Travel Warnings

Who doesn’t have travel stories?

Sleeping on the linoleum at Chicago’s O’Hare in the middle of a blizzard ✓; being stuck on the hotel corridor where a wedding party occupies all the other rooms and you have an 8 am presentation ✓; inspecting a nuclear power plant in a town where “good restaurant” means a choice of vending machines in the lobby of the motel, the kind of establishment where you sleep with your clothes on and your purse under your pillow ✓.

Luggage lost ✓, luggage stolen ✓.

Until my latest (April, 2015) Miniature Mystery, Manhattan in Miniature, I’ve never given any of my characters a bad travel experience. Maybe because I think every reader would be able to say: I’ve been there, and I can top that.

In fact my characters have hardly traveled at all.

It took four books to get Gloria Lamerino of the Periodic Table series out of Revere, Massachusetts. In seven books, Geraldine Porter of the Miniature Mysteries never leaves fictional Lincoln Point, California. Sophie Knowles of the Professor Sophie Knowles mysteries stayed put in the Boston area through four books, except for a jaunt to New Hampshire, which hardly counts as travel.

In Manhattan in Miniature, Gerry finally returns to her roots in New York City. Here’s a taste of one of her less pleasant moments.

*****

I still felt a little jet-lagged and tired enough to grab a few minutes of sleep. If a cab could be a phone booth, why not a bed? We were traveling slowly enough in midtown rush hour traffic. I scrunched down a bit, got comfortable, head back, legs stretched out as far as possible, volume turned to zero on the video display in front of me, then . . .

Crunch!

A flat tire? In the middle of the crowded Lexington Avenue? From the quick stop and words from the cabbie, words that were directed to an SUV driver and not fit for Maddie’s journal, I guessed No, not a flat, but a fender bender. At a rate lower than the speedometer could register, I’d hardly felt the jolt, which was less violent than what I remembered from operating the bumper cars on the boardwalk at Coney Island.

“You okay back there?” my driver asked, opening the door to exit and examine the damage. He sounded more like a man who hoped to avoid the inconvenience of an injured passenger than one who was concerned for my wellbeing.

“I’m fine,” I said, as he slammed the door. A light changed somewhere and traffic started to flow, but without us.

*****

I’ll leave it you to read about dealing with a killer, the other unpleasant moments.

 

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