Jane's Breakdown

Jane pulled off the interstate to refuel her car. Having filled the BMW with gas she went into the service station to use the washrooms.

As she washed her hands, she checked herself in the mirror. Her pale blonde hair was glossy and neatly cut into a shoulder length bob around her face. The cut was arranged to part the hair on the right rather than the centre, which made it more striking. She wore minimal make up, just a small amount of eye liner and a touch of pale natural tone lipstick. The effect was deliberately intended to make her attractive without being intimidating.

In a conversation with friends once, when one friend had started to be bitchy about Jane’s success, the woman had said “so it’s all about being as pretty as possible for you Jane to make men buy stuff from you”. Stung, but wanting to take the heat out of the situation Jane had laughed “actually it’s being just a little bit pretty that works. They like what they see enough, but don’t think I’m out of their league”. The woman was quite drunk and clearly spoiling for a fight. She pulled a face “Eugh, the idea of selling yourself to a load of creepy men, I couldn’t stand it.” Trying not to lose her temper Jane responded “actually it’s selling the benefits of the many effective life enhancing drugs my company produces to a load of super smart doctors”. She paused and trying to sound light “Just that the majority of the doctors that make buying decisions are men”

The incident had died down after that as other friends changed the subject, but the exchange had got under Jane’s skin because there was a grain of truth in it. She did use her femininity to her advantage and dressed to be attractive, without going over the top. She looked in the mirror, the white dress she was wearing was typical, it hugged her slim figure and but accentuated her curvy bottom. The dress length was modest, being cut just above her knees, but in some ways that highlighted her long legs and her striking height at nearly 5’9’’.

She smiled at herself in the mirror, no matter what anyone said, she was successful because she understood what the drugs she represented did, was always on top of her data and worked hard. The fact that the odd doctor fancied her was not her problem.

As she lined up to pay for her gas, Jane picked up a bottle of water and some sandwiches for lunch to go. When she got to the till the man behind it smiled.

“Got far to go ma’am?” he asked.

Jane smiled, she never minded being pleasant and exchanging small talk, it was good practice. “I’m headed into Canada” she told him “Montreal in fact”.

“Oh wow” the man responded “that’s quite a drive, I’m surprised you don’t fly”.

“It’s not so far” Jane said “and I’m there Tuesday, Wednesday then have meetings in upstate New York Thursday and Stamford on Friday so driving is actually pretty practical”.

The man handed her back her credit card. “I hear there’s an incident on the interstate further up. You might want to look at an alternative route.”

When Jane got back to her car she parked up for a moment so she could drink some of the water, eat an early lunch  and check her phone for traffic. It seemed that the man was right, the maps showed that the road 40 miles north of her was highly congested with multiple lanes closed.

She sighed, she hated sitting in traffic. Moving the map around she looked for alternatives. She didn’t have any further meetings planned that day, having already completed two early meetings just outside Boston. Therefore she didn’t have a deadline and was simply staying overnight ready for early meetings the next day.

She noticed that if she went to the west further up the road then she could get across to I89 as an alternative route north. It would mean a diversion of around 80 miles on smaller roads and crossing over a small ridge of hills, but the weather was warm and settled and she figured that it would be a nice drive. None of the roads she was looking at looked that small.

Jane had not, until this point been using the BMW navigation system as she knew the I91 route to Montreal well. Selecting a destination that would place her right by the entrance of I89 to the west she pressed go. She failed to notice that the German car’s system had selected a slightly different route to the one that her phone had shown.

That turned out to be very unfortunate for the 33 year old blonde pharmaceutical saleswoman.