"Tracy…" I started again and then trailed off. I honestly didn't know what to say, what to think about what she'd just told me.
"I just can't believe I was like that," she cried. "I was actually thinking you didn't love me, that you were trying to keep me down or something. I'd completely forgotten that I was still alive because of you, that you'd already showed me how much you loved me by saving me, not once but twice. And how do I repay you? How do I return your love? By trying to get you to exploit what you know against your morals. By calling you up and trying to get you to tell me about a baseball game and then getting pissed at you because you don't know. By wanting to threaten you if you didn't tell me about a football game. By thinking you're some kind of moralistic…" She broke into fresh sobs again. "Oh God Bill!"
"It's okay Tracy," I soothed, holding her hand. "At least you like me now, right?"
She composed herself a little but continued to squeeze my hand almost painfully. "I've had a lot of time to think in here," she told me. "A lot of time. And I realized that I was having a lot of bad feelings for you. I told myself it was because of you withholding knowledge from me. You were on your way to getting rich but you weren't including me in it. Like I said, I felt I had a right to get rich off of you, and do you know why?"
"Why?" I asked, though I suspected the reason.
"Because I was blaming you for this death sentence I have hanging over my head. I realize now how irrational that is, you didn't cause it, you just told me about it. But somehow, in my mind, I thought it was your fault. You were the one that screwed around with fate and caused this. Never mind that fate would've taken me on graduation night if not for your interference, you were the one that put all this in motion and therefore you were the one to blame for it. So then part of me figured that if I got stinking rich all of this would just go away. I wouldn't have to worry anymore about riding in cars. Do you know how damn inconvenient it is to NEVER get in a car with someone? That was all your fault Bill. That was what I thought, what I brought myself around to believing. And then you wouldn't help me get rich to compensate for it. When I went up to Tahoe this weekend, I was a very bitter person."
I nodded, not talking, understanding the source of her feelings a little. I can imagine what it's like living every day wondering if fate was finally going to catch up with you. She probably felt a little like soldiers in a war feel after a while.
"Sometimes I would feel paranoid beyond belief. Like I didn't dare even step outside the dorm room because fate was waiting for me out there. It would send a drunk driver along to run over me and knock me into the duck pond or something just to get at me. Other times I'd think the whole thing was a figment of my imagination, that I could climb into a car with Ted Kennedy and be perfectly safe. I can't even go to counseling about it. Can you imagine how the counselor would react? And I can't tell my friends about it either, although I must admit that sometimes, after Linda and I had a few beers, I was tempted to tell her what happened to you. Something kept me from doing that. The only person I could really talk about it with is you, but I didn't want to talk to you because you were trying to keep me down and you had caused all of this in the first place."
"But through all of that I stayed away from the situation that I knew fate wanted me to get into. I never got in a car with anyone else driving. I rode my bike when I wanted to get somewhere close by, even if it was pouring rain. If I needed to go to The City for something I took BART or the city bus. I was very careful not to give fate an opportunity.
"A few times though, I got into cabs. I didn't really like doing it but I also didn't think it was that dangerous. Cabs are public transportation aren't they? It never occurred to me that a cab driver would be drunk."
"You've ridden in cabs before?" I asked, surprised.
She nodded. "A few times. I only did it as a last resort but I never had a problem before. Sometimes we even drove right along the Bay too. I figured cabs were reasonably safe. In truth I didn't ride in them much mostly because they're expensive. And then I got in the one at the casino."
"What happened then?" I asked.
"I knew something was wrong almost right from the start of that trip."
"What do you mean?" I asked, fascinated, eager to hear this story.
She swallowed nervously. "It was the eeriest thing. I'd been drinking at the casino and was pretty buzzed, feeling kind of good you know? I was up a hundred bucks and ready to just go back to the room and crash. As soon as I closed the door in the cab and it pulled away I started to get nervous. I didn't know why at first. I didn't equate fate with any of it. I just felt twitchy, uncomfortable, like I didn't really want to be there. I thought it was the cab driver. He didn't seem drunk at all, that really would've made me nervous obviously, but there was something about him I didn't like. Something about his face, which looked kind of old and gross looking. He was talking about how good the tips were in his job since he usually only drove people who'd won big. Kind of hinting, you know? He asked me if I'd won big."
She breathed deeply, wiping a tear from her eye. I could see that she was trembling.
"He turned his head towards me when he asked me that," she went on. "When he did that I smelled it. Alcohol on his breath. Like the cop said, it wasn't much, just a faint whiff of that odor that people have when they've been drinking. I'm sure you know what I mean."
"Oh yeah," I affirmed softly. As a paramedic I'd smelled that odor thousands of times and knew it well. When I'd been new and had worked the night shift in downtown Spokane that odor had been on nine out of ten of my patients.
"As soon as that hit my nose and I realized I was in a car with a drunk driver at the wheel I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. The buzz that I had went away like that." She snapped her fingers. "I almost panicked, especially when I glanced over to my right and saw that we were driving alongside the lake. It was dark but I could see the water less than twenty feet away, just down a small incline. I could imagine perfectly being under that water, trapped in my seatbelt, not able to breathe, drowning. I could see Mom and Dad and you at my funeral, crying while they lowered my coffin into the ground.
"The cab driver was still looking at me, waiting for me to answer his question. Everything was moving in slow motion. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going and he was drifting into the other lane. That broke through. I yelled at him to watch where the hell he was going and he jerked his head back, steering back into his lane. He said something like, "Jeez lady, I wasn't gonna hit nobody" and looked offended. But I was still terrified.
"I told him to stop right there and let me out. He said, "what are you talking about, your hotel is still a couple a miles away?" and I told him I didn't care, to let me out right there. We argued for a minute about it and he just kept driving down the road, telling me that we were almost there and that he couldn't let someone out before they were where they were going. Finally I screamed at him to stop the fucking cab now.
"Things got really slow motion at that point. He was pissed off and said "fine, walk if that's what you want". But instead of simply stopping and letting me out he tried to pull into a parking lot on the other side of the street. He did it without looking to see if anything was coming first. Something was. It was one of the shuttle vans that take people from the motels to the casinos. He pulled right in front of it. It didn't even have time to put on the brakes. I didn't even have time to yell. In that second, while I was looking at it's headlights less than five feet from me, I knew that fate had finally caught up with me. I knew that I hadn't listened to you as much as I should have. I knew that I was going to die. I KNEW it!