Intermission

Emily drives me home in her father's gifted Electra. We cross over the Connecticut River, riding away in silence, moving west from Amherst College. It was a pickup evening of drinking spiced rum and warm cider out of paper cups. The event had taken place in one of the college's back hay fields.

Tonight, the interior of her Buick is dank with our warm breath and the smell of wood smoke hangs on our clothes. Emily drives the beast with exacting precision, correcting any divergence from our path with a leather gloved hand. I take a sidelong glance and catch her copper-green eyes as they ignore the stuttering yellow median. Her young face dips slightly to the left when surveying the road. The eye line follows the painted white stripe which is unbroken for this stretch and delineates the roadside from the vore of the woods. We both take in, eyes touching on the browned-out reds and yellows of the fallen leaves that will soon be replaced with drifting snow at its side. I know Emily is looking for a deviation in the path. We have always hooked arms in this act, a studied skill, focused and objective. In all truth, I am almost as good.

For the dance, we had put on our autumn best. Three brown leather buttons of her camel hair coat were left unfasten in the chill, her light-colored khakis tucked into black muck boots. The pockets of my wool peacoat, darker than its indigo color, hold several black ink pens, a flip notebook and a small metal flask filled with whiskey, in case conversation became a mire. I watched her as she talked to a tall white boy, at one point touching the back of his wrist. I am imaging her conveying the idea that a hundred nights wouldn't change her mind.

My right hand explores a lucky rabbit's foot rooted deep in my coat pocket, finding underneath the silky fur a rigid cured stump, that had become interrupted in its digging. I explore, once again, the claws that nest in the fur, and I am reminded of the cost of fortune.

We leave together. On the way out, I kicked over the piece of plywood, the hand-painted sign, stuck into the grass and dirt, propped up with bricks. I make sure to let it fall onto its face.

The Sadie Hawkins Bonfire & Disco was over.

It is early November. By this time, we are in the low numbers of the morning as she pulls off Route 9, onto the side street, and creeps the car into my driveway. Emily moves a covered hand, depresses a toggle, and cuts the headlights to the car, but then, she lets the engine idle. I believe, or is it, am I to believe ,there is a mixed message in these actions. Turning my head to look her in the face. I am ready to pass a good night between us and notice her seatbelt is...somehow, already off, or maybe it had never been secured. I surmise that the evening is not over, as of yet.

Imaging that any moment the automatic locks engaging, their chromed stick heads all in synchrony hunkering down, stuck fast in the door wells. Even though we have been driving across the flat of the valley, the car is not warm, only blowing lukewarm air against any exposed skin. The car idles, her gloved hands resting on the steering wheel, dashboard lights illuminating that face, eyes not searching but only taking in the dark of the yard. She was tracking something else.

“1...2...3. Tell me something...you love.", she requests.

This is a game we used to play, before we had both filled out notebooks with each other's proclivities. My hand is on the door handle, but I am not in a rush to release its hold. I move my fingers to the condensation forming on the window and draw a line.

I respond quietly.

“You’re playing with me."

This may have come out as a soft growl.

“The answer to that question is arbitrary. What is there to say?”

She doesn't look away from the empty yard.

“No joke! 1...2...3.,” she says to me.

Her hands are covered in a pristine set of black leather gloves. There is a snapping creak as her small hands grip the steering wheel a little tighter, as if to gain leverage.

“One thing. Right now, before you leave my car.”

“Your father's car... but since you are asking, there is always toast, with half melted butter, and strawberry jam,” I said.

“Got it,” she said.

“Give me something else. Something good.”

“I’ve got nothing... nothing as good as that, any longer."

“Not one thing... Are you sure?”

Finally, she turns her face to look at me.

“No. Not a thing,” I said.

“I have five things I can pop off the top of my head.” She tells me.

“Start the list...superstar,” I say.

But, for the first time, in a long time, if ever, I watched as she struggled. Her precision clipped and trimmed, and she took her gloved hands off the steering wheel.

I slunk down in the bucket seat. My right hand went to my cap and brought it down over my eyes.

"Okay, well, that is that," I said and moved the door latch, broke the encapsulation, and I let the night air enter the cabin.

"Give me a moment."

Emily presented to me a folded piece of Crane cardstock, held between two fingers. I plucked it from her hold, not asking about its origin and moved outside the Buick.

The car door closed slowly and heavily with satisfaction. Emily re-engaged the transmission and rolled down the side street, waiting until she was at a distance before switching the running lights on. Watching the distance grow somehow felt like the Atlantic undertow.

Under the streetlight, I can make out, Emily's diminishing girlish hand, one full of weary flourish. It runs the entire width of the card.

"Your full name (sharp crease in the folded paper) will be my funeral pyre."


Address

The Comb Tree
42.316833,-72.656553
United States of America