five minutes of his patient stabbing at the locks before the driver's side gave. He chuckled as Jon proudly produced the keys from under the seat. 
"What brought you out here?" Did we have 'Clueless Suburban Kiddies' scrawled on our foreheads somewhere? "Yeah well, thank you." (Thank you Mr. Fireman!) Broken-locked but accessible, Jon pronounced that he was starving and ready to go. I suggested going home and getting something to eat. He countered with a proposal of going back into New York, getting to Little Italy and putting his car into a lot with strict orders not to lock any of the doors. I am definitely not the only crazy out on the roads... I had a bad feeling about this but it (thankfully) proved to be wrong. 8:00 PM and we were back in New York, my stress finding a new outlet in New York city driving and my unplated car was given plenty of space. We had a lovely dinner, a toast to the day's end and a mind-numbing 3-hour drive home before stumbling into bed past midnight with a solemn vow that I would never schedule a day like this again. Ever. Jon laughed at my naïveté. He knows me far too well. P.S. I have nicknamed my car "Marius" after the young idealist who survives the first skirmishes of the French Revolution to make it home to his love because he was cared for by his "guardian angel" Jean Valjean. May it always be looked after kindly. Wish us luck! |
