Stranded- Taken from my book When We Were Young

Stranded
Because I was working so much, but wanted to spend as much time with Gloria as I could before she left for college, we hung out at my apartment when I had any spare time. One time she spent the night, and she woke me up at 8:30 am.
She walked around the apartment like she usually did, with a smile on her face. I, on the other hand, was shocked to find out there was such a thing as morning in the late summertime. She woke me up early because she had a gift certificate she’d received after graduation and the closest store (where the gift certificate could be used) was an hour drive down the road. I decided to go with her. I had nothing better to do; I had to work a night shift.
I went to the bathroom and prepared myself for something called "morning."
She drove her car. I smoked a cigarette and noticed the huge bags of coal underneath my eyes in the right-side mirror. It made me look like a junkie, but the sun was shining, and the wind was keeping me awake.
There was no conversation while we went down the long, predictable road. It was a straight shot that made the drive seem longer then it really was. I nodded off to the soothing sound of tires on smooth pavement. My eyes were closed, and I knew it wouldn't take long for me to go back to dreaming again.
My awake sleep was interrupted when Gloria hit something. One side of Gloria's car felt like it was on a gravel road. I awoke when the first thud hit my head, followed by a sound of grinding wheel metal rolling on concrete. Suddenly there we were, unable to go above 15 mph in the fast lane of the interstate.
Disgruntled drivers honked as they passed us, while metal from the wrecked side of the car shook the black top below.
"So," said Gloria, casually. "What do you think I should do?"
"Well, if I was in your position, I would pull over to the right side of the road, if you want to avoid road rage," I answered with the same tone.
Gloria did so, and we got out to inspect the left side of the car. When she described the sound to me, Gloria thought a helicopter was landing when she first felt the shake.
The final judgment was that the tire looked like a band-aid that had lost its stickiness to the skin. The tire was mutilated. We stared at it and laughed.
"I knew that was going to happen," Gloria said.
"How did you know that was going to happen?" Wondering if I was I being initiated?
"It happened to me when I was going with my ex-boyfriend. He complained the whole time. When it happened before, we got a ride to the gas station from a hippy in a Volkswagen van. He told us he just got off probation, and while he was driving, he was smoking pot."
"I hope we get the same guy,” I said, laughing at the omen.
The realization set in that we couldn't stand there and laugh at our misfortune. We crossed the lanes in a light jog, and then crossed a few more lanes while cars zoomed in the opposite direction. This got us to an exit ramp, where we walked in search of a telephone to call a tow truck.
Turning left, we reached a narrow bridge with barely enough room to walk. One car passed us, while a police car came toward us. We thought this was a good thing, because the policeman might give us a ride to the nearest gas station. I waved to him, but he drove past us. The cop must have enjoyed his air-conditioned car so much he didn't want to offer us a ride. Way to serve and protect, PIG! We laughed as sweat poured down our foreheads.
In the summer, we had no real schedules, so we had to laugh at these types of situation; we walked the rest of the way to a gas station. When we arrived, we wiped more of the sweat from our foreheads. I was willing to walk another mile with her to add to the last remaining memories of the summer.
We passed people filling up their cars with gasoline, and we headed to the pay phones on the other side of the parking lot. I gave Gloria 35 cents for the call. Luckily I had my AAA card.
I thought she was cute the way the phone touched her ear, and she seemed confused about what to say and do. I sipped on the grapefruit juice that I had bought inside the convenience store, still laughing about the tire that had been destroyed.
She got off the phone and told me the tow truck would take 45 minutes. I didn't care; I had no place to go. I also was having the time of my life. If I’d been with anyone else, I would probably have been plotting their death.
I imagined Captain in this situation. He would have left the car and walked back home, because he enjoyed that kind of misery. He would also have enjoyed telling the story at House of Waffles.
We went inside the gas station to avoid the heat and sat at a booth, which was part of a restaurant adjoining the gas station.
"I don't mind if you kids sit there, but our air conditioner isn't working," said the clerk at the cash register. It seemed like everyone's air conditioner was broken, or they didn't have one that year, during one of the hottest summers on record.
Gloria and I didn't mind though, We started talking about movies that one of us hadn’t seen. I was surprised to find out she had never seen Rocky. I watched that movie religiously. In fact, in high school I was in a band named Apollo Creed. Ironically, we died too.
I told her that the movie wasn't just a bad-ass boxing movie; it also had a love story in it. This is what I usually told girls about the movie, hoping they would want to watch it with me. It never happened.
When the tow truck arrived, I was disappointed, because I wanted the classic-looking tow truck. This one was a flatbed tow truck. The driver was an older man with wrinkles and a hat that said Clinton's. Gloria asked him if he was from AAA.
"Yup," he said." Ya'll don't look stranded."
We were too busy taking it all in, so it didn’t look like we were suffering.
We got inside the truck, and Gloria gave the driver poor directions. But I couldn't have given them any better. I guess all the heat made us stupid. The driver figured out where the car was while she did most of the talking. I enjoyed the ride and the air conditioning.
Finally, we arrived at Gloria's car, which resembled a tripod. It didn't take any time for our new friend to hoist the car on the flat bed. As he did this, Gloria noticed an orange citation. The ticket pretty much said that she couldn't leave her car on the side of the road, and we had to move it. The cop who drove past us when we needed a ride to the gas station probably circled around and put the citation there.
We got back into the tow truck, and the driver slightly tipped his hat and informed us his name was Clinton. We were in a town called Rocky Mount. Clinton must have taken a liking to Gloria, and decided to give us a free tour through his town.
He pointed out different locations, including an old, abandoned warehouse where a guy had committed suicide after he got caught selling moonshine.
This was a smaller town than the one we wanted to escape. The thing I liked about it was that there were no franchises, none of the same stores were built together—all free standing, and there were no strip malls. Everything was right there in the small town, although I couldn't imagine living there. I didn’t see a House of Waffles anywhere.
On our way to Clinton's shop, he stopped at a heating and air conditioning business. The man who came out to greet us wore a shirt that was similar to Clinton's, only it was sky blue with a patch on one of the pockets. I couldn't read what it said.
Clinton asked, "How's it going?"
The man said the same. Then there was a long silence.
Clinton said, "Bye."
The man said the same, and then we were off again. I guess they could only speak in short greetings in the town of Rocky Mount.
Finally, we arrived at Clinton's shop. We got out of the tow-truck, and Clinton asked to see my AAA card. As he inspected it, all of his workers walked at their own pace to their next job in the scorching sun. And they all wore the same striped shirt that Clinton wore, with patches that showed their name.
A few of them said, "Hey, Clinton."
Clinton said, "Hey,” back.
He put Gloria's car in one of the three garages. Then he came back to me, gave me my AAA card, and told us it would be a little bit of a wait.
Gloria and I sat on the curb in front of Clinton's gas station/shop. We watched his customers fill up their cars with gas. The old gas pumps were underneath a shelter that looked like it could fall at any moment if the wind changed direction. From where we sat, it looked like the whole area had a spilled oil finish, and the hut where the customers paid looked like a shack made of brick aged by car exhaust.
Even though Clinton's business looked like a smoker's lung, it seemed to run smoothly. People left there happy, as we did when Gloria's new tire was put on.
We said, "Thank you."
Clinton smiled back. His teeth were the only thing that lit up on his face. The rest of his face was permanently stained with his knowledge of cars. When a man like Clinton smiled, you had to smile back.
Gloria decided she would spend her gift certificate some other day, but I would have kept on going. We went home, and she told me that most of the people coming in to get gas at Clinton's reminded her of the family of her dad's girlfriend. Her dad paid for his girlfriend to go through hair styling school, but still she just sat on her ass and smoked pot. Gloria told me how weird her family was and how normal she felt compared to them. I told her how normal my family was and how weird I felt compared to them.
We arrived in Roanoke as the clock in her car hit noon. Was it really just noon? It seemed so much later. She brought it to my attention. This was the usual time my day started.
"Now, see everything you can do when you don't sleep in? You would have missed riding in a tow-truck."
We went back to my apartment and took a swim in the pool. Afterwards she went home, and I went to work.
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