Habeeb left us in a flurry of badly confused miscommunication and a sense of awe at how dependent he was on technology. Never have I seen someone so reliant on a malfunctioning (or a functioning one, for that matter) GPS. Maybe he had doubts about his own intelligence, maybe he'd gotten himself lost a dozen times, I didn't know - all I knew is that I was getting pissed off.
We had been driving around in a circle for twenty minutes now as Habeeb's GPS system got him stuck in a loop. The road we were on went around a small suburban block, and we drove around it so many times that I was half-close to ripping Habeeb's head off. Did he even look at the fucking road? Habeeb, we can SEE THE HIGHWAY FROM HERE. IT'S RIGHT OVER THERE. TAKE A RIGHT.
"Oh, no, no. GPS says take a left."
"We've taken this road three times already." Silence. We drove around the road again.
Finally Beebs looked up from his goddamn GPS and realized that we could, actually, see the highway from where we were. He took the right and we ended up back on the #1 highway.
The sun had already set and a star-speckled firmament grinned down at us. We were going to be sleeping outside tonight, and it looked like a great night to do it.
Habeeb pulled into a motel to book himself a room. Before stepping out of his car, he made sure to usher us all out of the backseats - in the midst, juggling guitars and backpacks like street performers - and instructed us to go hide behind a building. He didn't want the motel attendant to think that he was going to be sneaking 3 additional people into the motel room - as if making a huge scene and sending us dashing from his car to hide ourselves made things less conspicuous. Fuck, Beebs.
Once that was settled, he crammed us back into his car and dumped us off downtown. I'm sure we'd been bothering him as much as he'd been bothering us (our fetid feet and snide remarks will do that), so it was nice to get some time to ourselves. Aside from the tense atmosphere in the car, the air itself had grown muggy and disgusting. It was nice to be away from Beebs and under the stars.
He dropped us off at a Boston Pizza - right next to the dumpster. Perfect. Once he'd reversed out of the parking lot (slower than anyone should ever reverse out of a parking lot - I didn't know cars could drive less than 1mph, but he was pulling out at a tenth of that speed), we dove into the dumpster. We were tossing old pizza boxes around inside when the store's manager came out and gawked at us.
"Are you... in that dumpster?" he asked, completely incredulous.
Scrib poked his head out of the dumpster. The question was stupid, the answer was obvious, so Scrib only chose to mock the idiot. "Do your eyes often deceive you?"
The manager contemplated Scrib's statement for a moment before he realized how dumb he'd sounded. Still, he used his power of authority to ensure he came out on the top of this situation.
After we got kicked out, we made our way to the back of a convenience store. There was an electrical outlet there, so me and Scrib plugged in our phones. Fernweh and I crawled into our sleeping bags and settled down onto our nice, spongy-soft concrete mattresses, while Scrib stared deeply into the depths of my phone. His gaze was locked with great intent on the screen as he immersed himself in a world of video games. The 32-bit music serenaded me as the night drifted on and the moon gave way to the following morning.
Tonight, we'd be in Toronto!
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