Three days after moving into a house ten miles north of Columbia, Missouri, the house caught fire.
Jim, a friend going through a divorce, was staying with me for a while. He woke me up yelling, "fire, fire." The fire was in the laundry room at the far end of the house. Jim's bedroom was closest to it. There was no water to fight it. I woke the girlfriend, and the three of us made it to the front door through the smoke. The roof above was already ablaze. An ember fell on my new leather jacket hanging on a chair by the front door.
We got out with the dachshund and Jim.
The girlfriend wanted her Mercedes out of the garage, which was on fire. I suggested we let it burn. She disagreed. I asked Jim what to do. Jim worked for an insurance company. He said save the car.
I pried up the garage door slowly, burning my fingers on the metal strip along the bottom. We got the car out. The open door fed oxygen to the fire and the garage became a conflagration.
The four of us, me, the girlfriend, Jim, and the dachshund, stood by the Mercedes and watched the house burn. The fire department eventually arrived. The roads were covered in ice. Half the house burned to the ground, half remained standing.
We drove the Mercedes into Columbia. First stop: a department store to buy clothes. I was barefoot, no jacket. We started piling clothes into a shopping cart.
The lights started going out. The smell of smoke coming off us was triggering the staff, so they shut down the electricity in the building. We assured them it was just us. The lights came back on.
At checkout, my credit card was declined. I went out to the Mercedes, grabbed the cash I'd had the presence of mind to take on the way out, and paid for our purchases.
I had forgotten to pay the credit card bill.
We checked into a nearby hotel. The girlfriend's ex-husband had sold us renter's insurance. I called the insurance company. Hotel covered. Food covered. Limits?
No limits.
We stayed in the hotel and ate in the gourmet restaurant for three weeks, all at the insurance company's expense. All of our friends dined with us.
We salvaged very little from the house and put it into storage. Collected from the insurance company. Then headed to Florida.
We spent Christmas on Cedar Key, lunch on a pier next to the boats that caught our fish, seashells collected from the beach afterward. A lot of shells. They were for my saltwater aquariums, which had just been destroyed in the house fire. Saltwater aquariums in Missouri. An expensive hobby. A great Christmas Day.
Three days on Marco Island in a cheap kitchenette before high season. Bought and cooked fish and seafood. Collected more shells. Escaped before the hotel raised its rates.
We made it to Naples. The Mercedes died.
A certified Mercedes mechanic found us on the street and provided a temporary fix. His advice: it might be cheaper to fly him to Missouri than to let a shade tree mechanic touch the car. He gave us the name of a transmission shop in Miami. Parting words: go slow on Alligator Alley.
We made it across without incident, though Alligator Alley felt like a lonely place to be stranded in a broken car.
The transmission shop said the transmission needed to be rebuilt, parts were on order, and it would be a few days minimum. I started calling hotels. No availability. It was New Year's Eve. I had not known that. Every hotel in Miami was sold out for the Orange Bowl.
The transmission shop owner had been listening to my calls. He offered us his house. He would stay at his girlfriend's place. She was skiing in Colorado. Pool, fully stocked bar, kitchen. He recommended the neighborhood restaurant if we did not feel like cooking.
I was overwhelmed. I told him we could not possibly accept. He said the house was nice enough.
I had no options. I accepted.
We hit the tourist spots in Miami, then drove down to Key West. Ate grilled dolphin along the way, assured it was not Flipper. Key West felt touristy and crowded. We went out on a glass-bottom boat. A storm blew in. Everyone got sick. The mate sluiced the puke down the deck into the sea. We were not sick. We did not see many tropical fish.
We went back to Miami and stayed in the transmission guy's house again. He showed us around, the motorcycle and sidecar his father brought home from the hospital the day he was born, trophies and photos from his days as an ocean racer. His friend who managed the Cigarette boat factory stopped by. This friend lived on a houseboat and had rigged a water system to simulate rain on his windows so his date would spend the night. He offered to build me an ocean racer for $125,000.
I had put my last $5,000 in my pocket as we left Missouri and told the girlfriend we would go until the money was gone. I had no plan.
We ran into a friend from Missouri one day in Miami. I borrowed $300 from him to get home.
Heading north from Miami, crossing a railroad track, the muffler caught the rail. Why? I had a crate of seashells in the trunk. The weight had broken the hydraulic rear suspension on the Mercedes. After arriving home, I learned the shells were occupied. The occupants were dead. And very smelly.
The Mercedes ran okay. The rear suspension was sagging. I watched for road hazards.
We made it to Atlanta before it started to snow. Big rigs were chaining up on a mountain north of Atlanta. The Mercedes on new Michelin tires cruised past them up the mountain. The snow kept falling. I kept driving. We stopped only for gas. Twenty-four hours. I drove the whole way.
I slept for a day. Then had to clean my seashells.