Page 28 of Who We Think We Are
K ate feels safer—less vulnerable and exposed—as soon as she is in the car.
A few blocks away is a burger joint with a drive-through.
“This isn’t what Kate usually eats,” Kate says out loud, as though narrating a story, “but Twilight Zone Kate does what she needs to do.” She pulls up to the window.
“A cheeseburger and an extra-large diet cola, please.” I’ve got to get my caffeine somehow .
Once Kate has her food and drink, she pulls into a parking spot to eat her hamburger and map her route to Belgium.
She’ll drive west as far as Dortmund and then head southwest, avoiding all the big cities she’d seen on the little map.
She’ll enter Belgium by driving between Düsseldorf and Cologne.
It should take three and a half hours to get to Liege, right over the border in Belgium.
By the time Kate starts to drive, it is dark and still pouring rain.
Kate continues her third-person narration.
“It is a dark and stormy night, but the brave and intrepid Kate Hathaway ventures west into the unknown. No one and nothing will stop her, try as they might.” Is someone trying to stop me?
Or do I just have an overactive imagination?
“Kate Hathaway does indeed have an active imagination. But she could not have imagined the things that have happened to her since …” Since when?
“Since she got to Berlin. Someone does not want Kate in Germany. Which is fine because Kate does not want to be in Germany either.”
Kate tries to listen to music or a book on her iPad, which is not hooked up to cellular, so she can’t be tracked. Ugh! I can’t stand the noise. Too jarring. I need to concentrate on my driving.
When she gets to the autobahn, there are no streetlights. Jesus, it is dark. And people drive so frickin fast! Don’t they know how dangerous that is in the rain?
The windshield wipers are going the fastest speed they can. A car roars up behind Kate.
They found me! Is this guy going to ram me? Is this how I die, alone on the autobahn in Germany, where no one in the world knows where I am except the bad guys?
Then, at the last second, the car honks and swerves around her.
Most of the cars race by her in the left lane, but a few minutes later, it happens again, and then again.
Can they see me? Maybe I should have gotten the white car.
Stop freaking out. No one is after me. This is just how they drive here!
Kate stays in the right lane, heading toward Belgium at sixty miles an hour.
I’m not driving faster. I’ll be a danger to myself.
The crazies can have the left lane all to themselves.
“Kate has never been scared of driving in her life. Until now. The autobahn, built by slave labor supervised by her great-grandfather in World War II, is a thing unto itself.”
After four and a half hair-raising, gut-clenching, nail-biting hours, Kate crosses the border into Belgium.
She stops at a well-lit gas station and immediately runs to the WC.
All that diet cola and nowhere to stop! Hands shaking, she fills the car with gas, looks at her map again, and plans the route to Antwerp.
She’ll be there in an hour and a half. Before she pulls out, Kate tries to take five deep breaths again.
There is still no way she can count five breaths, but she manages to count to two several times, so she calls it good.
The highway heading northwest through Belgium is as different from the autobahn as night is from day.
Kate resumes her third-person narration. “Why is this highway so different, Kate?” Kate answers, “First, because there is a speed limit; second, there is an abundance of streetlights; third, and perhaps most importantly, it is not in Germany! Kate can breathe again.”
When Kate reaches Antwerp, she goes to a drive-through coffee shop and orders an extra-large Earl Grey with steamed milk and a croissant. She maps her route to The Hague and heads north. This leg will also take an hour and a half.
As she nears The Hague, Kate thinks about where to go. I’m not going to my usual hotel. That’s too predictable. I’m going to the Canadian Embassy as soon as they open in the morning. I’ll drive there and find a hotel close by.
Right across the street from the Embassy is a luxury hotel. At 3:00 a.m., Kate pulls up, and a valet takes her car. When Kate tries to check in, the clerk says, “You can’t check in at this time, madam.”
“Why?” asks Kate. She looks at the clerk’s name tag. “Listen, Anita, I have been traveling for fifteen hours and desperately need to sleep. How can we make that happen?”
“Check-in time isn’t until fifteen hundred hours. If I check you in now, you’ll have to pay for a whole extra night.”
“Fine. Give me a room on the top floor at the end of the hall, if possible. I need peace and quiet.”
“Very well. Give me your credit card and passport, and we’ll get you checked in as quickly as possible.”
Kate hands her credit card and passport to Anita and holds her breath, waiting to see what happens.
Anita keys in the numbers on her computer and gives the credit card and passport back to Kate, along with the key to the room.
No drama. Kate lets her breath out in a whoosh and tries to resume normal breathing without being too obvious.
On the elevator to the tenth floor, Kate’s third-person interviewer asks, “And are you made of money, Kate? Renting a Mercedes, paying four hundred euros extra for not having to show your passport, and paying for two nights at this fancy hotel?”
“No,” replies Kate, “but Twilight Zone Kate must …”
“I know,” interrupts the third-person interviewer, “she must do what she must do.”
When Kate gets to her room, she deadbolts the door, drops her bag, tears off her clothes, steps into the huge, white-tiled shower, and runs the water as hot as she can bear.
She sits on the floor of the shower with the scalding water from showerheads above and all sides beating down on her from every direction.
She is shaking and, to her great surprise, sobbing.
After a long while, she begins to feel a measure of calm.
It’s 4:30 a.m. when Kate wraps herself in an oversized white terry towel bathrobe and, with plumped-up pillows behind her, sits under the fluffy white feather duvet on the king-size bed. She turns her phone on, and it chimes and lights up like a pinball machine.