Matt checked the reservations board and found his name and spot number. The rental car he’d reserved was a ways away so he stepped over the chain link fence and exhaustedly wandered the streetlamp-lit parking lot, desperately fighting the urge to rub his left eye as it buzzed with spring-time allergies and sleepiness. When he found it, the silver-gold sedan, he didn’t even register what make or model it was. He tossed in his bag and then himself. The dashboard clock burst to life at a turn of the ignition. It was 12:53 am.
He inched up to the exit booth slowly, wary that they’d turn him away. Word on the street was that you needed an actual driver’s license to rent one of these machines. Well, Matt would see about that.
“Hi,” Matt greeted the twenty-something girl on the other side of the-almost-his car’s window, “just to get this out of the way, I don’t have my actual license, but I totally have a picture of it?” He tried to smile, but all his face managed was a grimace. His eye felt like it was made of bees.
She looked at him like he’d just suggested they run away together to Iraq to breed feral cats for a living before telling him to pull over and wait for her manager to come back and let him deal with it. As he waited, Matt took off the ski goggles from his forehead and finger-combed his hair; he needed to look respectable. When said manager eventually arrived, Matt explained the situation to him, mustering up all of the travel-weariness he could.
“Hi, good evening. Hi. I lost my wallet in transit here. I have no money, no driver’s license, and I need to get to my work training in,” he glanced at his phone, “in like seven hours. Really? Seven hours? Look, I need this car. I’ve rented from you before, you have my license on file, please. Let me have this car.”
The man looked at him for some anxious seconds, before turning to his screen and asking Matt to spell his last name.
Barreling down the highway, he couldn’t believe his luck. Granted, driving without depth perception due to having to keep an eye shut to mollify the itchiness wasn’t as much fun as Matt’d hoped, but listening to two GPS units fight for his attention certainly made up for it. He’d set up both his phone and the built-in navigator, not fully trusting either, feeling like Mr. Popular as they argued back and forth over which route to take. Not one to play favorites, he followed one then the other then back again on his way to the hotel.
When he got to the building’s main entrance, he found the automatic door wasn’t opening. Thinking it was a faulty motion- or weight-detector, he began to stomp on the mat and wave his hands all around. Eventually the doors slid open to reveal a concerned looking old man at the front desk, peering around a pillar at the traveler making a ruckus in his entryway.
He wouldn’t let Matt check in without a ‘real’ credit card.
“That’s fine, I get it,” Matt said cheerfully, smiling with his good eye, “rules are rules, but if you don’t let me stay here, I’ll just have to camp out in my car outside.”
“I really shouldn’t be doing this…” the man said hesitantly, looking around the abandoned lobby, “just don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Matt lied, eagerly accepting his room keys.
