I'm getting vanity plates.
So say you kind of fall in love with this guy, strange and bad an idea as it might seem or be. When I say kind of fall in love I mean you truly respect and thoroughly enjoy someone, finally, and even though it's been a few months since you've spoken that hasn't changed at all. Say you don't know why you haven't spoken. Say it could be this incredible, unnecessary misunderstanding, but you just don't know. Say up until that last moment it was intense, maybe I'll come see you in New York, this is what I want in my life how does that match up with you?, out of nowhere, across all boundaries, everything.
Say you've spent two months waiting to come face-to-face at the bank, over the gas pumps, and get this figured out.
So I don't even know how many times I've seen him from a distance, or on the road. Maybe ten? A dozen? I'm supervigilant. It's half the reason I take the long way everywhere I go, stop at the store for...gum, yeah, I could use some gum.
He's seen me. Had to slam on the motorcycle brakes cause he was looking into the cab of dad's truck, not at the road where a cop had just pulled onto it. Turned his head and stared as he passed when I was coming out of the coffee shop. Saw me pass at sixty on the right when he was riding with his father, making a left on the way home.
I don't think we have each other's numbers anymore. If it matters. I can't make the call anyway.
Say one sunny morning on the way from the Bearcamp River back to the office you're speeding down the little highway, music blaring, coffee-fueled. Your right arm out straight to the top of the wheel, head tilted down against the sun, almost scowling. Your hair back but whipping with the windows all open. You've just taken a drag off a Djarum Black with your left hand and rested it back on the wheel. The sun glints off the abalone pendant around your neck, you're just rounding the soft curve in the road, the thick clove smoke is slowly leaving your just-open lips. That's how you remember the instant, precisely, as you just catch the two figures in the truck in the other lane, with those plates, DS&G1. You remember because they definitely, definitely saw you. And for once you had it all together without any trying. That one was all chance.
Say later that day you pull into the post office and the only other vehicle there is the company truck. You glance at the driver and it's not him, not blonde enough or big enough, but it's his brother, maybe his father. You haven't met either.
I got out of the car, found the key on the ring, walked into the building without looking again. Felt the eyes. Shook as I opened the box, discarded the credit card offers, began to open a letter and head back out. Shook, and it wasn't even him.
The brother - twentyfive or twentysix, more red-brown, shorter - is opening the door as I go to leave, we're passing in the hallway. He wasn't ahead of me on the road, he had looked ready to leave when I got there, there's no mail in his hand on the way in or out...did he come back in for this? I look up and he's already looking at me.
"How y' doin'?" he nods.
In laconic, Puritan old New Hampshire, this is something. This is a standard rural greeting, yeah, between older men chiefly, but I use it too with hellos, in conversations. This is at the very moment I start to look up, it's not like we've been looking at each other. This was planned. I'm telling you, this is something. I can't tell you how many men every day will watch, stare, whistle, and never really say anything. Grown men talk to me, smile once in a while, and I'm sweet right back, but a young man has never done this. I'm sorry, it's New Hampshire, it's weird. You don't get a number on the street.
I manage a "Hi..."
So tough and composed until it matters.
So he goes in, I come out, walk to my car, open the door as I open the letter, he comes out, opens his door...
...and we do the I-didn't-just-look-at-you thing for way too long. It's painful, but we're both already in our cars by the time it is. What are we gonna do, signal to each other? One gets out and approaches?
I'm not doing it! Because, what is this? Does he know who I am? If so, what does he know and what does he want to communicate? Or, worse, this older brother with a birthday the day before his, does he want to talk to me for his own purposes, not knowing me? Do they both get me, want me, independently? Was anything said in that truck cab this morning? Was anything said months ago?
It's not that, "I'm not doing it!" I wish I had - the moment I didn't, I wish I had. I could have had that conversation. I could have had that conversation when I wasn't shaking. Fight or flight. I don't have it, babe, I'm sorry. I'm not the spring-born Rams they are. I'm cold winter, air twenty below without the wind chill. I flew.
I slowly start the car, back up, leave, and he stays for a minute or two because I never see him behind me.
Say your days just keep passing. Sunny days, rainy days. You're out with the dew or after dark. In the village or far from it. Fifty miles a day at least, with gas tanks to fill, checks to cash. Always a truck in the corner of your eye.
Say you've spent two months waiting to come face-to-face at the bank, over the gas pumps, and get this figured out.
So I don't even know how many times I've seen him from a distance, or on the road. Maybe ten? A dozen? I'm supervigilant. It's half the reason I take the long way everywhere I go, stop at the store for...gum, yeah, I could use some gum.
He's seen me. Had to slam on the motorcycle brakes cause he was looking into the cab of dad's truck, not at the road where a cop had just pulled onto it. Turned his head and stared as he passed when I was coming out of the coffee shop. Saw me pass at sixty on the right when he was riding with his father, making a left on the way home.
I don't think we have each other's numbers anymore. If it matters. I can't make the call anyway.
Say one sunny morning on the way from the Bearcamp River back to the office you're speeding down the little highway, music blaring, coffee-fueled. Your right arm out straight to the top of the wheel, head tilted down against the sun, almost scowling. Your hair back but whipping with the windows all open. You've just taken a drag off a Djarum Black with your left hand and rested it back on the wheel. The sun glints off the abalone pendant around your neck, you're just rounding the soft curve in the road, the thick clove smoke is slowly leaving your just-open lips. That's how you remember the instant, precisely, as you just catch the two figures in the truck in the other lane, with those plates, DS&G1. You remember because they definitely, definitely saw you. And for once you had it all together without any trying. That one was all chance.
Say later that day you pull into the post office and the only other vehicle there is the company truck. You glance at the driver and it's not him, not blonde enough or big enough, but it's his brother, maybe his father. You haven't met either.
I got out of the car, found the key on the ring, walked into the building without looking again. Felt the eyes. Shook as I opened the box, discarded the credit card offers, began to open a letter and head back out. Shook, and it wasn't even him.
The brother - twentyfive or twentysix, more red-brown, shorter - is opening the door as I go to leave, we're passing in the hallway. He wasn't ahead of me on the road, he had looked ready to leave when I got there, there's no mail in his hand on the way in or out...did he come back in for this? I look up and he's already looking at me.
"How y' doin'?" he nods.
In laconic, Puritan old New Hampshire, this is something. This is a standard rural greeting, yeah, between older men chiefly, but I use it too with hellos, in conversations. This is at the very moment I start to look up, it's not like we've been looking at each other. This was planned. I'm telling you, this is something. I can't tell you how many men every day will watch, stare, whistle, and never really say anything. Grown men talk to me, smile once in a while, and I'm sweet right back, but a young man has never done this. I'm sorry, it's New Hampshire, it's weird. You don't get a number on the street.
I manage a "Hi..."
So tough and composed until it matters.
So he goes in, I come out, walk to my car, open the door as I open the letter, he comes out, opens his door...
...and we do the I-didn't-just-look-at-you thing for way too long. It's painful, but we're both already in our cars by the time it is. What are we gonna do, signal to each other? One gets out and approaches?
I'm not doing it! Because, what is this? Does he know who I am? If so, what does he know and what does he want to communicate? Or, worse, this older brother with a birthday the day before his, does he want to talk to me for his own purposes, not knowing me? Do they both get me, want me, independently? Was anything said in that truck cab this morning? Was anything said months ago?
It's not that, "I'm not doing it!" I wish I had - the moment I didn't, I wish I had. I could have had that conversation. I could have had that conversation when I wasn't shaking. Fight or flight. I don't have it, babe, I'm sorry. I'm not the spring-born Rams they are. I'm cold winter, air twenty below without the wind chill. I flew.
I slowly start the car, back up, leave, and he stays for a minute or two because I never see him behind me.
Say your days just keep passing. Sunny days, rainy days. You're out with the dew or after dark. In the village or far from it. Fifty miles a day at least, with gas tanks to fill, checks to cash. Always a truck in the corner of your eye.