The Road Taken

“Thanks.” I said. 

“The world is yours.” She replied and handed me the change. 

It was sunny and hot and I was getting coffee. I had been in a car for about five days. Trees and roads and my friend Ally and his loud music had been my only company. We were in my car because Ally’s dad was a librarian who worked across the bridge over in New Jersey and he definitely needed his car. So here we were in my sister’s Volvo with the fender that hangs over the edge and the sunroof that leaks and the air conditioning that slowly becomes hotter. 

“Roll down your window.”

“My eyes are dry. Just wait a minute.”

“I’m suffocating. It’s unbelievably hot. Feel my vent. I think it’s broken.” I reached across and waived my hand ceremoniously across his side of the car. He looked at me with a satisfied pain. He was suffering more. I rolled down my window. 

We were going south. The re-opening of America we told everyone. No, we didn’t have jobs per se, but what good was a job? A job meant a lack of freedom we told them. Money? What good is money when you are stranded in the corporate ocean? What, are you going to buy ten thousand dollars worth of snacks at the vending machine? Are you going to use that money on all those trips you are going to take when you’re seventy with a failing marriage and a broken body? Savings! My friend, I shall die tomorrow for all I know. You will die tomorrow, I can tell you that much. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

In truth, Ally and I didn’t have jobs because we didn’t get anything we applied for. Jesus wept. So we made our own project. We had received small refunds from cancelled university dining plans. I drove to Philadelphia to pick Ally up, and then we went south. We dove down across the vast country we called home but had never attempted to know fully. I wanted to go to West Texas, far away, close to Mexico and dust. 

We spent a couple hours on the phone trying to budget the trip out. Really what it came down to was food. We couldn’t believe how much it would take to feed us. We concluded that Cliff Bars were going to be a strong part of our diet. To this end, we stocked up on two kinds: chocolate chip, also know as “them blue bitches”, which were to be eaten as breakfast, and peanut butter, “them orange bitches”, which were to be eaten as either second breakfast, second lunch, or pre-dinner. I think, wisely, we believed that this intermediary meal would be crucial to the long-term possibilities of this trip, and our friendship as a whole. Due to our shared long-legged body types, a road trip in a small car was bound to become physically irritating. A second snack was an important carrot for us, a promise of more, a comprise with the increasing ache in our hip/lower back region. 

We were now driving somewhere in Oklahoma. I have a friend in school at Oklahoma we were going to meet. 

“Oklahoma’s a big state, huh” said Ally. 

           I was tired of driving and listening to Ally. An exit advertising a gas station stood bleakly against the weathered highway greenery. I pulled on the wheel and took the exit.  We slid along the off-ramp and came to a traffic light. Behind the light was empty, really empty, void-ness. Traffic light colors and nothing else. I turned and started down the two-lane road. It felt like relief after the highway. The sides of the road look over fields. The sun was high and there were no shadows. It was hot and yet pleasant. The air had rolled over fields, distant mountains, salt marshes, piney North Carolina woods, shaggy dunes, pale, glinting sand and the green ocean all the way to our windows. It had picked up America itself and dragged it towards the great sinking middle -- the lost land of highway exits. 

           I pulled into the empty gas station. We got out of the car. Ally grabbed an orange Cliff Bar and sat on the curb. 

“I’ll go inside, you pay the gas.” I said. Ally nodded and looked down at his phone. His dark eyes glancing through the other world. His shirt fluttered briefly in the breeze.

I walked into the gas station. It was familiar in the ways that all gas stations are. I bought honey roasted peanuts and walked over to the automated coffee machine. I used the knuckle of my index finger to navigate the greased touch screen and then wiped my hands on my thigh. I gathered my things and went to the register. 

The cashier was young. Her hair was back in a ponytail. She was reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem. 

“Hey” I said.

“Hey” she said.

“Middle of nowhere, huh?”  

“Middle of somewhere.”

“I’m on a road trip with my friend Ally. He’s out there doing the gas right now, but he’s probably not. He’s like that, but I think he was a good choice for all this.”

“He looks pretty capable.” she said. Ally was still slumped on the curb reading his phone.

“Joan Didion, that’s a cool book.” I said. She looked at me for the first time. Her eyes were full and had a wet quality to them. Her hair was back but strands fell down the length of her face on either side. Her mouth was relaxed. 

I put my honey roasted peanuts and coffee down on the counter. 

“This is the last time, you know.” she said.

“The what?”

“It’s the last time you’ll ever see me. I’m going to be here and you and Ally will be wherever and far away. No one finds each other twice.”

“I hadn’t really thought about this like that.”

“But you can stay. Stay here in the median of passing waves. Forget them, forget Ally. Dust to dust, right? We are born slouching towards death. Maybe this is it, all you will ever need.”

“Do you have this conversation with every customer?”

She looked up at me exposing the whites of her eyes. And I felt the pull in my stomach of finality. The singularity of reality was hard edged. Goodbye sounds different when its final. This is the real one. Goodbye my friend. Chao meu amigo. We will not meet again, not in this lifetime. Goodbye’s like these are marked by lingering gaze and one decisive moment: the turn out of this life and into another. It is honestly a blessing to know when this moment faces you – it is worse to guess. Far worse to wonder if the short see ya on a trip to the grocery store is it than to recognize finality, because you always know.

“How much.”

“Four seventy-five.”

“Thanks” I said.

“The world is yours” she replied and handed me the change.