The SUV made surprisingly little noise. The snow blanketed it, muffling the engine. Mel and Nina tried all the doors multiple times, in the hopes that something would suddenly give.
“I’m so sorry,” Mel said, close to tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Nina said, her expression dark as she tried to look down into the window well of her car. “I should have taken out the keys.”
“Don’t you have one of those remote locks?”
“It’s on the key chain.” Nina sighed.
Parker came over with a steaming cup in his hand and surveyed the scene.
“What are you guys doing?” he asked.
“We’re locked out,” Nina said.
“The engine’s on,” he said, stopping in his tracks.
“Noticed that. Thanks, though.”
Parker came over and peered into the window on the opposite side.
“Isn’t there a way of opening this?” Nina said, looking desperate. “Like with a clothes hanger?”
“I don’t think so. Not with this kind of lock. You need a slim-jim.”
Mel walked over, swept a spot clear on a bench, and sat down. The back of her jeans soaked through almost instantly. Her coat was still in the car, so she was shivering, but she didn’t really care.
“Triple A,” Nina said, digging into her purse for her wallet and phone. “I’ll call them and they’ll come out and open the door.”
It took Nina about ten minutes to get through. Parker sat next to Mel on the bench. He offered her his drink, but she waved it away.
“I’d say it’s going pretty well,” he said.
When Nina hung up the phone, she turned to find Parker sitting alone.
“Where’s Mel?”
“She went thataway.” He pointed to the building. “Really fast.”
Nina leaned up against her purring car.
“They said they have a lot of calls from people stuck on the road. It’ll take them anywhere from an hour to three hours to get here.”
“Well, it’s nice weather to sit around in and wait.”
“We’re going to miss her,” Nina said. “We’re going to get to New York too late, if we ever get there. We know what building she’s in, and that’s about it.”
“It’s only, New York. How hard will it be to find her?”
“I have to stay here to wait for the truck,” she said. “You can go inside if you want.”
Parker didn’t move. He just poured some of the hot liquid from his cup and watched it dissolve a hole in the snow.
“So, why are you here?” Nina asked.
“Why are any of us here?”
Nina just stared.
“Because Mel asked,” he said.
“Did you know I was coming?”
“Mel mentioned it. Why are you here? I thought you hated Avery.”
“I don’t hate her,” Nina said. She looked up into the falling snow. This always made her lose her perspective and gave her a sense of rising and falling at the same time.
“But you don’t like her.”
“I don’t like what she did,” Nina said. “It’s complicated. This whole thing is actually ridiculous.”
“So what did you end up doing with … ?”
Parker spoke with an ill-concealed anxiety. Nina didn’t feel like answering his question, but she was kind of stuck. Literally. Stuck in the snow, with her car, with him. It wasn’t like things could get much worse.
“I haven’t really figured all that out yet,” she said. “Why don’t you go wait with Mel? I think she’s a little upset about the thing with the door.”
“Right.” Parker hopped up. He was smiling, though it wasn’t a happy smile—more like the smile of someone who’s been proven right about something.
The truck arrived a half hour later, and the door was popped open in about ten seconds. This bothered Nina somewhat. She felt like it should have taken a little more time and effort. She’d spent more time opening jars.
The sky was now a feverish pink, and the snow showed no signs of stopping. Nina put the car into four-wheel drive and made her way along slowly. It took two more hours to get into the city. Traffic around New York was snarled and insane, and they spent almost an hour at a standstill waiting to get on the George Washington Bridge. It was too nerve-racking even to get excited about going to the city. Not that they could see the city, anyway. The sky was full of white drifts that obscured the view. It just felt like they were in a snow globe.
Once they made it over and got into the city proper, Mel became too agitated to follow the map, and Parker had to take over. He also had to crisis-counsel Nina as she experienced multiple panic attacks as yellow cabs skidded by her, coming within inches of her car. They managed to get onto the FDR Drive and basically slide down the side of Manhattan on packed snow, going way too fast in an attempt to keep up with the traffic.
“Are we in the nothing-left-to-live-for lane?” Parker asked.
They swung off somewhere in the twenties and managed to make their way down Second Avenue to an area that Mel vaguely recognized from studying the school’s Web site.
“Parking lot!” Mel cried. “Parking lot!”
Nina made a sharp left and turned into an underground garage. As they made their way out to the street, the snow was shooting down the narrow paths between the buildings and going right into their faces.
“So, where is this place?” Nina asked. She had only been to the city a handful of times with her parents, and she had never gotten much farther than Macy’s or the Empire State Building. This part of New York was completely strange to her. It was a tangle of stores, academic buildings, and delis. It was hard to look up and see how high any of the buildings were, but Nina could tell that they weren’t huge skyscrapers.
Parker was scanning the street.
“Turn right at the Starbucks, walk past the Starbucks, and keep going until you reach the third Starbucks on your left.” He shook his head. “Maybe they grow them here.”
“Eighth Street,” Mel said, brushing snow off her printout. The ink on the map smeared over the page. “Eighth and Greene. It’s near a park. Where are we?”
“Lafayette,” Nina said, squinting at a sign. “Which way do we go?”
“Um …” Mel rotated helplessly. “Maybe we ask someone?”
“Let’s walk until we see what number street we’re on,” Parker said. “We can at least get to Eighth.”
They walked along as people were out with shovels and salt, trying to do battle with the elements and losing.
“Great Jones Street,” Nina said as they reached the next corner. “That’s not a number. I’m going to ask someone.”
It took one or two tries, but Nina managed to flag down a woman who told her that the school was just a few blocks over.
“Okay,” she said, checking her watch. “We have ten minutes. Let’s go.”