Snag a Bag

The night was clear and cold as we barreled down I-75 to Atlanta from Big Canoe, the gated community where my mother-in-law lived. It was Thanksgiving 2009 or 2010, doesn’t really matter which.

I merged onto 485 to get to Tom and Natalie’s, where we were staying overnight before driving home to Augusta. It seemed like a bad idea out of the gate to me, but I may as well legally change my name to Cassandra. Tom and Natalie (divorced for over a decade now) were having marital problems. Serious marital problems. Natalie had come home during the afternoon a week or two prior and found Tom in their bed with a woman who was her polar opposite, engaged in sexual activity with cameras rolling. She attempted suicide the next day.

So I’m absolutely over the moon to spend a night in this happy home. Needless to say, the tension in the air was so thick I couldn’t have sliced through it with a machete or scimitar. Good times.

Natalie asked me if I wanted to go out with her. I didn’t, but I wanted to stay in the room with Tom and his puffed chest even less, so I lied and said yes.

Well, pop my cherry and call me a banana split—we were going out in Natalie’s mother’s car. It was a brand new Jaguar convertible. Black. The seats were like butter. The odometer showed that it wasn’t even broken in yet, only had a few hundred miles on it. My night was improving. Until Natalie started “driving.”

Lord, she was drunk as Cooter Brown, dripping diamonds and being adorable in a fox fur jacket that would lose its charm smeared on the highway. I commented as neutrally as possible, and she asked me if I wanted to drive.

Hell to the yes I wanted to drive that Jag instead of die in it. And let me tell you, that sweet little kitty was as tight as a gnat’s ass on a lemon wedge. I barely had to touch the acccelerator, and I could damn near steer it with my thoughts. Oh, I loved driving that car.

I was cruising up the perimeter at around 90 when she told me to take the next exit. Damn, I was ready to get in the fast lane and open that baby up. Oh, well. I should have missed the exit, but I was a good faux scout and followed instructions. No salute.

“Take a right,” Natalie directed when I reached the end of the ramp. Almost as soon as I turned, she told me to hang a left.

I didn’t like the looks of it. As soon as I turned on the street with no name, we began descending a steep hill. Ride-the-brake steep. Probably one way, definitely a dead end. Fantastic, it became crystal clear that if we were going out, it would be after she scored some powder.

The road leveled out at the bottom of the hill, and guys were milling around, but one was standing still by the curb, in the shadows of the dark. Point man located.

The temperature had risen since my husband and I left the mountains, and it wasn’t misty, but humid enough to halo the dim streetlights. I stopped in front of him and saw Natalie and myself from outside the vehicle. We definitely looked like two spoiled-bitch white girls—blonde hair and all. Fur. Diamonds. Louis Vuitton. Jaguar. There was zero doubt in my mind that the neighbors could easily take all of it.

I’m not sure what Natalie's self awareness level is when she isn't in her cups, but it was in the negative range that night. On the drive, she had been bragging about her mother, author of about a dozen etiquette books, being on Nancy Grace recently. Like that would impress me. She opened the conversation by wishing point man a happy Thanksgiving. Asked him if he had a good dinner. That was perfectly fine.

The next things that came out of her mouth were evidence of her false belief that she could code switch. Maybe on the street in jeans and a hoodie, but not in that Jaguar in fur and diamonds. Not a chance in hell that would play in Detroit.

Cornbread. Collard greens. Blackeyed peas. Oh, hell no she didn’t. I try to sink deeper into the glove leather driver’s seat. Point man humors her, to my relief. I read the smirk on his face, but she doesn’t. She’s looking for a fifty (that’s a half gram). He cuts his eyes over to someone, and the merchandise is ferried over to him by one of the other dudes. These guys aren’t amateurs, don’t even have to speak or gesture to each other to communicate. And he’s not holding. Smart. Natalie, on the other hand, thinks she’s being smart. Thinks she’s endearing herself while she’ll actively endangering herself. Since I’m contained with her, she’s also endangering me. Fabulous.

Could things get worse? Could she do something more stupid than try to act hood while trying to score some blow on Thanksgiving night? You better believe it. If there were a stupidity Olympics, the highest tier would have supported a diamond-crusted blonde wrapped in fur, hand over heart with Hall and Oates’s “Rich Girl” playing on the PA. Yes, she did. She didn’t just think it, and she didn’t wait until we were safely out of there to say it out loud. Whether or not it was true is irrelevant, especially in this closed seller’s market on a holiday.

“It looks light.”

There were a lot more guys on that street than the visible ones. Point man gave a tiny jerk of his head, and we were approached from all directions. Natalie's face showed signs of comprehension of her faux pas as she leaned into me, and said, "I think you should turn around."

Let's pause here and go back in time to when my father taught me how to drive. I was twelve, and we were out at my grandparents' in the country. He took me to one of the timber roads on my mother's land, drove down it a few miles, put it in park, and cut it off. We swapped seats, and he instructed me on adjusting the seat and the mirrors. After we buckled up, he told me to start the engine with my foot on the brake. After the engine started, he told me to put it in reverse. I drove all the way back to the county road in reverse, and I asked him when I could drive forward. He said when I turned fifteen or when I could drive a mile in reverse at 20 mph without swerving, whichever came first. I began driving forward when I was thirteen.

So, Natalie said she thought I should turn around. In a brand new Jag while we were being surrounded. Not today, Susan. I looked her dead in the eye, said, "Fuck turn around," popped that Jag in reverse, and hauled ass up that hill like James Bond. And that’s how I lived to tell this tale—I remembered what my daddy taught me.