Taking It by Michael Cadnum Page B

trucks.
    After a while the chatter from the Inner Mom shut up and I didn’t let myself think. A few nights of bad sleep had left me empty. The radio reception continued to be trouble. I expected to hear country western music but it was news, when I got anything at all, the stock exchange and floods somewhere in Georgia.
    I felt self-conscious pulling into a Chevron station. It was ridiculous to think this way, but I did. Everyone would look at me and see how far I was from Capistrano Street, in a car I had never driven past Hilltop Mall. There was a self island and a full island and I drove in beside self . I pumped super unleaded. I felt a little clumsy, but only a little. I took my time scrubbing dead bugs off the windshield, wings, thoraxes, all kinds of insect parts.
    There was heat coming out of the radiator. That’s what radiators do, they remove the high temperature from the engine and release it into the air. I could explain this to the least capable student in the class, Harry Luke, a guy who came to school to eat lunch with his girlfriend, and who saw classes as a way to fill in the time before and after.
    Lincoln peed on a tumbleweed at the edge of the lighted area, and I let him drink some water straight from the pink hose, getting water on my sundress. I wondered if I should take the cap off the radiator and pour in some more coolant. Mr. Friedlander had warned that taking the radiator cap off a hot car could be dangerous, a geyser exploding as soon as the cap was loose. I left the radiator alone.
    I checked the oil, wiping the dipstick and reinserting it, careful to keep the black syrup away from my dress. The oil was down about a quart, so I bought some forty-weight oil and emptied it into the oil intake, and felt satisfied that I had taken care of things.
    There would be plenty of time to call Dad and let him know I was all right. I paid a man in a booth and asked if there were any maps.
    A vending machine sold maps, and it took only quarters, so I had to go back and ask the man in the glass booth to break a five. I felt awkward, sure he would say that they didn’t give change, the way some stores will if you need to make a phone call.
    I tossed the map into the backseat after a glance. I steered the car up the on-ramp back onto the freeway. I was worried about the oil, and, now that I was back on the freeway, having to pass a slow truck, I was worried about the other fluids I hadn’t checked, and for the first time I really doubted what I was doing.
    This wasn’t a doubt that originated in the voice of my imaginary mother. This originated in me. I was already two hundred miles south and I was afraid the car wasn’t going to be able to make the trip as far as I wanted to go, not in this heat. The sun was gone, but with the window rolled down I could feel the warm wind. Moths flattened on the windshield, tattered flags that the wind loosened and blew away.
    I turned on the radio again, and even the static sounded calming, sputters that meant there was activity out there in the world, even though I couldn’t make out what it was.
    When I told Lincoln we were doing fine he gave me one of those dog laughs, eyes blinking, mouth wide.
    Maureen thought she understood animals better than anyone else, but I don’t think she took such good care of Lincoln. I even let Lincoln lick my hand a little. He was polite, his tongue hot, but he was more interested in the smells flowing in through the barely open window.
    When I said something to him he would look, wag, and put his snout back to the window. Sometimes the vibration in the steering was so bad I hung on hard, but after a while, I got used to it, driving like a person who did this all the time.

21
    Interstate 5 intersects with Interstate 10. You look at the map and you think it looks complicated, but I told myself that in real life all you have to do is pay attention.
    It was past midnight. The LA traffic was heavy, cars driving up