Liz's bare feet pressed on the cool glass of the sedan's windshield. A combination of sunlight, hangover, and Tom Petty playing on repeat for the last two hours in the tape deck was making her ill. She crawled her way out from under the plastic jacket. The sun was like a knife in her brain.

She flipped down the visor to block the sun only to discover the built in mirror. Her makeup was smeared it made her look like she had fallen down on a Van Gough painting. She took a pack of wet naps out of her bag and began cleaning her face.

"Hey there, beautiful. Glad you decided to stop hiding from the universe."

"Where the hell are we?" inquired Liz.

"The middle of nowhere, better known as Kansas."

As her eyes finally came into focus, she could see that this was the truth. They were in the place where brown meets blue with the occasional green dot here and there to break up the horizon. Every now and then, a tractor trailer would pass by, headed in the opposite direction, just to remind them other humans still existed.

She took her phone out of her bag and held down the power button in hopes that it somehow magically charged itself while she was asleep. She hoped they would have a charger at the next place they went for gas. She feared she might start having fits if she didn't see the internet soon.

"I think I need another drink," Liz muttered under her breath.

"I was more thinking coffee, I've been fighting against some serious nap action for about the past hour. I desperately want to change the music out, but I'm afraid to take my eyes off the road," Rick reported.

Liz hit the eject button on the tape deck. With a kerchunk the tape flew out of the deck and into her hand. Static came blaring out of the speakers. She twisted the dial until she found something that wasn't NPR or an explanation of how wonderful Jesus is.

By the time they reached the gas station all the blue had turned to gray, giving the world the look of an old time-y photo from the days of the Wild West. Rick laid back in the driver's seat. His eyes felt like they were glued open. All he wanted was to rub his eyelids until they dropped to his cheeks, but he couldn't lift his arms away from the steering wheel they had been there so long. Eventually he managed to loosen his grip and tear them away. The two of them looked like zombies.

Rick wearily pulled out a bundle of singles from his pocket and handed it to Liz. "I'm going to gas up. Can you get me a coffee and a pack of Camels?"

Liz took the money and stumbled out of the car. She stood for a moment.

The store was old and worn out. It was caked with grease and dust. The windows looked as if they had been rubbed with soap, but someone had forgotten to apply the water. As if they were waiting for the rain to do the work. Her nose tingled as if the way it does when one licks a nine-volt battery. Wet dust, she thought to herself, that's a new one.

The chime let out a bing-bong as she entered the store. Everyone in the establishment locked eyes on her and she became suddenly self-conscious. She hoped that they would return to their business as she made her way through the store, but they continued to stare at her as if she were a two-headed calf at the rodeo.

Everyone looked strange and inbred. It was like a horror movie. Any second she expected to see Aston Kutcher to come running out of the back room, telling her it was all a joke. As she fixed the coffees she could still feel their eyes on her.

The door let out another bing-bong and a feeling of relief came over her. She turned expecting to see Rick, but instead, a cliché of a small-town cop stood silently by the door, with his hands on his hips. His elbows were thrown back and his neck lurched forward like an angry chicken.

As she made her way to the counter, the coffee cups were visibly rattling, either from her nerves or the lack of alcohol in her system. She wasn’t sure. The obese clerk, perched on a two foot stool behind the counter, sneered at the coffee grotesquely.

"That all you want."

"Um..." Liz's throat had run dry. She desperately wanted to take a sip of her coffee but she had a sneaking suspicion that if she did so before paying she would be promptly arrested for shoplifting by a bored small town cop. "I also need some Camels."

"Camels?" the clerk asked as if she had never heard the word before.

"Yes. A pack of Camel cigarettes."

"I know what they are."

Despite the fact the Camels were clearly within arm's reach, the clerk heaved herself off of the stool and took three exasperating steps to the rows of cigarettes that lined the wall behind her. "Camels ... Camels ... Camels" she repeated as she scanned the rows of cigarettes with her finger. The cop took a couple of chews at an imaginary piece of gum.

"Y'know what they say, Nancy? If you can't find something, check yer ass!" heckled the old man who clearly had no interest in buying anything.

"Shut up, Phil, or I'm going to come bother you at where you work!"

The cop looked out at Rick's car. Then he wandered over next to Liz at the counter. He looked her up and down, then he leaned an elbow against the counter so he could look her in the face. Liz could see her own frightened face in the reflection of his mirrored sunglasses.

"You two on vacation or something?" the cop asked.

"Mm..hmm"

"What's that's, sweetheart?" Asked the cop. "I couldn't hear you."

"We're going to L.A."

"Hollywood, huh? You two movie stars or something?"

"Ah... No. We're just you know ... going to L.A."

"What for?"

Don't say a hamburger, Liz thought to herself.

"You know... vacation."

"Mm..hmm. I see."

Liz quickly paid for the coffee and the cigarettes and made her way past the cop and out the door. She walked over to the car and found Rick laying back in the passenger seat.

"I'm beat. You're going to have to drive for a while." He handed her the keys as he sipped his coffee. Liz sat in the driver seat. If she leaned forward she could reach the steering wheel, but not the pedals.

"Um, Rick?" asked Liz. What she wanted to say next was that she had never drove a stick-shift before, but instead, what came out was, "How do you adjust the seat?"

Rick smiled and leaned over. He reached his hand between Liz's legs, which gave her a bit of a startle, being already nervous from her interaction with the cop inside the gas station. Rick grabbed a lever from underneath the seat and the whole thing was now sliding back and forth. Liz reached down and grabbed the lever, holding Ricks hand for a second.

"I got it," said Liz. Rick when back to half napping and drinking coffee.

She felt like everything was so far away. Not just the steering wheel and the pedals of the car, but her home, her friends, and even herself. She scooted the seat forward, but it didn't help at all. Rick, still drinking coffee with one hand, was banging the pack of cigarettes against the dashboard with the other. Liz turned the key, but nothing happened.

"You have to push the clutch in." Rick spoke without opening his eyes.

Liz found the clutch next to the brake and, stretching her leg out as far as it would go, pushed it in with her foot. She turned the key and the engine kicked over. She took her foot off the clutch and the car lurched forward about two feet at, what felt like, about ninety miles an hour.

The car came to a sudden stop as the engine died. The two coffees on the other hand sailed along their merry way across the dashboard, but by some miracle half the coffee fell back into the cups. The rest of it, however, now decorated the interior of the car.

"I've never driven a stick shift before."

"Ya think?" Rick said, mopping up coffee with a fist full of napkins. "OK, it's not that hard. Just make sure you're in neutral and ease off of the clutch nice and slowly."

"You know what ..." The muscles in Liz's forehead felt like they were trying to crush her skull. "Fuck you. No. I'm not going to learn how to drive a stick shift right now. OK?”

“I don't know who the fuck you are,” Liz continue shouting, “I just met you. You could be some kind of bank robber or something. I don't know if you paid for that gas or not, and there is a weird fucking cop in there. He's asking why we're going to L.A. What am I supposed to say? Hamburgers? Fucking hamburgers? I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. OK? So just shut the fuck up for a second."

Rick looked up over her shoulders at the store for a moment.

"Why didn't you tell me about the weird cop?"

"Because I didn't know if it was real or in my head."

"Oh. He's real all right. Looks like some kind of weird chicken man."

Liz let out a laugh.

"He does look like a chicken man."

"Yeah, it's fucking weird. Alright, Switch seats and I'll get us out here and we'll stop for a second and figure it all out. We're going to have to get more coffee anyway."

"I'm sorry about that." Liz had made quite the mess.

"Don't worry about it. These cars were built for little kids to make a mess in. It will wipe up in no time. Let's just focus on getting some distance from the Kentucky Fried Ranger."