About 20 minutes later Brad returned still carrying his jacket. Apparently once you left the arena re-entry wasn’t allowed so he had bought a drink and then returned to the concert floor. As soon as I saw him I wanted to ask for my keys back but I didn’t want to seem like I didn’t trust him so I didn’t. However, Ben was also worried and immediately asked Brad for my keys back. Brad reached in his left pocket and then his right and started to look worried. Then he checked his jacket, then his pockets again, my stomach dropped. The keys were gone and Velvet Revolver took the stage.
Screaming over the first pounding rock anthem Brad told me not to worry. We’d find the keys. We were in a sold out auditorium with about 10,000 people but the arena floor was concrete. “As soon as everyone filters out they will turn up,” he assured me, “just enjoy the show.” I tried to enjoy the show, I really did, but the thought of being stranded in Atlanta with no way back to Chattanooga or a way to get back into my apartment if I made it back to Chattanooga wouldn’t go away. I stared at the floor the whole time hoping by some miraculous turn of events the dancing crowd would somehow kick the keys directly in front me. It was the longest set of my life.
Finally the band reached their last song and we all prepared to split up and scan the floor for the keys. In the midst of their encore, confetti started shooting out all over the auditorium. In an excited frenzy the crowd cheered the confetti that I suddenly despised. As it piled thick on the floor it effectively eliminated any chance I had of finding my keys. The crowd filtered out and we shifted our feet through the confetti and trash filled auditorium in vain until security kicked us out.
So there we stood, outside alone on a cold December night with no way home. All of us but Brad had left our jackets in the now unpenetratable fortress that was my Ford Explorer. As we took the long walk to my car with the small hope that somehow I had an extra key I knew nothing about, it began to rain, hard. It was a weird feeling to feel so abandoned and lost surrounded by grocery stores and coffee shops. It was about 12:00 and everything was closed. I had no idea what to do. I’m still not sure why but Ben went to see if the grocery store was open. Casey was starving. Brad felt awful that he had put us in this situation. I was just worried.
“Don’t you have a spare key?” whined Casey. “I might,” I answered. I knew I had a spare key, I just had no idea where it was. It was possible it was in the car, it was also possible it was in my apartment in Chattanooga or maybe I left it at a friend’s house for “safe” keeping. I had no idea. I started praying that wherever it was God would somehow transport it inside my car. We decided to call AAA to see if my prayers would come true.
An hour and a half later, soaked to the skin in the freezing rain, hungry and beginning to lose our sense of humor, I received a call from the lock smith that had been assigned our case. He had the thickest back woods southern accent I had ever heard and was almost impossible to understand. As I confirmed our exact location and assured him we would be the only 4 people standing in the rain in a dark empty parking lot in the middle of the night , he asked me one more question, “Y’all don’t have a baby stuck in there do ya?” I hesitated to answer, wondering if a trapped baby would somehow get him here faster, “no…there isn’t a baby.” “Well that’s good,” he fired back, “I’m tired of dumb bitches leaving their kids in the car today. I’ll be there in a minute.” It was weird. It was only the beginning.
The first thing he asked us is why we were standing in the rain. No one answered; we thought the answer was apparent. He also told us he was just a lock smith in training, he had intentionally ran into another car earlier in the day because “they were fn stupid” and that he was on his way to meet up with several transvestites that “got pretty wild.” He invited us along if “we liked to party” and asked us if we “had any ice.” I was thankful I was with 3 guys. The whole process of unlocking my car took over an hour. As he finally popped the door open we all frantically jumped in, digging under seats and in the glove box looking anywhere for a spare key with no luck. We were completely stranded. “My boss can make a new key,” offered the locksmith as he unzipped his pants and began to “drain the lizard, if I didn't mind” on the right front tire of my car, “but he can’t get here until the morning.”
We started discussing our options. Casey couldn’t stop talking about how hungry he was. The locksmith, who had decided to wait around to watch the festivities, offered him his sandwich. Casey was starving but didn’t know if taking a home-made sandwich from a drugged up, transvestite loving lock-smith was a good idea. “If you’re starving you should just eat it,” insisted the locksmith. He seemed a little agitated so Casey took it and actually contemplated taking a bite but as hungry as he was he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. This temporary fix could result in some more long term problems.
Our only option for the night was to stay in the car or in a hotel. Brad offered to pay for a hotel but we had no way to get there. The locksmith offered to take us to a Holiday Inn that was only 5 minutes away. While getting into a car with this guy seemed like a horrible idea we didn’t think we had much of a choice. Hours of standing in the cold rain had numbed our common sense and judgment. We already knew we were going to have to pay $200 to get a new key made and at least $100 for a hotel room and didn’t want to wait for a cab. The tiny lock-smith truck only had room for one of us up front. The other 3 had to climb in the bed of the truck under the low hanging topper. Ben pulled out a cigarette as we all looked at each other wondering if we had just stumbled into the plot of a low budget horror movie. “We don’t have a choice,” Ben decided, “We just need to get out of the rain.” He put the unlit cigarette in his mouth, lifted the back window and climbed in, “if we’re going to die lets get it over with.” Brad attempted to be a gentleman by offering me the front seat with our scary chauffeur; I respectfully declined the opportunity to be alone with our unlikely savior as I whispered, “are you crazy?!” and followed Ben into the back of the truck. Casey was pale; in retrospect he seemed to be the only one who realized how reckless this decision was. As we struggled to get settled on top of the plastic jugs and tools that filled the truck bed, the locksmith smiled sinisterly and stuck his head in the window, “You better not light that fn cigarette,” he ordered “those jugs are all filled with gas.” My blood ran cold as he aggressively slammed the window shut and locked it. Casey grabbed my arm and whispered, “We really are going to die.”
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