Dandelion

The front door slams. It doesn’t happen too often, but this week it’s the third time. I jump in my chair and start to think about its motivation. Usually, the catalyst is one of four. A rude client, a rude colleague, flailing public transport or me. But today, I know it can’t be me. I’ve done everything I need to do and a bit more for good measure. And for once, she’s home earlier than usual, so I write off the train network. There’s another slam, this one shaking the water in my glass.

“Jesus,” I say under my breath; it’s time to call it a day. My cursor batters her eyelids, asking me to stay and type, but I can’t, I shouldn’t. Another slam. I fold the screen down. My eyes pulse in their sockets, wondering where the light has gone.

“Argh!” She screams. It’s painful to listen to, cutting. Composure is the best remedy for hysterics, or so I’ve found. I take a couple of breaths before descending the stairs. Listen, don’t solve, I tell myself, and the wooden steps begin to creek.

“What’s going on?” I ask as softly as I can manage.

“Where’s the fucking charger?”

“Laptop or phone?”

“Laptop, I still have to send an email. My laptop died on the train,” she’s crouched behind the kitchen island, hunting in the drawers and cabinets. Every door’s taking a piece of her mood.

“It’s upstairs, I’ll get it for you,” I say, run and return. A bottle of wine is glugging its way into her glass when I hand over the white cable.

“Thanks. I’ll be done in half an hour.” She’s already typing a reply. I wonder if her cursor asks her to stay at the end of the day, or is it thankful when the screen fades to black.

“Want anything special for dinner?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry.”

After enough years of practice, you learn when to persist and when to concede. Now is the time for the latter. My day has been spent behind a laptop, and the garden needs some TLC, so I step out under the threatening clouds to find the bucket I abandoned last week. I was hunting for weeds. There’s a city of dandelions rocking gently by the patio, and I start levelling it. But the first is given the treatment it deserves. Make a wish and blow. What did I wish for? Only a fool shares their wish with the world. I pick another and set it aside. She’ll appreciate it in an hour. The rest are dealt with cruel, undiscriminating efficiency. For all their beauty and mystical properties, dandelions are weak opposition, designed for propagation, not defence. The grass squeezing between the paving slabs is next on my list. I have an old folk for this job, it’s bent into a hook. The sound of metal scraping against flint makes me cringe, but the grass comes up easily. Even so, this is the worst job of all, simply because of the length. The path meanders the entire span of our narrow patch of land. My back aches after five minutes, and my knees start creaking after ten. At twelve, I concede. My hands are dusted with dirt, and the tips of my fingernails are black. Two signs of honest labour. Right on cue, there’s a knock on the window. I turn and see a smiling face. She’s tired and angry but smiling nevertheless. I smile back, and the clouds begin delivering on their threats.

“Sorry about earlier,” she says, stacking her keyboard on top of her laptop.

“No problem. Now, what about dinner?”

“I kind of fancy Maccies.”

“Well, maybe you can make your wish come true,” I say, presenting the intact dandelion. By the time I’ve extended my arm, she’s inhaling. Then she blows, and the fuzzy globe of seeds drifts into the air, spreading itself over our kitchen floor.

There’s a Maccies half a kilometre away, but I turn right instead of left at the end of our road and head the other way. She doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Either way, I’m pleased about it.

“I was thinking,” I say. “We should take a road trip soon.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t mind. But, we should set off in one direction and just drive for a few days.”

“Sounds good. I’d like to go north.”

“To Denmark?”

“Sweden if we can manage it,” she says, and for the first time since the last slam, there’s some energy in her.

“What about Poland and the Baltics?”

“Isn’t that ages away?”

“I guess it depends on how many days we have,” I say, glancing at the mirrors and switching lanes.

“How far could we get tonight?”

“Tonight?” I say and glance her way. She’s joking.

“Yeah, why not. I’m only working half a day tomorrow, and we aren’t doing anything this weekend.”

“You’re serious,” I say, more to myself than to her. Golden arches wait on the horizon, so I turn off and right, then join the drive-through queue. There’s one car in front of us, a beaten-up red Opel Corsa. Two teenagers are smoking in the front seats.

“Drive through?”

“Yeah, we have a lot of miles to cover.” I turn and smirk. This is what I love most about her. Now and again, she’ll embark on a ridiculous adventure with me. Right now, we aren’t in our thirties, with jobs waiting for us in the morning, loans to pay at the end of the month and emails to send all day long. We’re eighteen, doing all-nighters, driving around for the sake of it. Twenty chicken nuggets, two large fries, a vanilla milkshake and two coffees fill the space between us as we join the road for the night.

“Google says we can make it to Hamburg by two. Maybe we can stop there, work a little in the morning and set off again at noon,” she says, plotting routes on her phone.

“What are the hotels like… expensive?”

“We can sleep in the car tonight. Tomorrow we can decide where we want to go. Baltics or Scandies.” Even though we live within striking distance of both, we’ve been to neither.

“So what happened today?” I ask, chewing a mouthful of fries.

“It’s nothing really… Suzanna’s usual shit. But it’s all sorted. I just don’t understand how people can be so stupid. Everything she’s asking for was highlighted in the email I sent yesterday. I even colour-coded it.”

“Which one is Suzanna again? The moody French lady or the Yankee?”

“The Yankee.”

“There’s your answer then,” I say, then burn my tongue on the piping hot coffee. Karma.

“You alright?”

“Yeah.”

Bremen’s the first checkpoint on our way into Germany. At midnight it’s an uninspiring collection of warehouses and yellow lights. A FlixBus is heading towards us in its lime green uniform. There’s a tired face pressed against the window, utilising a hoodie as a pillow.

“It’s a shame we never travelled,” she says, hunting for the last fry at the bottom of the brown bag.

“We’re literally doing it now.”

“I know, but I mean the kind of travelling people do when they’re eighteen.”

“Well, we definitely missed the boat on that one.”

“Yeah, I know. I wish someone would have told me back then that once you grow up and get a job, you won’t have the time.”

“We have time now.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s not like we can take six months off and disappear,” she says, crumpling the brown bag and stuffing it into an empty cup. “I just imagined life to be a bit different. We both have well-paying jobs, and we have a house and friends. We have everything I thought we needed. But it’s like we live the same week on repeat.”

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“Nothing really.”

“If you want to give it all up and travel until our money runs out, we can. I’ll quit tomorrow.”

“And then what?”

“Who knows, but isn’t that the point?” I’ve said something that’s making her think. A kilometre passes with a flash of red tail lights, blue road signs and the smooth hum of rubber on tarmac. The nuggets and milkshake feel heavy in my stomach, sloshing from left to right when I turn the wheel. Then I feel the car complain, vibrating at a different frequency. It stutters.

“What was that?” She asks, re-joining me on our journey.

“Not sure, but I’ll pull over and check,” I say, checking the mirror. There’s not a single pair of headlights coming up the road. It stutters again.

“Are we breaking down?”

“It feels like it.”

Smoke billows out of the bonnet when I pull it open. Something’s hissing at us. Come closer, and I’ll bite, it says. A couple of cars race by a little too close for comfort. We’re not exactly in a layby, more like a grass verge. There’s a cold breeze cutting across the road, and in the distance, the orange glow of a city.

“Now what?” She asks.

“I guess we call someone. Or wait for someone to stop. But let’s call someone first. I don’t want to end up waiting all night.” I find a number for Hans Autowerkstatt. Judging by the images on Google, it’s a one-man operation somewhere in German suburbia.

“Hallo!” He shouts down the line, moving away from a muttering TV. He’s not a roadside mechanic, he tells me, but he’s coming and bringing a tow rope.

“Well, now we wait. Hang on, you don’t smoke,” I say, as she lights a cigarette, sitting a little way up on the verge.

“This is more like it,” she says, exhaling a cloud into the night air.

“This? smoking?”

“No idiot. The uncertainty. That’s all travelling is about anyway, right?” She says, passing the cig my way without taking her eyes off the road below. I take a drag and cough.

“That’s awful. Why do you smoke these?”

“Habit.”

“What habit? Where did you get them?”

“I always have one on the way home,” she says, and I’m a little stunned. We’ve been together for eleven years, and I’ve never questioned her when she’s told me the smell is from a man on the train or a colleague she sat with at lunch.

“Why did you never tell me?”

“Not sure… I guess I liked keeping it a secret. It’s fun. Was. But don’t worry, this is the extent of my secrets.”

“Next, you’ll tell me you and Suzanna are having a colour-coded affair.”

“Don’t be stupid. She’s not my type. Plus, I only kept this a secret because it’s harmless.”

“I think smoking is famously not harmless.”

“I mean relationship-wise. And smoking in secret makes me feel… eighteen again. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

“What was it again?”

“Travelling. It’s all about seeking uncertainty, isn’t it?” I look at her, uncertain of who she is. Her face looks tired but relaxed. She’s at peace.

“I think it depends on the person. But if you dig to the bottom, I’d say most people are chasing some novelty. Maybe that means uncertainty, too. That’s why people fly hours away to somewhere completely different.” She’s giggling.

“What?”

“You mean like on the side of a German motorway in the middle of the night?”

“Like I said. It depends on the person.”