text: Laura and James sat in their respective seats in the car. SUV, more precisely. Laura recently traded her 2019 Audi Q5 for a 2020, since its superiority went without saying. She often complained, though, that it wasn’t the same. Many of the 2019’s features, though older, suited her purposes more closely... but she put those thoughts out of her mind. This was the 2020 and was therefore better: it’s self-evident. Besides, cars don’t last that long. One year into a car’s lease and you were bound to start experiencing problems. To say James disagreed would be unfair to the word. James relished buying cars old enough they could legally drink a beer. He also wouldn’t pay any more for a car than he had in his chequing account, which often wasn’t much. Most recently, he sunk into a 2002 Mini Cooper. It was the second Mini he’d bought, though this one was less powerful, older, and more rotten than his previous one. His previous car- Bebe Rexxha, he named her- died in an accident with a BMW X5. God rest her soul. James loved the thrill of buying a neglected husk of a car, then sourcing parts cheaper than from any mainstream outlet. Wrecking yards, Amazon, Kijiji... if you knew where to look, you could restore a $1200 car to road condition for less than $500. James always kept a suite of tools in his trunk; new problems strike on their own schedule. But, having touched every system in the car, he had the quiet confidence of knowing he could fix anything in an hour for less than $200. The Audi gave James a headache. *New car smell-* coveted by many- poisoned James like chemicals sublimating into the air as they seeped out of plastics. Which is what it was. Laura drove. She worked constantly, and so she loved the car’s Bluetooth phone connectivity. She also loved to keep the panoramic sunroof open: the light and air it drank-in made her feel free. Nevermind that the air conditioner needed to run at twice its normal output to offset the heat, or that her speakerphone calls with clients featured the question “What?” more than anything else, as the wind turbulence drowned the finer points of the conversation. They sped down the road. Metaphorically. Something in Laura’s upbringing disinterested her from questioning authority: if the road was marked 80km/h, she drove 79.5km/h. Nevermind that even to do 100km/h on a road this wide and clear felt like a crawl. Nevermind that other traffic trailed tightly behind her like sleeper-carriages shackled to the Orient Express. Nevermind that any police officer worth his salt would tolerate 10km/h over the limit, if only as the margin of error in his radar-gun. But James accepted it was ‘*speeding*’ inasmuch as it was the fastest she’d go, today. Ahead it lay. It was massive- it must’ve been a Caribou. James had never seen a Caribou before, but this wasn’t a deer. He hadn’t seen Elk or Moose before either... but something in his lizard-brain drew on the experience of his caveman ancestors: Caribou. There were a few cars parked on the shoulder around its wide, flat mass. It was deep in the distance, so James couldn’t make out which of the cars hit it. Hopefully everyone was okay. James guessed it was 8 or 10 kilometers away. At 80km/h, that gave them around 5 minutes before they came to the obstruction. “Jeez- that looks pretty bad up there. Do you think we should turn down County Road 9 and avoid the whole thing?” asked James. He was proud of himself- he’d only recently moved to the area but was starting to remember roads outside his immediate neighborhood. “It’ll be okay” said Laura. “Um- can you tell me what you mean by ‘okay’? I don’t think they’ll have removed it by the time we get there... we’re only a few minutes away and if we turn-off, we can avoid getting stuck there, too.” James again focused his eyes on the situation, and saw that cars were beginning to queue up around the caribou, waiting on someone (currently no one) to haul the heap out of the way. “I prefer not to dwell on the negative” said Laura as County Road 9 flew past them. With cruise control on, she was free to focus her mind on the bright, clean air washing over her from the sunroof. Still going 80km/h, James estimated they’d come another couple kilometers closer to the situation ahead. “Oh! There’s a café attached to that gas station up ahead- they have good sandwiches there, remember? Maybe we can pull-in for lunch and, by the time we’re done, they’ll have cleared that problem.” James often solved problems with his stomach. “There’s no problem.” Said Laura. James’ subconscious shielded him from the full impact of that last statement. What did that even mean? *‘There’s no problem?’* He could tolerate something like *‘I don’t mind waiting’* or *‘I think it’ll be gone by the time we get there’* or ‘*surely we can go around it’*... but to say the problem doesn’t exist? James was attuned to *gaslighting* statements like these- statements meant to invalidate another’s perception of reality, without evidence, by exploiting the implicit trust of a relationship. Although James couldn’t consciously process this, he did begin to feel the telltale signs of rising anxiety in his body. Tightened muscles. Flattened emotional expression and slowed speech- reactions that lowered his odds of doing anything rash. “Laura, honey: do you see the caribou on the road ahead? It’s blocking both lanes and there are cars stuck in both directions. I want to get to Alicia’s house, too... so if our goal is to get there on time, we need to go another way. Otherwise we’ll get stuck until someone takes that caribou away.” ‘Who *does* take dead caribou away?’ James wondered. “I prefer to focus on the positive. I don’t know why you keep bringing this up” said Laura. James’ anxiety increased another notch. Through this conversation, a few more kilometers had slipped past them, not to mention the sandwich café. The phone rang over the Bluetooth system: Laura’s mother. Her voice was battered by the 80km/h winds thundering through the sunroof, but they could hear the gist of what she said. “Isn’t that strange? A caribou, in this part of the country. They don’t normally come this far. Yes- it’s on the news. Everyone’s talking about it”. Laura said “That’s amazing! I hope nobody was hurt. Fortunately James and I are headed to Alicia’s house. Okay. Bye!” James was bewildered. Is there a difference between denial and repression? Is saying *“there is no problem*” the same as *“I choose not to acknowledge the problem”?* I mean, there are obvious semantic differences... but in the end: if they have the same outcome, aren’t they the same thing? The queue of cars ahead of them looked to be a kilometer away now, maybe less. The phone call and James’ philosophising took more time than he expected. “Laura- slow down. Please. Those cars are getting close and there’s no point racing up to them” “We’re fine. Nothing’s wrong.” “Laura- cut the shit. There’s a dead goddamned caribou up there: if we don’t hit it, then we’re going to hit one of the cars that stopped to avoid it. Slow down- we’re still doing 80 and those cars are coming up, fast.” “I just don’t like to think that way, okay?” “What the fuck is wrong with you? We’re going to smash this fucking car and you don’t care?” “If we slow down, we’ll be late for Alicia’s. That might hurt her feelings, and I don’t want to hurt anyone.” “Are you fucking serious? If we slam into those cars, you and me and others are all going to get hurt... plus we’ll *never* show up at Alicias’s. How does that make any se-“ James never lost consciousness but the impact left him punchdrunk. Airbags wilted around them now, and the interior of the Audi stank of burnt sulphur. The man in the car ahead of them was already out of his vehicle- he was unhurt, thankfully. Beside James, Laura wept softly. “Why the fuck are you crying? What the fuck was that?” James was furious with Laura. They had all the time in the world to do something- change course or slow down- and she did nothing to make it better. “I’m just sad that we didn’t make it to Alicia’s.