Lost in the Static

         Iris gazes through the windshield into the soft blankets of snow that are beginning to fall on the stretch of road before them. The gentle flakes look like static against the inky darkness of the night’s sky. She lets her eyes glaze over and then come back in to focus. After three glasses of Pinot Noir, she has to admit her head is feeling a little fuzzy. She glances over at her husband, Ron. The snow outside his window illuminates his profile, making his normally tanned skin look almost translucent. 
         “Are you feeling drunk at all?” she asks him. “How many Scotches did you end up drinking with Hugh?”
         “I’m fine.” He states simply without looking away from the road in front of him.
         “Okay…well, I for one can’t believe that he was drinking so heavily. I mean, this night was to honor him and all this money that he donated to the hospital. They are naming the whole new wing for him, for God’s sake-and all he can do is stand around and drink like a fish and talk to the same old group of doctors that he always does. His speech up there was deplorable. I-“
         “He was fine too.” He cuts her off, darting a glance over at her in the passenger’s seat. She balks slightly at his sharp tone.
         “What’s wrong?” she asks calmly. The edginess is definitely unusual for Ron, especially after a night of drinking and hobnobbing with his colleagues. Up until about six months ago Ron had always been the most energetic and cheerful person in any group. He always stayed for one last drink and never turned down an invitation -be it to a black tie ball or a company soft ball game. Lately though, Iris has noticed a churning down not only on his usual excessive amounts of socializing, but on life in general. His twelve-year-old leather chair has never been so worn in, and the DVR has become the first piece of non-medical technology that he has ever managed to master. 
         He opens his mouth to reply, but just then the car lurches and bounces and they hear a huge thump outside.
         “Jesus!” Ron yells. He guides the car over to the side of the road and jerks it to a stop. “What the hell was that!?”
         Iris looks surprised. “It was probably just a stick in the road or something, honey. No need to get worked up.”
         “It sounded like a freaking body that we just ran over! What do you mean don’t get worked up?” He throws open his door and swings himself out. Iris sighs, squeezes her eyes together tightly for a moment, and then steps out of her side of the car as well.
         They both stand there, gazing at each other over the roof of their silver Mercedes SL500. Iris sighs again, gathers up the hem of her floor-length black gown, and carefully steps over to Ron’s side of the car. They are the only souls on the road as far as they can see in either direction, and the only light is coming from the headlights of their own car. They are a lighthouse for this highway of spookiness. Iris glances exaggeratedly in both directions and then swings her gaze back to Ron. The noiseless snowflakes begin to mist her tight blonde bun, perhaps attracted by the full bottle of hair spray she emptied on it earlier.
         “So what was it?” she asks pointedly, squinting her eyes against the bright beams of the headlights. Ron looks in either direction as well and then kneels down gently to glance under the car.
         “I don’t know…” he mumbles, mostly to himself. “That’s very odd…”
         “Are you sure you aren’t feeling just a little drunk, honey? I know I saw you go up to the bar for at least four drinks through the night.” Iris asks gently.
         “I’m not drunk, dear!” he shouts into the black emptiness of the night. “Did you not hear that huge sound? I am sure that we ran over something just now.”
         Iris looks again in either direction, staring carefully at the road while allowing her eyes to adjust to the lack of light. There is nothing. She is sure of it. She looks back over to Ron, who is now on his way walking back in the direction they had just come, his eyes panning over the road. “Oh jeez…” she mumbles to herself. “Just come back, Ronald! It was nothing!”
         She stares after him, her eyes zeroing in on his back. She glances once more at the car, just as the headlights dim out.
         “Oh, my,” she sighs. Shuffling back to the car, she throws a quick look over her shoulder and sees that Ron has slipped behind the curtain of darkness and out of sight. She can’t even see the silhouette of his glossy gray hair anymore. She quickens her pace a little, clutching at her gown and trying desperately not to stumble each time her sharp heels sink into the damp roadside earth.
         “Ronald!” she yells, her voice cracking slightly. “Don’t go any further! Do you hear me?” Silence. She grumbles a bit as she tentatively pops open the driver’s side door and eases into the tan leather seat. Only Ron has ever sat in this seat before. He is extremely overprotective of his car, and Iris hasn’t been in possession of a driver’s license since she was twenty-one anyway. The last time she was in control of a vehicle was in 1972 when her college roommate Cindy had talked Iris into driving home her red Karmann Ghia after a few too many Juleps at the Delta Sigma Kentucky Derby party.
         With a little less trouble than she had anticipated, Iris is able to turn the ignition and once again illuminate the empty road ahead. With a shaky hand, she reaches forward to turn off the Henry Mancini C.D. they had been playing. “Moooooon Riiiverrr….” gives way abruptly to a rumbling silence. Iris pulls the now damp and slightly muddy hem of her gown up around her knees and eases the car out on to the road, struggling a little with the steering wheel to turn around toward the direction Ron had stalked off.
         Leaning almost completely over the dash and squinting her eyes into little slits, she searches for any glint of Ron’s shiny leather shoes, a twinkle of a cuff link, a flash of white collar against the darkness. Inching along at less than 5 miles an hour, Loretta realizes she has passed the point where she guesses they hit the bump, and she is driving on the wrong side of the road. With a hysterical jerk of the wheel she pulls over once again onto the grass. She freezes for a second, not truly able to grasp what is happening. She lays on the horn. BRRRRT. BRRRRRRRRT. She pauses again. The only sound is her own uneasy breathing and the whisper of the snow, which is beginning to sound like a waterfall.
         Iris rattles around with the unfamiliar collection of gadgets on either side of the steering wheel until she knocks one that turns the high beams on. She yells out a shaky “ROOOONNN!,” but the windows are closed. With a burst of cold air, she swings the door open. “ROOOONNN!” she yells again into the cavernous darkness. Her eyes sear through the silence and she tries to focus on the road as it disappears beyond the flooding headlights of the car.
         She stands there beside the car for five seconds, ten, what feels like a lifetime. Her labored breath rises and falls along with the soft whistle of the wind. She yells for Ron until her voice begins to break. She hasn’t blinked and her eyes start to water, blurring her already strained vision. Ron has their only cell phone tucked into his jacket pocket and turned on silent so as to not disturb the events of the night. She doesn’t know what to do. She stuffs herself and her long dress back into the car, but she doesn’t shut the door. She doesn’t want to lose the biting feeling of the cold, her only connection to him. With a trembling hand she blasts the horn over and over, praying that someone will hear her plea for help. BRRRRT. BRRRRT. BRRRRRT. The sound becomes so loud that her ears go numb as well. She can no longer see, no longer hear, no longer feel. She gives in and shuts the door, turning the dial for the heat as far as it will go. She continues pressing the horn.
         After thirty minutes of trembling and crying and honking the horn she sees headlights appear in the distance. They start out as a blur of light and then separate into two bright dots, slicing through the dark and cold. She fumbles around frantically with the knobs on the steering again, knocking the lights out and then illuminating them even brighter. As the other car comes closer, her breathing hollows out and her hands begin to tremble. She leaps out of the car, waving her arms and yelling with all that’s left of her voice. The car pulls to a stop, it’s a police car. Iris cries with relief. “Help! Help!” she yells.
         The car pulls to a stop and there are two young officers inside. They both jump out, their eyes wide with confusion. “Ma’am, are you ok?” One of them asks.
         “No I’m not ok!” she croaks. “I’ve lost my husband! He’s lost!”
         The two policemen look at one another. “Why don’t you come with us, ma’am.”
         “No!” she shouts. “He’s out here! I need to find him! He left and now he’s lost!”
         “And you came out here looking for him?” one of them asks delicately.
         “He left!” she yells again. “He left! I need to find him!” she is near hysterics. One of the policemen walks over and takes her arm, guiding her toward their car, its blue and red lights flashing wildly through the snow.
         “Her husband must have run out on her,” he whispers to his partner as they shuffle past. They eye her long black dress and damp high heels as he eases her down on the back seat. She sits trembling and looking up at them with wide eyes.
         “You need to go look for him!” she shrieks at them. “He’s all alone. He’s out there all alone!”
         “Ma’am, when did you last see him?”
         She looks up at them, her eyes falling open even wider. “I don’t know. I don’t know how long its been!” She pauses to wipe at the tears streaking down her face. “It’s so cold!” she cries.
         “Ma’am, what exactly happened? Do you need us to drive you somewhere? Do you live around here?”
         She looks up at them, her lip trembling with confusion. “We went to a party, we were driving home,” her words come out in a frantic staccato, “we ran over something in the road, a stick I think, or a rock. He got out to look for it and he walked off! He’s gone! He must be hurt!” Her words ramble off in a jumble of crying and howling. The two policemen stand silently. They turn their heads and meet eyes, confused.
         “He’s out there in the snow, ma’am?” one of them asks softly. She nods her head vigorously.
         “Yes!” she shrieks, “He’s out there, you need to help him!” One of the policemen jogs over to the other side of the patrol car and leans in, grabbing his radio to call for help.
         Within minutes the quiet road is filled with color and sound and life. Five police cars with their lights blaring are parked askew along the road. An ambulance sits off to the side on the grass, its blue and red beams twisting wildly through the snowy trees. One of the female police officers who has arrived has wrapped a large wool blanket around Iris and she leads her to an unmarked car parked on the grass to the side of all the commotion. She helps her into the backseat and gently tucks the edge of the blanket inside the door before she shuts it. She jogs around to the driver’s side and jumps quickly behind the wheel.
         “Ma’am, I’m going to take you to the police station,” she says evenly. “Is there anyone we should call? Any children or family members?”
         “No,” Iris replies softly. “No children.” Her eyes fill with tears. There is nobody for her to call. No children, no family. Nobody. They had each other. They had been happy with that. No children. Iris breaks down, her shoulders heaving and arms shaking. “Why did he do this?” Iris pleads. The policewoman glances over at the sobbing woman beside her.
         “It’ll be ok, ma’am.”
         “It’s Iris. Iris. And it will not be ok. Don’t feed me that bullshit. Why did he do this?” she asks again, her voice filled with confusion and desperation.
         “I’m sorry, ma’am-Iris,” the policewoman offers hesitantly. She falls silent. Iris continues weeping beside her.
         The policewoman sighs and sweeps her heavy black bangs out of her face with a steady finger. She looks up out the windshield; the lights of the other police cars and the ambulance blur the scene in front of them.          
         “If you could hold on for just one second,” she says to Iris, “I’m just going to step out of the car and I will be right back.”
         Iris nods, a sniffle and a little moan escape. The policewoman pauses for a second and then sweeps out of the car. The door thumps loudly closed and Iris buries her tear soaked face in her arms. She leans over and places her head between her knees. The vents of the car blow warm air loudly over her back. She takes in a deep breath and it comes rattling back out in a broken sob.
         “Holy Shit!” The policewoman jumps back into her seat, pulling the drivers side door shut behind her with both hands. “Holy Shit!” she says again. Iris looks up at her. She has been gone for less than a minute.
         “What?” Iris asks. Her voice sounds like a little girl’s.
         “They’re gone,” the policewoman barks at her. “Nobody is out there,” she says, pronouncing each syllable carefully. Iris looks through the windshield at the streaking lights. It looks like a crime scene from a movie or from reality tv. She looks back at the policewoman. She wipes her eyes.
         “Are they looking for Ron?” Iris asks in her little girl voice.
         “No- they are all gone! Like, just, they just disappeared! Nobody is out there!” They both sit silent, staring out the windshield into the lights. The policewoman grabs her radio and starts babbling into it. “My radio is dead!” she yells. She drops it. The whole scene seems like a routine, Iris squints her eyes at the woman. They stare at each other, frozen in the strangeness of the moment.
         “What’s going on here?” the policewoman pleads with Iris. She scrambles for the keys in the ignition and the car rumbles to life. She eases the car forward and they float between the other police cars parked on the road in front of them, straining their eyes to search through each of the windows.
         “Where are they?” Iris whispers. The policewoman slams her foot down on the pedal once they clear the perimeter of the other cars and they sail along the dark road, the trees slipping past them behind a curtain of fat snowflakes. After they have gone a couple hundred feet the car tilts and jerks as they fly over a large bump in the road. The policewoman slams on the breaks and the wheels wobble a little as they ease to a stop. They turn to stare at each other.
         “Don’t get out, it was nothing,” Iris squeaks.