Part I
It was the jazz that soothed her, that kept her from tearing her eyes from her head. It was the tinny sigh of the ride cymbal, the loose beat of the snare, the sweet tune of the piano. It was the harmonious dance of the sax and the muted call of the cornet. It was the three glasses of wine she had had with dinner.
The night ride home was nothing new for Marie, certainly not when it included her and her husband sitting side to side in that nervous silence that often accompanied two people who had grown far apart. Though, after years, it did seem easier to long for the calm that resulted from such a falling out.
The flurry of white picked up outside the car, a shower of thick, illuminated chaff that flew up and over the windshield and disappeared into the night. A gust of wind blew the driverless car off its path, but the guidance system detected the error and quickly set the car back on track.
“Presence of high winds detected,” the robotic female voice called out to its passengers.
Marie looked out the window. Even with all of man’s technological savvy, these machines never truly sound real.
The car’s radio began to sputter in and out and the static changed Marie’s mood with haste. She turned the dial. The empty sound of wind and her husband’s breathing set her thoughts elsewhere.
She had always loved classical music, its masters Coltrane, Brubeck, and the others. Her husband, David, had never shared that love. Instead, he listened to that new music the kids listened to. What was it called again? Drowned? No… drone, that was it. And how that rubbish did drone on.
It was some crisis of his, no doubt; trying to act younger, trying to impress anyone who might be listening. The only problem was that nobody was. Nobody listened while he exercised in his private gym, or while he was on his way to the office, or even while he snuck downstairs for his midnight linkups, downloading images of women much younger than her and much less clothed. Oh yes, she knew about those nightly visits to the computer, yet she ignored them. Their love life could hardly be called amiable, much less existent.
“Sensors indicate freezing rain and ice patches. Speed slowed by twenty kilometers per hour.”
Her husband sighed and placed his hands behind his head.
“You may need to use the steering wheel for a change,” Marie said.
“Stupid weather,” he grumbled. “How much slower are we even going? I’ll never figure out this damn metric system. Why’d they have to go and change it anyway? What ain’t broken, shouldn’t be fixed.”
She gave him a reserved smile. How terribly clichéd of you.
Several small aches made their way to Marie’s head. She thought it best to switch her view from her husband to the sky and the trees. The snow blocked much of the beauty, making it difficult to see much farther than the car’s side mirror. Her head fell to her shoulder and her eyes became heavy. She slowly drifted to a dreamy world where life had simplicity.
Marie’s head jerked to the left as the car spun out of control. She felt the icy patches beneath, and the tires losing traction. They were spinning, endlessly spinning. Marie dug her fingernails into the console.
The car’s automated system could do nothing but heedlessly try and gain control on the tractionless road. The brakes were called into action, but they did more harm than good. The car flipped, the passengers knocked to the roof of the car even with their seatbelts securely fitted. The whirling mass of steel came to a stop as it careened into the trunk of a giant oak. Marie was barely conscious.
The winter’s chill filled the car and touched Marie and her husband. Somehow the radio had come back on and was spewing out static. The car corrected this smallest of problems and suddenly Marie was listening to her jazz. She saw the shadows of a creature on its haunches come up to the shattered windshield and sniff at the contents inside. The sounds of big band played as she fell into more worlds of simplicity.
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