27 Stoplights

27 Stoplights

a short story by Jeff Minton

         There are exactly twenty-seven stoplights between Tommy Coleman’s house and his workplace.  The time is 7:37 am.  Work begins at 8:00.  Once, maybe two years ago, Tommy caught every green light and made the drive in 16 minutes.  Red lights can put the time anywhere up to 40.

         Tommy fumbles hastily to insert his key in the ignition, and drops it to the floor.  The keys make the fourth item Tommy has dropped this morning: after his toothbrush, his wife’s protein powder, and his cell phone (which he dropped twice).

         He backs his jet black VW Passat past the wife’s minivan and into the street.  He shifts to first, still rolling back, guns the tach up to 4k RPMs, and pops the clutch hard enough to echo the tires throughout the subdivision.  153rd Terrace takes him to Switzer Rd, which leads him to the intersection at 151st st.  This first stoplight is an easy one because he’s turning right.  Even a right turn at this hour proves difficult, but he finds a hole, jumps in, and weaves around a few cars so that he’s first line if the next stoplight proves to be red, and it does.

         Tommy taps out a rhythmless beat on the steering wheel, and he looks around to avoid staring at the red light like a clock.  A family of five sits in the car to his left, complete with mother, father, daughter, son, and baby.  They are all dancing in their seats to some mexican song with heavy bass.  Tommy scowls at them with his eyes and looks forward again.  What kind of family rides all in one car at this hour?  Why the hell are the parents riding together to take the kids to school?

         Tommy shifts his focus back to the stoplight dilemma.  It’s all about stoplights in the city.  Four miles can last twenty minutes if you don’t know how to work the stoplights.  There are three more stoplights before a long stretch of highway.  Currently, they are all red.  The farthest from Tommy will go green first, then the next, and the next, and then Tommy’s light will turn, and they’ll turn red in the same order.  If he gets a good start, he can make it all the way through to the highway without stopping again.  This requires both being first off the line when the light turns, and breaking the speed limit by at least twenty.  The light goes green and Tommy executes this move perfectly, even swerving to avoid slowing for an SUV that pulls into his lane from a Sonic parking lot.

         The highway will provide at least five minutes of smooth, 80 mph driving, and it is here that Tommy finds a moment to relax.  This is when the radio comes on, when the heater starts working, and he when he first feels a sense of movement.

         His cell phone rings.

         It’s his wife, naturally--the one he just left five minutes ago.  She probably wants to ask him to pick something up on the way home, or something else that he won’t remember until he gets home and she has a chance to remind him.  Or she’ll want to tell him about how cute the twins are being right now.  How they’re fighting over the rattle, or sharing a spoon.

         The cell phone stops ringing.

         “Shit,” he thinks.  Now he has to come up with a reason why his missed the call.  He flips his phone open and dials her back.

         “Hey, why didn’t you answer?” Jenny asks.

         “Couldn’t get to it in time.  Did you hang up early?”

         “Of course not, Tom.  You really should get a belt clip.  This isn’t the first time you’ve had trouble digging that thing out of your pocket.  And that’s not safe to do while your driving.  It’s bad enough to be talking on it.”

         “So what’s up.  I’ve got to concentrate on the road here.  Traffic is crazy.”

         “I just forgot to tell you something before you left this morning.  You’ve got to start waking up earlier so you’re not in such a rush in the mornings.”

         “Yeah.  So what do you need to tell me?”

         “Mom’s coming over for dinner tonight, so would you mind swinging by Whole Foods and picking up some radishes on your way home.  Oh, and, I could use some fresh ginger and some Herbs de Provence as well.  And don’t bring home any junk, okay.”

         “Okay,” he says.  His lips are pressed together tight to prevent him from informing his wife that “swinging by” Whole Foods adds another ten stoplights to his trip home.

         “Thanks, hun,” she says.  “I’d do it if I could, but the boys have pictures today . . . and I’ve got my workout . . . then the normal stuff . . . and it’s just so far out of my way.  I’ll be surprised to make it home before you.”

         “Alright.  See you tonight.”

         “You too, honey.  Kisses.”

         “Bye.”

         “Oh, wait, hun?”

         “I really have to go.”

         “Did you switch the stroller to the van like I asked?”

         Silence passes, and Tommy notices that his speedometer is pushing 90.  He backs off the gas.

         “Honey, seriously, I told you as you were walking out the door.”

         “I’m sorry,” he says, “I was in a hurry.”

         “I swear you have got to start waking up earlier, honey.  For your own sake.  But that’s fine.  I’ll see if I can get my sister to loan me hers for the day, and I’ll just put the other one in the sling or something.  Don’t worry about it.  You have a great day, okay.”

         “I’ll try,” he says, but the line is dead.  He tosses the phone into the passenger seat and says, “Love you, too.”  He wants to add the word “bitch” but he can’t quite squeeze it from his lips.

         He’s approaching his exit, 435 East, when he is forced to slam the brakes and come to a complete stop on the highway.  An automated sign blinks the phrase,

Monday 1/26

6am-4pm,

then,

Left lane closed

Next 2 miles.

         He remembers, now, seeing this sign on Friday, and how he’d formed a plan to detour via College Blvd: cut across to Quivira, and merge onto 435 from there to avoid the construction.  Then his wife called--with that timing of hers--and he drove right on past College without even thinking about it until it was too late.  Now he’s at a standstill in the half mile between the College blvd exit and the 435 entrance ramp.

         Sunlight is burning in through the driver’s window and heating up his lap.  He kills the heater, sits back, and digs his middle finger into the corner of his eye.  He cracks a window.  He leans back in his leather seat and breaths cold air.  Diesel exhaust burns his throat and he closes the window again.

         Behind him, someone honks, and he turns around to flip the guy off, but his view is blocked by a giant twin stroller.  He yanks at the stroller a few times until it falls to the side and opens up his view.  Cars are lining up behind him as the traffic thickens.  A man in a truck rages at him with his finger flicking forward.  It takes Tommy a second to realize that the traffic in front of him has moved on about a hundred or so feet, and he rolls forward to catch up.

         The next quarter mile passes at a crawl.  A dull ache begins in Tommy’s gut.  He needs food.  He needs to shit.  He needs coffee.  He needs a monster truck to crush the six cars in front of him that are preventing him from veering onto the exit ramp.

         As the turnoff approaches, foot by foot, Tommy remembers that there’s a tech meeting this morning for all the programmers.  Normally he can skate in late without anyone noticing.  They leave him alone in his office, and, as long as he meets their deadlines, they don’t ask questions.  Be late to a meeting, though, and they give you the concerned corporate talking to.  It’s 7:48.  Tommy pounds the steering wheel, revs the engine.  He would have been just fine if it wasn’t for this construction, if his wife hadn’t have called.

         Shunting to the shoulder, Tommy cuts off the last two car-lengths and speeds onto 435.  He can still make it if everything goes right.  Another thought occurs to him as he’s working his way into the far left lane.  The annual system updates begin this week, and they’re bringing in an expert from Washington to tell everyone how to do their jobs today.  So the meeting will last at least half the morning, and he will not have a chance for coffee, let alone breakfast.  It is going to be hard to work in a nap, too.

         Three minutes of smooth highway driving--the sun at his back, the bleakness of the city in winter all around--works on Tommy’s eyes.  His lids want badly to slide shut, just a little more.  They squint and try to come together but Tommy nods and jerks, nods and jerks, and he won’t let them.

         He sees ahead another jam on the highway, before his exit at Wornall, and he manages to cut across four lanes of highway to exit at State Line.  Here he can cut across 103rd street to Wornall.  The stoplight catches him, and the bastard at the front of the right turn lane waits through a dozen opportunities to turn before the light finally goes green.  As Tommy ventures onto 103rd, he sees a Panera Bread, hesitates, and turns into the parking lot.  This will only take a minute.  Coffee, pastry, and he’s back on the road again and probably ahead of where he would have been had he stayed on the highway for another exit.

         There are no apple tarts left.  A bagel will take too long.  The only soufflés left are the turkey ones.  One blueberry muffin remains, and he eyes it as he waits in line.  He expects every one of the five people in line ahead of him to order the blueberry muffin.  They order a regular bagel with peanut butter, a bearclaw, another bagel, and then he overhears this curly blond little girl in front of him say to her mom: “Mommy, I wanna muffin.”

         Tommy clenches his jaw and begins to reexamine his options.  There’s nothing.  Everything’s too sugary, or too plain, or too hard to eat in the car.  He needs something that will work with the coffee to level out his blood sugar until lunch, otherwise one of his migraines will creep in, and the rest of the day will be hell.

         “How ‘bout some fruit, hun,” the mother says.

         “No, Mommy, no,” the girl whines.  Her legs drop out from under her and she’s on the ground.  “I wanna muffin.  I wanna muffin, Mommy.  Gimme muffin.”

         The mother grabs the girl’s wrist, pulls her to the side, bends down, and whispers harshly in her face.

         Tommy steps forward, trying not to smile, and takes their place in line.  As he’s approaching the counter to order, the fat grease-ball of a kid that is running a different register swipes up the muffin and delivers it to an old lady in the other line.

         “Sir?” the girl at his register asks.  “Sir, are you alright?”

         He realizes by the way she’s looking at him that he must be making a terrible face.  “Swell,” he says, curving his lips slightly towards his ears.

         She puts on this big, stupid, beautiful grin that he just wants to slap right off her face.

         “What can I get for you this morning?”

         “I don’t suppose you have any more blueberry muffins, do you?”

         “Umm, hold on a sec, let me check on that for you.”

         In the girl’s absence, Tommy can feel the clock on the wall to his left, and he does not turn to check.  He’s sure that no more than three minutes have past since he left his car.  He can still make it.

         The girl, maybe 23, coppery hair, highlights . . . and that smile.  She has perfect teeth, crescent dimples, and he can’t find anything fake about it.  She is just smiling like she can’t be happier anywhere in the world doing anything but preparing to inform him that there are no more muffins.

         “Good news,” she says, holding up a muffin.  “Fresh out of the oven.”  She drops the muffin in a paper bag along with a fork and a napkin, then leans forward to whisper, “They’re perfect when they’re warm like this.”

         He can smell her, a natural sweetness--no perfume, or retched hair products, or sweat.  And he can smell the muffin.  He grins back at her.

         “Dollar eighty-eight,” she says.  Her smile no longer shows her teeth, just the benign beauty that this girl is made of.  She is the kidnapped girl you see on the tabloids with the angelic face.

         “Oh . . . um . . . coffee . . . too,” he says.  “Sorry.  I need a coffee--tall, or large, or the biggest one you got.”

         She slides a large cup out in front of him.  “No charge.  For the wait.”

         “Nonsense,” he says.  “I insist.”

         “Nope.  I will take a dollar eighty-eight and not a penny more.”

         “Hey, is that a KU ring?” he asks, noticing her finger.

         “Yeah,” she says, I was there in San Antonio last year.”

         “No way!” he says.  Now he’s really smiling.  “You’ll remember that for the rest of your life? What are you, like 23?”

         Her smile closes a bit, into something polite, and Tommy gets the prickling feeling that everyone’s watching him and thinking he’s the scum of the earth.  He doesn’t know why, maybe for holding up the line or something, but people are like that, and he can tell they’re glowering at him behind his back.

         Tommy slaps a five down on the counter.  “Five bucks.  You’re just going to have to throw the rest away if you don’t want it.”  He grabs the bag and his cup and escapes before she has a chance to refuse.

         As he pours his coffee, he glances up at the girl, drops his eyes to his coffee, looks up again.  She’s giving the huge smile again, to the next lady in line.  He wonders if his wife has ever smiled so wide in her entire life.

         He stirs his coffee for a long time.  The girl behind the counter--what’s her name?  He squints to see the name-tag.  He can’t read it, but he notices how well she fills out that yellow shirt, so much that the name tag hangs to the side a bit.

         “Sir?  Sir, I’m sorry but we cannot take this.”

         “What?” Tommy says, turning.  Beside him is a hairy man, Greek maybe, reeking of aftershave and BO.  He wears a purple shirt with a manager’s name tag.

         “Sir, we don’t accept gratuity.”  He puts three dollars and and twelve cents in Tommy’s hand and walks away.

         Tommy squints at the man, and then in a sort of panic, glances up at the clock.  It’s 7:57.  He trots out to the car.  He lowers himself into his seat, muffin bag in his teeth, and Coffee leaps from the hole in the lid and burns his wrist.  The car clock reads 8:01, but its two minutes fast.  As he backs out of the space and starts forward, he sees, on the back windshield of a white Ford Taurus, a Jayhawk’s sticker.

         He stops, gets out of his car, runs around to the front of the Taurus, fishes the three bucks and twelve cents out of his pocket, and sticks it neatly in under the windshield wiper of the car.

         He speeds back onto the road, weaving through traffic, running yellow lights and clipping the freshly turned reds.  At 8:04 he catches a major red light.  He has spent more time, at this intersection, than any man should ever have have to suffer watching left lanes empty, then fill again, then the wall of cross traffic, and then, sometimes, he swore the left lanes would go again.

         He has the thought, sitting here, that he should’ve ordered a bucket of bagels for the meeting.  “Sorry for the tardy, boys,” he would say.  “But I thought you all could use a little bite to get you through the morning.”  Now, it would take an extra fifteen minutes to find a bagel shop, or a donut shop, or any stop, and the whole late because I had to stop thing wouldn’t add up.

         This stretch of Ward Pkwy moves pretty well, and he manages to get up to sixty for a while, as long as two cars don’t team up and block him from swerving past.  He blasts his horn at a lady with a tight pony-tail in an SUV and she moves out of the left lane.

         The clock hits 8:10.  He considers running off the road.  Seriously considers it.  He could slow down and hit a lamp post just hard enough to deploy the airbag, and then he could go to the hospital, and he could sleep.  The next stoplight not only stops him, but it keeps him there, just for a second, after it turns green.  The lady in the SUV honks at him, and he crawls forward.  Rushing is pointless now.  The meeting has started, or at least the meeting had been gathered, and now they are waiting for him.  Scott, the head-tech, is scratching down right now a list of concerns to discuss with Tommy.  He’s having to think back for more material, review  Tommy’s performance, talk to the employees about his behavior lately.

         This was Jenny’s fault.  Last night was sex night, and afterwards, when he told her he had work to do, she just let him go.  “Okay, honey, don’t stay up too late.”  That was it.  He went into the office and he started up his software, just in case she came in, which he knew she wouldn’t, and he then he signed onto Netflix and he cruised for something new to watch.  He picked some movie he had never heard of about some guy who wanted to commit suicide but the universe wouldn’t let him.  It was terrible in every way and left him feeling empty and disappointed.  His wife slept the whole time like she didn’t know what was going on.  And when the movie was over, he stared at the computer for a few minutes, then searched for another title--one he would watch tomorrow.  He found one, and he thought he’d just screen it for a few minutes to make sure it was worth watching, and it turned out to be a decent movie.  At 4:45 he crawled into bed, and he pretended to be asleep when his wife woke up at 5:00.

         Tommy is driving in the right lane now.  His mind is racing trying to come up with something to tell Scott when he gets to work.  He considers, as he guzzles his coffee, calling in sick.  He considers, again, crashing his car.  He bites his muffin, chases it with more coffee.  He considers playing dumb and claiming his car clock is off.  He considers marching into his office and making a huge scene and quitting. 

         His cell phone rings.  It’s the office.  He lets it go to voicemail.

         He can see the high-rise several blocks ahead.  His kids, he thinks, and he remembers that there’s a rolled up shirt in the stroller’s cargo bay with a generous spit-up stain crusted across the front.  “One of the baby’s is sick,” he would say, and point to the stain.  “I made it as fast as I could.”  And then maybe he’d offer to go pick up some breakfast for everyone to make up for it.  Then he could make it through the meeting, and lock himself in his office, and take his nap, and work up the energy for another night.

         There are two remaining stoplights between Tommy and the high-rise.  The first is green and the second red.  Tommy times this out in his mind, and it doesn’t even matter anymore, but they will turn, and he knows that he will hit them both.