warm clear night, charlie in his red chevette, my dream car, stick shift and no carpet on the inside roof, and only one seatbelt in the back. it's about 15 years old but the engine's good still. it purrs like a hoarse cat, or a small motorcycle. amanda and i hop in the back and cruise with the windows rolled down to northern chicago where charlie's gonna draw us for his art class. it's one of our last nights in evanston, one of my last chances to hang out with amanda and charlie. i will take advantage of it. i will leave home at 10pm until who-knows-when. amanda and i will sit in the chase cafe and converse while charlie sketches away. the cafe is an island of gentrification in a mostly run-down neighborhood. but it's got lots of light, and decently cheap coffee.

we're almost there now, but parking looks hellish. charlie circles block after block. then, a flash of inspiration: he knows the perfect parking lot, right by the coffee shop. zooom, we're off, down a back alley, faster, faster, a sick feeling in my stomach says this-is-too-fast, at the end of the alley we bump back onto the street and crunchhh.... grinnddd.... charlie shifts gears, pumps the gas.... nothing. we're stuck.

charlie says nothing. so i think he must be calm. but when he opens his mouth, the words fly out like startled birds. "i don't know what to do." "what do i do?" he jumps out, bends down to look at the right front wheel and springs back upright. groans. this is not good. does anyone have money for a tow? amanda and i flip through our wallets covertly, keeping an eye out for the patrons of all the nearby 24-hour liquor stores. the wheel looks grotesquely wedged up into the frame. charlie says something about the shocks, makes wild hand gestures, and goes off to call his dad from a pay phone. amanda and i bide our time, turning down offers of help from people passing by. I'm self-conscious of my skirt, self-conscious of my wallet. you know, moreso than usual.

charlie returns, and he lifts the front end up off the wheel so amanda and i can push from behind, until the car's safely on the side of the road. when his dad appears to rescue us, charlie scrawls a note on sketch paper with his charcoal pencil: "car is dead. will be back to tow it." He leaves the note under a windshield wiper, and we drive away.

i'm grateful that this didn't happen in traffic, relieved and sleepy and ready to stretch out in bed. comforted by charlie and amanda's presence. it feels almost like high school, that post-scare glow of knowing i'm okay, and with friends. and lucky that i got to drive fast in a rickety red chevette one last time.

part 2: keep all legs and arms inside the vehicle...

eliina and i plan to drive to buffalo, stopping for the night at her house in michigan. we load everything i own into the back of her dad's pick-up truck. then we head to quentin's house to say goodbye. there, it almost feels like this isn't really it. we act like normal, like we'll see each other tomorrow. eliina and i tease quentin about old high school photographs sitting on the mantle, and then we all sit at the kitchen table devouring an enormous piece of cheesecake. when it is finally time to go, we cry, we hugged, we cry...

eliina and i reluctantly climb in the truck to start our journey. then eliina looks in her rearview mirror. quentin has jumped on the back. we roll down the driveway with quentin perched grandly on the bumper. then he jumps off and jogs on the sidewalk beside us for a few minutes, with his lanky black dog, mickey, bounding after him. At the corner of the block, we stop and roll down the window to say one more goodbye..

part 3: we're here now

we might be lost. we are lost. no, we're not lost, we'll just ask at the tollbooth up ahead. eliina swears she doesn't remember passing this on the way here. the woman in the booth could be the most friendly person on the planet. her blonde hair is neatly molded into place, her makeup is perfect, and her smile pearly white. she looks like she belongs behind the cash register in a mcdonald's commercial. 'how do we get to..." eliina asks, though i can't remember the road anymore.

'turn left at the stoplight and get on at the next ramp," the woman says, sounding as perfectly chirpy as she looks.

eliina launches into a question about the best possible route from chicago. 'so, should i have come this way? would there have been an easier way to get there from the skyway?" she says.

'well, maybe, but you're here now,' the woman replies with a smile.

we realize that she is right, and start on our way.

more to come.

7/1/2002 05:45:28 PM

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