Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis
Chapter Three
It’s amazing how painfully slowly half an hour passes when you don’t have a phone. I don’t like to think I’m addicted to my phone, or if I am, I’m certainly nowhere near as enslaved to it as my friend Charlie, who spends every Sunday night strategizing how not to use her phone. ‘I’ve spent a working week on my phone, Noelle, despite telling every poor shit who’ll listen that I have no time,’ she’ll say. ‘I used to get off on meditation. I used to get off on men with beards. But no, not now. Now I get off on a screen and an internet connection. It’s sad. A modern-day tragedy.’ But without my phone, all there is to do is stare through the windscreen, nibbling my fingernails raw, watching people duck out of their cars and into bushes to pee, reaching deep inside their car boots pulling out dusty old blankets or packets from shopping bags as the snow just keeps on falling. A few moments ago, a driver in the next lane proudly pulled out a five-string banjo.
News headlines roll in again on the radio, but they’re all the same as they were twenty minutes ago. Something about a footballer and a court case, then the nasally announcements of snow blankets parts of the UK. Major delays. Roads closed.The public are advised to not travel unless necessary.
And maybe I should’ve listened to Mum – her pleas for me to stay home. ‘Gary at number twenty-one put on Facebook that it’s set to snow six inches, Noelle,’ she’d said before I left, clutching the collars of her blush-pink dressing gown. ‘And he’s always right. He used to work for Millets.’ But then, Mum doesn’t travel, even when it is necessary. It’s been three years since she went anywhere at all, or should I say, any further than the recycling bins in the front garden and the eight-weekly trip to the hairdresser and back which she attends as if she is under house arrest and only has an allotted forty-five-minute window before the cops turn up to throw her over the bonnet of a car and chain her hands together. In and out, no cup of tea, no small talk at the till. If I listened to her, I wouldn’t really go anywhere. And where would the pair of us end up then?
I glance over at the American in his car. I keep thinking he’ll catch me looking longingly over, like some sort of perv at a smoky bar, but the more time passes, and the more I try, again and again, fiddling pointlessly with the charger socket, taking out the wire and plugging it back in again, the more I have to accept: I need help. Because I need to get through to Mum, and it’s obvious now, with bush wees and banjos as evidence, we’re not going to be moving any time soon.
I push open my car door and get out. Snow showers my face as I slip on my coat. This borrowed, thin-as-cigarette-paper dress: definitely one of my shittier ideas. It’s freezing.
The American is looking down at something in his lap when I approach the car. A book, I think, or is that a newspaper? He looks up when I knock against the glass and the window glides down. The smell of warm coffee and new car leather puffs through the gap into the cold air.
‘Hey,’ he says.
‘I really hate to ask, but if I could just use a charger––’
‘Sure. Shall I take the phone and let you know when it’s charged, or do you … wanna hop in, or …’
He trails off, thumb pointing lazily over his shoulder to the inside of his car.
Ugh, this is awkward, this situation. It’d feel weird passing my phone through a stranger’s window, tell him to keep checking whether it has enough charge for a call, hoping he doesn’t glance at any of the messages that might come through, because it isn’t exactly unusual for Charlie to send a photo of the new tattoo she’s penned on Theo’s hairy inner thigh on a whim, or a zoomed-in photo of Orlando Bloom’s paparazzied knob with the message, ‘Just some more evidence to back up my Some Penises Can Be Beautiful stance.’ But it also feels weird to jump in a stranger’s car, regardless of how stationary it is, regardless of how lovely and normal he seems, and how very much unlike a serial killer. I’d rather do neither in normal circumstances. But these aren’t exactly normal circumstances, are they? A man, chatting across the lane to a police officer triumphantly pulls a two-foot-long supermarket baguette out of his back seat as if to prove the point.
‘I suppose I’ll quickly jump in,’ I say, ‘if that’s OK?’
The American’s car is a grown-up’s car – the sort that has heated seats. The sort that has a sensible handful of loose change and a neat package of pocket-sized tissues in the glove box in case of crying or nose-blowing emergencies. I doubt the American has ever drunk Tizer in here. I doubt he’s ever spread a McChicken sandwich meal across the passenger seat in Asda’s car park and rubbed spilled ketchup into the seat until it blended with the fabric, either.
‘Do you want to use my phone to make a call first?’ the American asks.
‘Oh, um – she won’t pick up.’ I shut the car door behind me. ‘My mum. She doesn’t pick up calls from numbers she doesn’t recognise.’
‘Oh. OK.’ The radio is on – something folky; slow, husky vocals, the gentle, picking of a guitar – and the heaters hum quietly. He fishes around in the arm rest between us and pulls out a charger, plugging one end into a port below the stereo. He holds the other end out to me. ‘Here.’
‘Ah. Thanks.’ I plug in my phone, rest it in my lap. Warm relief trickles through me like brandy as the charging emblem blinks onto the screen. I blow out a ‘Phew,’ and he smiles.
There’s silence now, both of us turning to stare ahead through the snowy blur of the windscreen. I fiddle with a button on my coat. The American straightens in his seat, picks at a thread on the thigh of his jeans. He glances quickly at me, catches me doing the same, and we both give one of those polite, just-for-strangers smiles. He has a nice face – the sort of intangibly nice face you can’t quite put into words. When Charlie was dating, she used to scroll the Plenty of Fish app and say, ‘I just want a man with one of those nice faces, you know? Just one of those friendly, trustworthy, earthy sort of faces that make you feel like Yeah. I’d follow you into the woods, dude, and know there’s a high probability I’d remain intact.’ Yes. The American has one of those faces.
‘Coming down out there,’ I say, because, well, let’s face it, I need to say something. ‘They said on the forecast it’d be light, if at all.’
The American ducks to look out of the windscreen, two perfect watermelon slices made by the wipers in the snow. ‘Yeah. Although – I guess it sort of is light.’
‘Is it?’
He gives a shrug. ‘Well, light if you compare it to the snow in – Toyama or Syracuse or something.’
‘Or … the North pole,’ I add weakly, and he smiles and says, ‘Sure. Or the North pole.’
Snow flurries down outside, the snowflakes like duck feathers as if from a gigantic burst pillow in the sky, and a new song begins on the radio. There’s a beat of awkward silence. I’ll leave. As soon as I have the tiniest drop of charge, I’ll get out—
‘Are you close to home?’ he asks.
‘Sort of. Half-an-hour away,’ I tell him, and he nods, tells me he’s on his way to the airport now, to go home.
‘And where is home?’ Dilly would give anything now, to place a bet on a state, see if he’s right.
‘The US. Oregon?’
‘Really?’I realise I sound high-pitched, shocked, and his dark eyebrows rise. And I can’t tell him why. That it was where Ed went. That it was where I was meant to go too, with him, to start anew. Until I couldn’t. Until I had no choice but to stay. ‘I just – I um, I had a pen pal from Portland once.’ I change routes. Still true, but not quite the heavy My Doctor Boyfriend Left Me for a Hospital in Oregon story he didn’t ask for.
‘Seriously?’
‘I was thirteen,’ I say. ‘It was a school thing. We all got allocated an international pen pal and something happened and, I don’t know, he was off school for six weeks. Or maybe he just wanted to avoid my letters, which was probably wise …’
The American chuckles. He has a nice laugh. Warm, genuine. And it makes me relax a little.
‘… so I got this very uninterested genius instead. Only lasted two letters. I think she found me really boring. She talked about pre-history and Socrates, and I just remember listing some facts about Brian from The Backstreet Boys.’
He chuckles again. ‘I’m not far from Portland, actually,’ he says. ‘Well, an hour or two. I’m by the coast.’
‘The coast. Sounds nice.’
A traffic announcement bursts through the soft folky music, and he quickly reaches forward to turn down the volume. He tries to find the music again, pressing a touch-screen arrow a few times, then settles on a random station. Another awkward, just-for-strangers smile passes between us both.
I click the side button on my phone. The battery sign blinks on and off. Of course. Of course it’s going to take its sweet time while I’m stuck in a car with a stranger. ‘My phone’s still really dead,’ I tell him, ‘sorry. I just need enough to make a call, it shouldn’t be much longer …’
He lifts a shoulder to his ear. ‘It’s cool,’ he says. ‘Plus, maybe – to pass the time?’ He picks up a folded newspaper from the side of the seat and holds it up, showing an unfinished crossword, red biro scrawled roughly in some of the squares. ‘Two heads are better than one, right?’
I pause. ‘Usually.’
‘Usually?’
‘In the case of crosswords, one head, and one that isn’t mine is probably better. In the case of geography too actually.’
He smiles. A comma-shaped dimple appears in his cheek and something glitters inside my stomach, like a spark. ‘Well, you knew Portland was in Oregon.’
‘That’s true.’
‘There you go. Most people over here hear me speak and say New York? Or Are you from California? Do you know Keanu Reeves?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah, no other states exist to us, I’m afraid.’
‘No?’
‘No, afraid not. To us, everyone works for Paramount Pictures and goes to prom and probably knows someone called Chad––’ I freeze. ‘God, and of course now I’m worrying you’re called Chad and I obviously didn’t mean—’
‘Sam. I’m Sam.’
‘Sam.’ Sam. Makes sense. He looks like a Sam. Sam’s a strong, classic, safe name, and I feel certain somehow, he is also those things. ‘I’m Noelle.’
‘Noelle. Like––’
‘Christmas, yeah.’
‘I was going to say … Gallagher.’ His cheek twitches in an awkward, shy smile and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
‘That’s Noel. I’m Noelle. No-elle. Noel but with an extra L and E on the end. Very important detail.’
He nods. ‘Noelle.’
I smile. ‘Correct.’
He brings a biro to the newspaper on his lap. ‘OK, Noelle not-Gallagher. How are you with ancient philosophers? Sixteen down is kind of torturing me.’