Story time #1

Already we'd gotten off to a late start, killing time at that chino-american experience I lived near. I couldn't help taking her there, not for her really, more for me I'll admit. We sat down and she opened the menu. Like any other person that you take out to eat, she asked me, “So, what's good here?”

“Everything. I'm getting the steak and eggs. We're gonna be on the road, eat hearty.” She dug her nose in the menu and I sat back deciding on coffee or orange juice. Together we totaled at least $2500 dollars of American green back, and we set our sights on gutting this country for all it was worth. I wasn't coming back here, and I had every intention of keeping her with me. Of course, if I'd have told her that, she would have run for the hills.

She ended up ordering eggs benedict with coffee. I had the steak and eggs, and conned her into splitting an order of biscuits and gravy, though I knew she had no intention of even tasting the biscuits. The waitress dumps some coffee in Mary's cup, and I order an orange juice. “Sure sure,” and the waitress trots away. I'm getting comfortable with my water and about halfway through she comes by with the juice. Setting the juice aside I slide a glance over to Mary, I said, “you nervous?”

“Why would I be nervous?” I saw her start shaking her leg under the bar counter, I could see everything from where I was sitting.

“It's your first time, isn't it?” I felt like this should be dirtier, more dangerous, but it wasn't.

“I'm not exactly excited about spending 46 hours in a car, but you have to make some allowances.” Then our plates were set in front of us. She didn't say much more, just steadily shoveled tiny portions into her open mouth. She would lick her lips and I watched her for a long while, not even touching my steak until the waitress came by and knocked the table. I looked at her and she gave me these eyes that said 'there's time for that later'. Like she knew what was good for me or something.

The steak was rare, just the right kind of bloody, and it damn near melted in my mouth. I could feel the anticipation surging through me, I wanted to get into the car, buckle up, slam on the gas and drive. I didn't want to stop for sleep or food or even other cars, I just wanted to drive, to watch the sun rise in front of me, and set in my rear view.

The worst of it was how badly I wanted to express all of this to Mary. I wanted to talk about this trip with my hands, huge gestures, wide swooping pantomimes of fantasy or destiny. I wanted the whole cafe to hear me, to all decide it's a great idea and come right along for the trip. I knew I couldn't take them.

When I was done I fumbled in my wallet for a twenty and lightly placed it on the wooden counter top. I didn't need to see the bill, and asked only for one dollar back. The waitress returned with a timely smile, and winked at me with some sense of recognition, a busy kind that suggested she'd seen me before, but only in a motion-blurred servant kind of way. I watched her mascara-caked eyelashes flutter, looked into her tired eyes, and smiled at her. “Thank you,” I said.

We’d been planning for months, just waiting for a reason and then, as deaths usually go, it just happened. I remember asking her one day, working the aisles, "What if we just picked up and left?"

"You mean, just leave it all behind? You’re crazy."

Only I wasn’t. She knew it to. We just started saving, banking up whatever we could and cramming it under our mattresses. I waited, cut back on smoking, even quit drinking. Life demands sacrifices, a fact both of us readily recognized. We both worked retail, and I used to watch her doing her duties. She was this cute stock girl, only she was a woman, all curvy, older, a gleam in her eye that I’d never seen before. Lunches together felt like an exotic fantasy, getting coffee on a street corner café in France, watching life pass us by, discussing its fineries, and picking it apart like chicken bones.

I kept on her about telling me who she was, but she figured mum would be the word, after all, "playthings are exactly that, no reason to get involved. I don’t know much about you either, do you see me complaining?"

We were pumping gas at the station down the road from the diner and I got to thinking about my funds. I did an inventory check and found three hundred dollars in fresh twenties fattening my leather wallet. I didn’t know how much money she brought, but at this point, having gone this far, I’d figured she had herself a level head. We had both known what we were walking into, and out on.

She sat in the passenger seat with her legs up on the dash and she was whistling some song that made no sense to me, and I could hear it drifting through the cracked window. I watched her dance, watched her sweat in the passenger side heat. I imagined her deciding she needed something from inside; imagined her peeling herself from the upholstery in one satisfying rip and it made me giggle.

She looked at me with this coy smile and kept on whistling. I watched her blink once, hit a high note, blink again, pucker her lips tightly, shut her eyes all together, and belt out one big long note. If I’d tapped my feet would it have seemed pretentious? Who knows…

I slid into the drivers side and shut my door. For the umpteenth time I turned to her and I asked, “so, you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be kiddo.”

I blushed, turned the engine, and we were off. I grabbed the 405 by it’s throat and road that beast down to the 10 . We’d be here for a while. I lacked air conditioning so we rolled the windows down and I couldn’t hear anything but the 80 mile an hour winds that roared through our cabin. I tried to light a cigarette dodging traffic. Twice Mary reached out and grabbed the wheel from my hands, making tiny noises like I had scared her half to death.

I managed to baby this a small ember hanging off the edge of my cigarette, and I sucked that thing off till I bellowed smoke from my nose like a beast. I turned to her, offered her the butt, and she raised her hand with a crinkled nose.

The road. It hadn’t begun yet, this was still familiar territory, but we both knew it was coming. Then it would be just us, two lanes, and the rest of the cattle. “So where should we stop?”

“Depends on our headway. How long do you figure you're good for driving?” She didn't want to drive, I could tell by her forehead. Her sunglasses shot my prodding eyes back at me.

“Honey, I could go all day.” I smiled and sucked the filter. She didn’t find me funny, she crossed her arms under her breasts and looked entirely dissatisfied at her windblown hair. I glanced at her just long enough to wonder what it would look like to see from her eyes right then and there. The road, hair, that tinted UV safe brown. The wind kept my cigarette ash from growing out of control.

“Utah seems reasonable. I figure a nice easy start.” She said this and I nodded in an agreement I wasn’t aware of.

“Whatever, we’ll stop where we stop I guess.” She unfolded our map, trying to make heads or tails of it.

“Can you even read that?” I'm not even sure I expected an answer.

“Sure, I’m just looking for the ‘you are here’ star.” We both laughed. “So we hit the 15 to the 70 to the 80 and just fly,” and as though this were the first time she’d considered this course she sat back and looked absent mindedly out the window before turning to me and saying, “sounds like a plan.”

“I’m glad you approve. You know, your opinion is appreciated.” I waited for something. She coughed a throaty one into her hand.

“Because that’s attractive.”

“Funny, asshole.”

Back to the road again. I watched a train pass outside her window.