Chapter Ten

Ed's note: No pictures exist from this journey into the heart of the American Dream. It's a good thing, too. Here's chapter ten of Chasing Sunsets, my novel.

X.

Blissful ignorance almost always trumps over-thinking

“…For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood not desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Travel no more than two miles outside of the Las Vegas strip and you’ll believe you’re centuries away from the fun. North Las Vegas is run-down, low income homes, a liquor store on every corner, the dry desert heat smashing the pavement. The extremely poor living just a stones throw away from a place where billions are made every day. Few people see this part of Las Vegas because of the conveniently located airport a few miles from the strip, which doesn’t shuttle taxis past this part of town. The tourists would never know it existed. You won’t find directions to the Thai restaurant on East Washington Avenue on any map you buy on the strip.

We checked into New York, New York and brought our stuff up to the room. We would only be staying there one night, then we would move down the road to Treasure Island.

After sitting down for a relaxing dinner, we headed back into the room to shower and change, something the entire city of Las Vegas should have thanked us for. The air conditioner was used rarely on the drive during the day, so we essentially let the hot air into the car all day long. Combined with other stenches, we probably didn’t smell as good as we wished. While Marisa took her shower and did the essential “girl” stuff, Eric and I ventured down to the lobby for a drink.

The things people can get away with in Vegas blew my mind. The best words to describe the extent of the trouble a person can get into is that Las Vegas is a place where you can drink outside and smoke inside. A drink bought at one casino can be brought onto the street and into another. ID’s are checked as often as you see clocks, which is never. Flyers advertising “late-night visitors” to hotel rooms were passed out openly on the street, and I figured that the $49 an hour for “La-La” would probably end up with me getting way more than that in medical bills for an itchy dick. So, while the girl on the flyer looked like a tempting late night phone call, it’s best that we didn’t take any of these things too seriously.

After we all had cleaned up, we spent a good time wandering the streets and having drinks at each casino within a reasonable walking distance. Limos raced passed us, groups of girls – probably lawyers, teachers, and bankers in their other lives – screamed as they were hollered at by cars of guys trying their best to present themselves as high rollers. The real high rollers flaunt it very subtly.

Eric’s rule was that no gambling would go on unless we were suitably intoxicated. The idea, on the exterior, sounds like a terrible one. In essence, it suggests that you should risk winning or losing a large sum of money while unable to think logically or coherently. However, having a few drinks before sitting down at a table involves the logic of trusting your initial instincts. There would be very little second guessing. Trusting Eric based on his call to stop in Denver, we sat down at the MGM Mirage for a round of blackjack once we had sufficient drinks. Once we sat down, we would be getting free drinks anyway.

I’ve always been a recreational gambler. This started with my father bringing home “football cards” for me to play since I garnered the ability to read and understand football. Once those two things came into play, I was filling out cards, betting on spreads, and being all the more immersed in who was winning, who was losing, and by how much. The bets were never very big – maybe $5 to win $20 – but I won despite the fact my picks were based solely on the big name teams. When I started getting older and what I thought to be wiser, I started to up my bets, sometimes looking too deeply into the games and I began to lose more than I won. The truth of the matter is blissful ignorance almost always trumps over-thinking.

Now, I’ll bet on anything. Again, since I was very young I have been filling out an NCAA March Madness bracket. I’ve succeeded on numerous occasions in that arena, winning the entire pool a couple times in the past five years. I can make educated wagers on who’ll score first in the Super Bowl and who’ll win the French Open. I bet mostly on sports, but it is not entirely out of the question for me to bet on politics or whether or not it’s high tide or low tide. I’m beginning to think I have a minor problem.

So naturally, in Las Vegas, though I was inexperienced, I had to sit down at the table and pray for beginner’s luck.

We played at the $25 tables, starting with just $200. This way, we would either be out really early, or keep on for just the right amount of time. We’d play eight hands regardless. Eric and I had comparable luck, up and down, up and down for about an hour while Marisa wandered off to play slot machines. In a stroke of genius, she chose the machine closest to the bar so when the waitresses walked by, she could just pick up drinks right away. She disclosed this plan to us later when she stumbled upon our game smoking Marlboro menthols, a glassy look in her eyes.

Both Eric and I were up about $100, so I took my $200 and put it in my pocket. At least I could leave with what I started with. He was a little more liberal with his spending and let his winnings dwindle. I think he broke even that night. If not, he didn’t lose too much money.

Around 3:00 in the morning, Eric and Marisa were ready to hit the bed. We had been up for a good 20 straight hours. The drinks were starting to kick our asses, but I decided that I’d go for the gold with my remaining $50 or so. As they headed up for the hotel room (we were back at New York, New York at this point), I stopped in for a final couple hands of blackjack. My luck was running out, and I had lost the last few hands at the previous table, so I wanted to try my luck with another dealer.

I propped myself down for a duel with the dealer. There were about four or five other gamblers at the table. For those unaware, swearing at the tables in Vegas is strictly enforced. One strike gets you a warning, but depending on the dealer and the level of the offending word, they could boot someone off the table.

The pit boss was standing around the dealer just watching the action around. The first hand, I remember, I busted taking a chance on a 16 when the dealer had a 19. “Bullshit,” I mumbled to myself, but audibly enough that the pit boss gave me a discouraging “watch your language” look.

I placed my final $25 on the table for the next hand. Two queens, a 20, and a swipe of my hand to say “I’ll stay here, thank you” as the dealer moved around the table. I figured I had just won myself another hand, maybe even another Southern Comfort on the rocks, which I was drinking consistently since I landed a spot at the tables.

The dealer then drew himself a blackjack.

“No fucking way!” I screamed, motioning my hand in the direction of the dealer as if I was throwing a deck of cards directly at him. Realizing what I’d done, which was get myself thrown off the table, I threw my hands in the air as the pit boss politely walked in my direction and lifted his index finger, motioning my removal from the table.

“I’ll leave,” I said begrudgingly. Once I collected myself, I smiled at the pit boss and told him “sorry, I’m just a competitive person. I thought I had him beat.”

“Go to bed,” he responded.

This wasn’t the first time my language had gotten me thrown out of a place. My sophomore year in high school, my relay team was ranked number one of all the freshmen and sophomore teams in the state. Heading into the annual state freshmen-sophomore meet, our team was pretty cocky. Since the relay wasn’t the only event I was entered in, my first race was the 300 meter dash. I ran a pretty good race, in the lead heading into the final stretch in the preliminary heat. As the final ten yards approached, I hit a wall and was subsequently passed at the finish line. Again, the f-word got the best of me as I screamed, “Fuck!” upon crossing the line. I was thrown out of the meet for lack of sportsmanship, and, amazingly, my coach, much like the pit boss in Vegas, didn’t buy the “I’m a competitor” excuse as the relay team couldn’t compete due to lack of a full squad.

I got lost on my way back to the room, but I had two $100 chips in my pocket, which was a moral victory for me. Once I found my way back to the hotel room, Eric and Marisa were out cold. I put my chips on the nightstand, so that I could wake up to the sight of two black chips staring me in the face, reminding me that beginners luck wasn’t a bad thing after all.

Chapter Nine

IX.

From gray to reddish rust colored

People are liars. We’ve learned this through generations of time. People lie because repercussions of the truth can be far worse than attempting a lie and possibly getting away with it. In this case, the clerk at the desk told Eric, Marisa, and I an extremely brutal lie upon us leaving the hotel.

We woke up as planned around 9:00 am and lingered in to the lobby for some coffee and breakfast. The lobby was set up like a ski lodge with couches and stone fireplaces, which were lit. People were already awake, wrapped in winter clothes or three-piece suits, aiming, it looked, for either the slopes or a business meeting. The weary travelers, dressed down as comfortably as we could, stood out as the ones who clearly didn’t belong.

Our hotel nestled in a tiny hamlet in between two towering mountains. In the morning, the snow sprinkled the Denver air, just enough to force us to shield the roofs of our eyes to take in the spectacular view; the mountain tops carefully layered in an early autumn snow.

After breakfast, I weathered the light rain/snow mixture falling on Vail and brought my car up front. I told the busboy I was stopping just to get my bags, and I jogged back into the lobby, where Eric and Marisa were waiting for me. I returned my key and asked what I thought was a really simple question, which I wanted to be answered truthfully, no matter how much it may have stung my ears.

“I’m checking out,” I told the clerk, a woman about 45 years old, seemingly miserable from her early morning shift. “How far is it to Las Vegas?”

“Vegas huh?” She looked at me. “You have an easy day in front of you. Once you get out of here and onto the highway it is a straight shot.”

My optimism for the day became evident, as I told my two partners what she had said. They, too, had been restless during the previous day’s trip. The best thing for the three of us was that night’s rest. We had begun to find a level of annoyance with each other, which will happen to the best of friends stuck in such a small place for an extended period of time. We needed to regroup. With the four hours rest, and uplifting news that the worst driving was behind us, we were all ready to begin the trip. We, in the upcoming hours, learned that the information she gave me was true, that is, if by “easy” and “straight shot,” she meant “really hard, arduous, dangerous, and miserable.”

#

The skies blended perfectly with the colors of the highest peaks. We were ready for our day.

The goat sat on the side of the road, ignorant of the speeding traffic zooming past him. Still half-asleep, the sight of the gray goat perked the three of us up. The snow was still falling, and the black-gray rocks lined the highway, which winded on the Colorado River still about 500 feet below us. Whistles of trains blew, and highway cops lay lazily at the wheel looking for violators. Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fat City” lay all around us; I wondered just how many of the houses and condos we saw belonged to native Coloradoans, or to the real estate companies trying to make big bucks off the land.

The reality of how high in the air we were hit us when we kept descending still about an hour of our drive to Vegas. The farther south we got, the color of the rocks began to shift, from gray to reddish rust, as did the sky, which turned from a bluish-gray to sky-blue.

I began, during this trip, to record my thoughts each night. However, the stay in Colorado was the first time my notebook had gone blank. The toll of the trip began to weigh on me, I figured. Sometimes my journal entries would examine my thoughts on my thoughts, leading me to query on where in my life I had become so introspective, examining the metaphysical part of my existence in this world. Sometimes the entries would talk of the surroundings and the people I was with, putting into question where along the lines I became so involved with descriptions of people and places. Other times, the entry would just be one or two words, summing up my days with a minute detail, like when I wrote “Gatlinburg!” as my entry one night in Kentucky, as if I was anticipating some greatly epiphanic praise or prose that was yet to be constructed in my mind. The journal had become less of a hobby and more of an autobiography.

#

Colorado had definitely been the hardest part of the drive so far, though it seemed to disappear the quickest due to the level of alert we had to keep. We watched locomotives scream alongside us on the Colorado River, but the grey rocks, overcast sky, and chilly climate kept the mood morose.

We hit the Utah state border about two hours after we left the hotel. The cliffs rose magnificently, and shone brilliant displays of brownish red clay. We couldn’t help but bring up the irony that Colorado’s nickname was the “Colorful State” and that Utah, despite what we considered having more prevalent color was left, at least from the sign, nickname-less. The meeting to nickname states, we envisioned, surely went something like this.

Colorado state representative: “We’re going to nickname our state ‘The Colorful State’.”

Utah state representative: “That’s bullshit! We are way more colorful than Colorado. Fuck it, we don’t even want a nickname now.” Turns out Utah - and I’m sure it was begrudgingly – chose the Beehive State. I would have lobbied for “The More Colorful State – and fuck you Colorado.”

Our good mood and view of incredible red, brown, and sand-colored cliffs and roadsides carried us through the morning hours. We stopped for pictures of plateaus that seemed like only God could have created. The air was dry, but friendly, the hills of the highway brought on a different landscape to marvel at ten miles at a time.

What did this land look like 50 years ago? 100? These thoughts entered my mind as I envisioned wagons heading west across the barren landscape; they crossed my mind as I was crossing the Mississippi through the still desolate Midwest. What was now rich landscape for homes and businesses, cities and sports arenas was once a land inhabited by very few. Solace was granted by the very few country roads I chose to take, which would still create clouds of solid gray from kicking gravel behind my wheels.

To the credit of the area, one of the most remarkable feats of the American west is its ability to remain remarkably unblemished by humans. From the highway there is little to remind drivers of Capitalistic America; there are no chain malls, McDonald’s, or manufactured tourist attractions, just the sights of incredible plateaus of orange and brown skyrocketing on each side of the road. The roads aren’t crowded with wanderers which allows for ample opportunity to marvel at the natural beauty. The car remained silent for stretches of time save for an occasional “holy shit,” “look at that one,” or an audible gasp in amazement. Marisa sat silently snapping pictures out of open window in her perch in the backseat.

The sign for the exit read “No Name” with a disclaimer underneath informing us that there were “no services available” as if we assumed there would be in a town so inconsequential and remote that it didn’t even necessitate a name. There was no visible sign of life in the town of No Name, just an exit toward nothing. Road signs along the highways become increasingly bizarre the farther they go into desolate areas. There were signs that read No Name, signs that had just a number, and my personal favorite, “Eagles on the Road.”

“No way, not the fucking Eagles,” said Eric, referring to the classic rock band, we clearly were overtired. “I hate the Eagles.”

“Maybe they mean the Philadelphia Eagles,” I countered.

“I hope so,” he said. “If I see Don Henley I will get out of the car and fight him.”

Much to our chagrin – and luckily for the aforementioned band member - we never encountered any large birds, football players, or guitarists playing “Take it easy.”

Marcus Camry, what I named the Camry I bought in honor of the former UMass basketball player, glided easily over the faded gray pavement, worn from years of unyielding sun and wandering travelers. The three of us played as many “car games” as we could have, and the sight of endless desert and rising mountains became tired.

The sun still beat strong in the middle of the desert. Though it was the middle of the afternoon, we were about to gain another hour due to the time change, amazingly, it seemed, to Pacific Time. We would finally be on west coast standard time. Eric didn’t agree with Marisa and I that the change would give us another hour to enjoy our time in Vegas.

“The time change gives us another hour to gamble and drink,” I announced.

“What? No it doesn’t,” Eric argued, his deep voice raising a little. “We’d still be drinking the same amount of time.”

“No way,” Marisa chimed in. “Whereas it would have been four o’clock, it will only be three, so in essence, it gives us another hour.”

Eric vehemently disagreed for a good twenty minutes. With Vegas just over an hour away, we ended our long trip through Utah, hitting the Arizona border.

The drive was short, but the scenery was amazing. The highway winded through cliffs on both sides, rising heavenward. The road, though, is almost like a bridge where the sides fall off into an abyss of nothingness. If we were to crash and fall off the side of this stretch of land, no one would find our remains – if there were any – for a million years. Just another casualty of the desert. At least, I pointed out, the weather was sunny. Fortunately, we weren’t traveling this dangerous road at night, or in inclement weather, and if luck would have it, it’d be a sight we’d never see. Little did I know.

There is a strikingly similar sensation of having a full tank of gas and a full pack of cigarettes at your convenience. With both, the feeling of endless resource ensues, it feels as if you have miles to go before the needle hits the far left and the last match is lit. And so with both a full tank and full pack, Las Vegas, Nevada came up out of nowhere, sitting in between mountains and desert, screaming for attention like an overdressed woman in an otherwise casual bar setting. There couldn’t have been a prettier sight to see for the three travelers who had been surrounded by the same barren landscape for the past 24 hours. While the western part of the country had its shining moments of beauty, the time had come for rest and relaxation in the amusement park for adults.

Chapter eight

VIII.

If you haven’t called your parents lately…

“The plains ignore us,

But these mountains listen,

An audience of thousands holding its breath in each rock”

-Ted Kooser, “Visiting Mountains”

“I think we should go for it,” I announced, blowing the cigarette smoke out of my window. We argued for a few minutes, while I pulled off the road for the necessities to make a night of our driving.

It’s not like we didn’t have options for a place to stay. I had a cousin who was living in Colorado at the time, who would have gladly housed us for the evening. Regretfully, I never got around to making the phone call to let him know I’d be in the area. He probably would have implored us to stay with him, or at least warned us that we may not want to traverse the roads.

Truckers stopped and stared as we entered the truck stop. The time was fast approaching 10 o’clock, and even with the entrance into the Mountain Time zone, we seemed to be facing a daunting task. Both Marisa and I had dedicated ourselves to driving, so we loaded up on caffeine pills and a couple of large, strong coffees. Marisa took a seat behind the wheel with me sitting beside her in the passenger side. Eric sat in the back of my car, trying to position himself comfortably so he could get some rest. Marisa and I caught up on what was going on with each of us. She drove for about four hours before we stopped for gas and a snack. There definitely should have been a warning sign upon entering the highway, letting us know we were in for the worst few hours of the trip so far. If we weren’t too blind to consider the signs God was giving us – the winds, the flurry of falling snow, the altitude – regular roadside signs would have worked fine.

In the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” the two imbecile protagonists head westward to Colorado in order to return a lost suitcase to its’ beautiful owner. However, on the way there, one of the characters, played by funnyman Jim Carrey, accidentally veers in the wrong direction, leading the two into the plains of Middle America rather than their mountaintop destination.

Upon waking in the flat landscape of Kansas, Jeff Daniels’s character muses, “I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.” To which Carrey replies, “That’s what I was thinking. That John Denver’s full of shit, man,” remarking on the late singers’ tune paying homage to the fabled mountain range.

Throughout the trip, even as we entered Colorado and started to roll up and down hills, we continued to make this joke. I think we may have angered the mountain gods.

After the rolling hills through the city of Denver, a lull of highway is laid out, giving a driver their final option to pull off. It’s kind of like a girlfriend taking a deep breath in an argument; you have just a moments notice for a reprieve before the real problems to begin. The skyline jetted upward in front of us despite the darkness.

My preconceived notion of what mountains were suddenly withered away compared to what I was looking at. The rolling hills of my youth were suddenly just memories, memories I had to shake for the moment as I buckled my seatbelt, repositioning myself upright as I ascended up the mountains.

I couldn’t even see the top, as the peaks of the Rockies were hidden by the most ominous looking clouds I had ever seen. Drivers well-traveled in the area sped by me, as I looked incredulously at the terrain. We navigated through tunnels, all the while driving straight towards the clouds. The rain began to fall, mixed with the already swirling flakes of snow. Around every corner was something new, but I looked in utter amazement as the signs displaying the altitude passed me on the right and on the left.

5,000 feet.

7,500 feet.

Finally reaching 10,663 feet at the Vail Pass Summit, where I almost felt like I should get out and take a few breaths of the cleanest air my lungs would ever taste – God knows I needed that - and knowing I may never be this high above sea level ever again.

When hikers reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the lack of oxygen at that altitude limits their mental capacity down to that of a ten-year old. Those successful enough to reach that point have stayed there for fewer than 15 minutes. Looking out upon the Himalayan Mountains, on top of the entire world, even the most articulate and intelligent adventurers are literally at a loss for words, rendering months of arduous climbing and adventure seem as climactic as meeting a rude celebrity. For the most part, they just desire to be back at base camp, safe from harm, and free to coherently collect their thoughts.

Jon Krakauer, a favorite writer of mine, and the author of two of my favorite books, Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, in the opening words of the latter novel, wrote about reaching the summit of the world,

I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I’d been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn’t summon the energy to care.

On a much smaller mental and physical scale, this is how we felt, yet we just sat in silence, the radio turned all the way down, not a cigarette was lit. Mentally strained from the voyage up the mountain, the descent should have been a coast for us. As we turned the corner atop Vail Summit, we realized that the voyage down was to be as onerous as the trip up, if not more so. The first sign we encountered asked drivers who might be doubtful to pull off and check their brakes. Soon after, we were warned of falling rocks, animals on the road, and slippery conditions. We mustered up jokes that the Colorado officials should have put up another sign at the peak, suggesting, “If you haven’t called your parents recently to tell them you love them, you should probably think about doing it now.”

The driving was slow down the mountain as snow and rain pummeled the windshield. I road the brakes the entire way as well-seasoned truck drivers sped past the tiny Camry inching its’ way forward. The three of us sat upright, our eyes attached to every detail of the road in case something went awry. I clenched the steering wheel tighter than ever before, my heart raced, and the only words out of my mouth were to inquire whether or not my passengers has their seatbelts fastened. Eventually, after almost an hour of driving, my brakes began to smoke and I could smell the burning brakes pads.

We hadn’t even reached the bottom of the mountain when we pulled off to a gas station. Once the air was clear enough to navigate, we exited I-70. The weather was violently cold for mid-September, and we decided to re-evaluate our decision to drive straight through to Vegas. Even Eric, who is never reluctant to take credit when he is right, was drained enough to remain mum on his assertion.

Once the fear had ceased and complete control of the senses was regained, Eric finally did speak up.

“You know who is definitely NOT full of shit?” He asked.

“John Denver,” the two of answered with a genuine laugh.

#

It was almost three in the morning, and being in the heart of the tourist communities would make it difficult to find a place to lodge for a few hours on our budget. I drove around in the snow, and we found a bed and breakfast with the lights on. We parked and readied ourselves to bunk for the evening, but no one was awake at that hour. We entertained the idea of crashing on the couch, but left, fearing the consequence of the owner awakening early and finding three complete strangers, who reeked of an 18-hour long car ride sound asleep on the couch.

Eventually, we found a Holiday Inn, where we swindled the female clerk down a few bucks, claiming I was a Toyota employee out on business, a fact I asserted by showing them my warranty card on my recently purchased family sedan. Since Toyota was one of their accounts, she gave me their cut rate. I’d be long gone before anyone from the company realized one of their “employees” used their discount.

The snow and the cold really started to hit us, as we crossed the courtyard for our room. It was 4:00 in the morning, and all we really wanted was a couple hours of shuteye. We turned on Sportscenter and stretched our legs out on our beds. Each of us smoked the day’s final cigarette and drifted very quickly to sleep.

Chapter Seven

VII.

The farthest west I had ever been

“I know what we call it

Most of the time.

But I have my own song for it,

And sometimes, even today,

I call it beauty.”

-James Wright “Beautiful Ohio”

The hustle and bustle of Chicago trailed off in the rearview mirror, as the terrain started to get a little flatter on Interstate 80 through western Illinois. Sweeps of infinite cornfield erased memories of strip malls and skyscrapers haunting the corners.

Marisa had decided to nap in the backseat, which was packed to the roof, leaving her just enough space for a seat behind the passenger. It also provided her with ample cushion to easily drift away. Her sleeping became a major theme for the first ten hours or so on this trip.

Eric and I had a lot of catching up to do. Only twice since Florida had we seen each other: one time when he and a friend drove to Massachusetts to surprise Concord, NH native Marisa, and another for his 23^rd birthday for a weekend of drunken behavior at my college.

#

The airport was still reeling with security six months after the terrorist attacks on New York City. Eric was arriving in Hartford to stay with me for the weekend, which I was sure would entail telling old and creating new stories. As I pulled into the short term parking lot, I was driving my girlfriend’s car. A stone faced soldier waved me towards him, and as I crept up to him, my good mood clearly shown.

He asked me to place my hands on the wheel, and interrogated me.

“Where are you going?” He asked.

“I’m picking my friend up in terminal B.” He scanned the contents of my vehicle, which were various papers and boxes containing research material for my girlfriend’s thesis paper.

“What’s all this stuff?” He asked. When I told him he shifted his attention to the concealed objects in my trunk. “What is in the trunk? Do you have any weapons in the car?”

With a swift flash of martial artistry, I swung my hands like a ninja, struck a karate-style pose and laughed, “Just my hands, officer.”

He didn’t laugh at my joke, nor was he amused when he motioned the gate to open to let me in. I had survived my first militaristic interrogation, barely, but I picked Eric up at his gate and brought him back onto campus.

A few of my friends from home came to visit that weekend and we filled my trunk with drunken expectations and a few 30-packs of Bud Light. We played drinking games, almost knocked over a statue on campus right in front of the President of the college, and narrowly avoided coming to blows with members of various athletic teams. We shut off circuit breakers in the dorms, and tried to push each other down the 30-foot hill on campus. The latter part of the first night we spent binge drinking and concocting plans for the subsequent evening, an evening in which we might become criminals.

Due to the outrageous success of the Playstation 2 game Grand Theft Auto, we decided that it must be relatively easy to steal a car. (Who says video games are harmless? Here we are, twenty something college students planning to steal a car. Of course, we meant no harm by it. We just wanted to joy ride and say that we did it.)

“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We call for a pizza, and when the delivery guy comes to give us our pizza, Eric, you go and steal the car. We’ll all jump in.”

The plan seemed foolproof until we botched our first attempt. Apparently the delivery guy caught on to our plan. When we ordered another pizza to the same address, the guy came again. When he saw us sitting behind bushes like a lion devising his attack, he took off toward his car. We chased after him to the car, which was idling in the driveway. He sped away and my friend Ted threw a full beer can at the disappearing taillights. The latter attempts yielded Dominos telling us that they were no longer delivering to our house.

Back in the car we had a good laugh about these incidents. We laughed at how ridiculously young we were then, and how our plans would definitely be more elaborate nowadays. By this, I think Eric and I were hinting that we would have succeeded at stealing that car given another chance. Maybe it is better we failed our first – and last - attempt at grand theft auto.

We continued west toward the signs that read “Des Moines.” With each mile west we traveled, we encountered land I had never seen. Each second, each inch of land was the farthest west I had ever been. Upon entering Iowa, we approached the Mississippi River. A longtime favorite book of mine, like many English aficionados, has been The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The brown water seemed to stretch forever at this point in the river. Steamboats were still traveling up and down the river, and motorists sped around on jet skis. I felt myself looking back in time to when Huck and Jim crept away in the night, and all the real life slaves who made the escape on these very waters. Everyone, throughout time, has made escapes over, around, up, and down this river, whether the circumstance be the harsh condition of slave labor, or just looking west beyond the life we knew previously. I smiled as I passed the setting for some of the most remarkable literature, and made a mental note that as I sit down to write soon, I make note of how impressed I was by the natural phenomenon. Little did I know that a few of these things would be visited upon me on this day-long trek.

All I knew about Iowa could fit on a post-it note. I expected the cornfield and plains, but not the vastness of them. The rolling hills carrying miles of cornstalks elicited as much awe as any coastline, landmark, or mountain did; houses miles apart, embodying a combination of Don Quixote’s swaying windmills and the land I drew in my head while reading In Cold Blood in college. There is not an ocean for a thousand miles either way, nothing significant besides the utter lack of silence in the car. More than any mountain or ocean in the country, the stretches of land throughout middle America impressed me. The land rolls on forever, with nothing but fields of green for miles on every side of the car.

My maternal grandfather Earnest McKenzie lived and worked in Iowa for a time as an English professor at the University of Iowa teaching Geoffrey Chaucer. At my home in Methuen, I have a library full of his old books, classics like Dante’s Inferno, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and Plato’s Republic, all first editions worn at the seams by years of reading and re-reading.

Upon learning of his life’s work, I quickly realized where my passions originated. I’ve spent hours looking over these books, examining the binding, smelling books over 50 years old trying to gather some understanding of what my grandfather was like. In 1952 soon before the birth of my mother, he committed suicide in the family driveway, a self-inflicted gun wound.

I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about the entire situation. I’ll never know why he did what he did, why he chose, in my mind, to abandon four children and pull the trigger. Part of me wants to see him wandering the streets somewhere in the afterlife, where I can walk to him and punch him right in the jaw and implore him to give me reasons; ask him why he left before he got to see one of his youngest grandsons choose the same field he did, ask him if he regrets that scenario. Another part of me wants to thank him for giving me the critical thinking, writer’s mind that I inherited from him, sit down with a whiskey – his drink of choice – and talk about our favorite authors and stories. Faith leads me to believe I will one day have that very important decision to make. All I know is that it is frustrating to know that I could have had someone with the ability to read, criticize, and write with on perhaps his final legs, giving me advice from an old to a new author.

#

The smell wasn’t something as unfamiliar as it was unpleasant. And it came in spurts. Iowa had seemed like the longest state to drive through, and it didn’t help that Eric had to use the restroom as frequently as Dick Vitale compliments Duke’s basketball program. We stopped at every rest stop, including the world’s largest truck stop on Rt. 80. Looking at the map as the sun began to set in front of our eyes, we made the conclusion that Nebraska was just as big, maybe even a little bigger than Iowa.

We hit Omaha as the sun was setting before us.

The most unsettling thing about the Cornhusker state was not the size, but the smell. Marisa, who would be awake very scarcely on the trip, would awaken to add commentary to our banter.

“You guys are disgusting,” when we were talking about a difficult decision between family members, “Nice songs, you fag,” when a relatively feminine song came onto one of my mix CD’s, but the most timely of her observations came about midway through the state of Nebraska, a little ways past Lincoln, where the farmland stretched for days, and the streetlights were few and far between.

“What is that God awful smell?” she asked. Eric and I had smelled the scent of shit from the cattle for a little while now, as we were sure Marisa had been, but finally it became so chokingly awful that complaining couldn’t hurt our cause. We stopped for food, so we could take a breath and stretch our legs. It didn’t take us long to realize why the state we were in smelled so bad.

The sign said “Famous Sandwiches,” which was misleading. We did rationalize afterwards that the sign never explained what made the sandwiches famous. We guessed “making people go to the bathroom quite frequently.” Our meals delayed our trip due to frequent visits to the mens’ and ladies’ rooms. When we finally got on the road, we were an hour out of Colorado, where an important decision lay in front of the wanderers.

“What are we thinking?” I asked my passengers. The day had been long, we were growing irritable, and the car stunk of cigarettes, farts, and generally, three people crammed inside a small car.

“I think we should stop somewhere,” declared Eric. I got the distinct feeling that he had seen enough for one day. He felt that there was no way we were going to make it to Las Vegas before morning, or avoid a major crash involving three out-of-staters. Even if we were to finish the voyage to Sin City by noontime at the earliest, we’d still be two hours ahead of our check-in time, and all we’d really want to do is sleep.

We had instituted the “volleyball rotation” during our trip. One person drives, the person riding shotgun stays awake to keep the driver amused and alert, and the person in the backseat is welcome to sleep. Presently, I was still driving, which was no bother because it was my car.

“I really don’t care,” started Marisa, “but I would be okay with driving throughout the night.”

The final decision rested on me. The money situation was tight; could I really afford a night at a hotel? How long would tomorrow’s drive be? Studying the map we truly began to appreciate how big this country really is. Colorado was enormous compared to the two states we just traveled through. Ahead of us, as the altitude kept climbing, we could see the mountains lingering in the distance, illuminated once or twice by flashing lightning.

Chapter Six

The following is chapter six from the as-of-now unpublished novel by Matthew Osgood, Chasing Sunsets.

VI.

Far from home plate

Skipping across my first time zone, I felt that somehow I was beginning to cheat the Gods. An unsettling feeling, when you have too much time to think up crazy scenarios, comes when you feel that you’ve done something to upset some higher power. We, as people, are allotted a certain amount of time on this earth. Likewise, our daily dosage of sun or rain is also pre-determined. As I changed the clock in my car an hour back, essentially gaining an hour, I was granted an allowance on my day. I had an hour more sunlight, an hour more of my day. I was cheating as I sped west, holding onto sunlit days, trying to avoid the unrest of the night.

A major car crash slowed my trip to Chicago. I eased my way out of Indiana unscathed and crossed the border into the Land of Lincoln. My trip, so far, had been an enjoyable one, zigzagging across the eastern part of the country. There was no rhyme or reason to the route I took, just an excuse to see people and places along the way and maybe get in a little action while I was at it.

I was ready, though, to get some company because I knew when the days’ trip was over that I was to be reunited with a couple of good friends. I had made arrangements in advance to stay a couple days in Joliet, Ill. with my friends Eric and Marisa. They would take me out on the town, and tantalize my taste buds with some of the greasiest and delicious food the Midwest had to offer.

The three of us had met down in Orlando, Florida in 2001 where we were all taking part in an internship program at Walt Disney World. Eric was the first roommate I met, the elder statesman of the group, and right away I thought he’d be someone I got along with.

Back in Massachusetts, I had followed my older brother from elementary school through high school and even through college, so stepping away from that safety net proved to be difficult. I knew that for the first time, I would be stepping into a world where I knew absolutely no one. Having to rely on just myself, I realized that I had the personality tools to make it anywhere. I had to. It was fight or flight.

Eric was a seasoned vet when it came to the college thing. He was already a senior while I was just a freshman, far away from turning 21. When it turned out my seven roommates and I would all get along, we spent most of the time working during the days and spending an absurd amount of money and time on booze. Our drinking habits were increased because there was nothing better to do. We were in Orlando, where the sun shone bright every day. We were young, having fun, and, because there were 10,000 other college students, most of the nights consisted of drinking until complete inebriation and dabbling in some hookups or throw ups. Even if work concluded at midnight, there was a party you could join, particularly for our apartment, where every night was a celebration.

Somewhere along the line, we established a core group of about eight friends, and Marisa was one of them. She and Eric hit it off almost immediately, despite her boyfriend in New Hampshire. Soon after the program ended, she and Eric fell in love and she moved from New Hampshire to Joliet and they moved in together. The two were married in the fall of 2006.

Of all of the friends that I made down in Florida, Eric and Marisa were the ones I remained in closest contact with. Whether the situation calls for a drunken late night phone call, or a clever recap of the weekend through e-mail, we did a great job of keeping in touch, even after the program ended and a relationship between me and the two of them could have been in jeopardy. A terrible fear of mine is that one day, I will stop referring to someone I used to call a friend, as “someone I used to know.” It’s happened already with friends from Florida, and eventually found its way to my friends from California. Either way, Eric, Marisa, and I began to realize, through distance and absence, how much more we had in common despite the difference in time zones.

Their location was incredibly practical; as I thought that it was probably about halfway across the country. I was terribly wrong. Looking at a map of the country, now I realize how big of a difference there is between the Massachusetts to Chicago trip and the Chicago to San Diego trip.

The Camry and I pulled along Rt. 7 in Joliet about midafternoon. I thought of how Jack Kerouac in On the Road must have traveled these same roads during the height of his beat generation journey. Kerouac was a Lowell, Massachusetts native, who gained literary acclaim with his semi-true account of a trip across the country in the 1950’s. Little did I know that Joliet would be the first of many cities along the way that we had both stopped. I counted just him and me among the elite company that had been to similar hamlets.

Just Marisa was home as I pulled in. We sat on the back porch swing, smoking cigarettes and trading stories, updating one another on our lives. Marisa seemed happier than I had ever seen her. She had settled into her life in Chicago, far from the rough upbringing she had in New Hampshire. She wanted to know all about how the Red Sox were doing, and we reminisced on times we spent after Florida frequenting local bars. Red Sox fans are transplanted throughout the country, and at the time, neither of us had any idea that our beloved baseball team would be ending an 86-year World Series drought a little over a month later, and both of us would be watching from different sides of the country, unaware of the chaos ensuing at home. In fact, it was Marisa who made the first phone call to me as the celebratory third out was made in Game Four of that series, both of us reveling in the excitement of a Red Sox championship far from home plate.

When Eric arrived, we started making plans for the night. Ever the planner, he wanted to know exactly what I intended to do, when I wanted to leave Joliet for the trip westward, and so on. I told him I planned on spending a couple of days in his town, checking out the food, the people, and the bars. He took this sentiment as “I want to get drunk for three straight days.”

I realized that one of the only things to do in Joliet was to drink at bars and taverns, of which there are galaxies. There are bars on every corner, bars right next to bars, each of which I felt Eric had spent time. In addition to the bars, the selection of eateries could make even Michael Moore’s head spin. Each place, too, would stay open until about an hour after the bars closed, appealing to the late night crowd, which gladly accepted the convenience.

I welcomed the fact that most of these restaurants were, in fact, locally owned places, and almost none of them displayed the greediness of capitalistic America, shooting up fast-food chains every couple of streets.

Despite the fact that what I needed was a day of rest in between drives, we headed out on the town each night. Besides, we had catching up to do. And since Eric had already been to my side of the country twice, he wanted to show me where he grew up, introduce me to friends, and make up for the time we had lost since Orlando. It was a running joke that I would never make it to visit them out in Illinois. I had promised to come on many occasions, but never quite followed through.

After a couple nights of boozing until the early hours of the morning, we called it an early night before the voyage. We decided that we needed to hit the road early. We made sure to get coffee at the Dunkin Donuts by the highway just before the trip started. Despite the tendency to induce a good sit down in a bathroom along the road, a large coffee was something essential to making this trip happen. Eric suggested that we plan our trip around stopping in Denver, but Marisa and I decided it would be better if we played it by ear. Perhaps we should have listened to Eric when the idea was placed on the table, but we took our chances.

It was right as we left Joliet when I mentioned that we’re about halfway to San Diego.

“Halfway there?” Eric laughed as he went to the glove compartment for our map. “You are so wrong, Matt.”

I ignorantly debated with him as he opened the map.

“We’re not even close to halfway, maybe a third of the way,” he measured the difference in distance eastward and westward with his thumb and his index finger. “You could drive back and it’d take you less time.”

Eric thumbed through my case of CD’s, which ranges from country to rap to jazz and soul. I watched him flip pages back and forth, offering advice and explaining the track listings and compelling stories behind the names of the blank CD’s I had recorded myself. He finally picked a country CD, aptly named “Getting’ Lucky in Kentucky.”

I scanned through the tracks, finally stopping midway through the disk to show Eric a song he may have never heard before but might find funny and enjoyable. After the song was over and we shared a good laugh at Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach,” Eric returned the CD to track number one, explaining, “What else do we have to do?”

Chapter Five

The following is chapter five from the as-of-now unpublished novel Chasing Sunsets by Matthew Osgood

V.

“Takes away the coffee flavor”

“When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.” – Anthony Storr

I felt a combination of being a stranger and lonely for the first time on the trip. Driving these roads was isolating; I had never climbed these hills, may never climb them ever again, I thought, and I wanted to stop and marvel at the landscape. More so, I wanted to share these views with someone. Pictures taken from that trip do not do justice to the experience mainly because the shots were taken while driving and through a windshield. Looking back now, I wondered why I was in so much of a rush that I didn’t pull along the side of the road to take more pictures. I’d like to say that it’s because I was a lonesome traveler, but when I was joined later on the trip, the camera still went unused for the most part. I wanted to create a scrapbook of the places I would see, but we all have these grandiose ideas that go by the wayside for a variety of reasons.

Atop the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, looking south through the clouds hovering over majestic colored mountains, the sun setting opposite over the horizon is where I came up with the phrase, “The places I’ve met and the people I’ve experienced.” There were cars of strangers gazing out over the vista, cars with plates from Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Massachusetts all taking in the same experience. I decided no longer to go places as a stranger, not pretending to be a local, but trying to experience what the locals do. I would not just rush to touristy sites, gathering in all I can read in brochures, but I would try to become one with the land, ask questions of natives. I wanted to try my best to meet these places, to know what they are about.

The best way to look at a situation sometimes can be from a complete outsiders view. Without an affixed opinion, the questions asked and the first impressions are a little more genuine. To come into a scenario where you believe you understand all that there is to be understood, you tend to miss out on important facets of what is going on around you. I tried to approach my trip like this. The desire for learning about the places I visited and the people I saw was not artificial. If my host wanted to show me the sea, the city, the mountains, or the bars, I felt glad to go.

It was strange being part of a situation beyond my control. Looking at all these people who resided in these parts, knew these streets, knew these people, it’s fascinating how little I knew. There are the roads that people travel every day and know so well, and here I am, a wanderer struggling my way through roads and cities of the country, somehow navigating strange streets to find familiarity. I enjoyed when people came from different areas of the country to visit with me because I could show them the sights and sounds from my hometown. Here I was now at the mercy of others, living as an outsider trying to fit in.

Likewise, with people, I’ve found you need to experience them. Meeting someone consists solely of an introduction, small talk, maybe finding a common interest or two. The best way to experience someone is to ask questions, listen to the tone of their voice when they talk, and listen to how they say it. Look into their eyes and see their sincerity or insecurities. Pay attention to how they laugh and what they eat. Let them take you to a local restaurant, especially when traveling. There are Applebee’s and TGI Fridays on every corner in America. A local pub or restaurant elicits an image of who someone really is, an in-depth look at who the person surrounds themselves with, and where, and how they conduct themselves.

The trip to Kentucky was to see a friend Ashlee I had met in Florida. On Spring Break actually. Amazingly, during the trip to Daytona Beach, Florida during my senior year, we had only just hung out one night. I had approached her at a bar and hit it off immediately. We had some drinks, did some dancing, then exchanged numbers. After that, however, we didn’t talk for the rest of the trip. Upon returning home to school, I deleted her number from my cell phone and went on with my life. Returning from class one day approaching graduation in May, I had a voicemail on my phone from Ashlee, in her southern twang asking if I remembered who she was, that she had had a great time hanging out with me and to give her a call sometime. I actually distinctly remember blowing it off, citing that I would never see her again, why call her. I showed a roommate the voicemail, probably just to let him hear the cute accent she had. He implored me to call her. He knew the girl I was referring to, and because she was cute, seemed genuine, and possessed the sexiest accent we’ve ever heard, I called her back.

It turned out we had a tremendous amount of things in common despite our geography. A southern Baptist, she was a junior in college, and the stereotypical Southern belle: 5’0 tall, no more than 100 pounds, strikingly bright blonde hair, blue eyes and a vulnerable disposition. She was amazingly gorgeous and polite. She was extremely genuine on the phone.

We spoke on and off throughout the remainder of the school year, but lost contact as the summer began. I still hadn’t decided that I was going to embark across the country, so I figured her a passing acquaintance. It was fun while it lasted.

After I made the decision to move to San Diego, I began looking into places that I could stop along the way for visits. I knew that Springfield was definitely going to happen because I still had friends there, or friends that would be willing to travel and send me off. Visiting Elisha in New Jersey was also a given because I knew the drive from western Massachusetts to New Jersey had the distinct possibility of creating some traffic problems for me. The city driving would be terrible if that happened, and would take too much out of me. I had also already decided to stop in Chicago to visit my friends Eric and Marisa. They would then drive with me west. I toyed with St. Louis for a little while, but crossed it off the list. Even the decision for Wilmington came just two or three weeks before the trip even began.

Whose idea it was to go through Kentucky, I don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t mine. I suspect it was one of my friends, who, and I agreed, had intentions that bordered on me being a scumbag. I was, surprisingly, as a single 22-year old, very okay with that. So I called, she agreed, and I was headed to Williamsburg, Kentucky.

As the mountains evened out, my anxiety rose. I hardly knew this girl despite our long telephone conversations and drunk dancing on some Daytona Beach dance floor. However, I was committed to going. Alongside the highway I could see a giant cross signaling my entrance into the Bible Belt, but chuckled when directly below the cross was a XXX Porn Superstore.

The town of Williamsburg was everything I imagined a Kentucky town to be. It had a very intimate feel, a small main street snuggled between the only signs of civilization, a small Baptist college and a McDonald’s. Ashlee and I reunited then I followed her to her one bedroom apartment atop the foothills. She was everything I remembered her to be, except she was a lot prettier than I had envisioned. I just hoped that my appearance had the same effect on her. I called a friend to tell him about the goldmine I had just discovered as I followed her home. There was no absence or awkwardness of conversation during those crucial first moments. In typical southern fashion, it was a necessity that I meet her grandmother and aunts before they consented I stay the night. I trusted that I’d be sleeping somewhere else should I make a bad first impression. We spent the night meeting her family, where I exaggerated the Boston accent and charm. Later that night we laughed over drinks at dinner, making plans to make our way to the Fried Chicken Festival the next day. Only in Kentucky.

The World’s Largest Skillet was a disappointment, but we had fun roaming the streets at the festival. She ran into many friends, and, ignorantly, I felt like the smartest person in town because I was the only one without an accent. Or, more factually, the only person with an accent. On the guys, I thought, the accent makes them sound outrageously dumb. On the women, however, vulnerably attractive. The two of us became surprisingly attracted to one another despite our legitimately short time being acquainted. Somehow, and I believe she feels the same way still, the two of us worked. We were complete strangers, and almost complete opposites. We were from different worlds, held different beliefs, and were headed in different directions yet neither of us wanted this short, three-day visit to end. Back on the Smokey Mountains, we took photos of the two of us, figuratively and literally in the clouds on top of the world. Ashlee and I held hands, the conversation never stopped, and we spent all three nights in the same bed.

We kissed goodbye and the finality lurked ominously. We’d probably never be in the same place again. She had found a notebook in which I was writing, and scribbled in a hidden back page instructions to “never forget those who can’t join” me. I found the note only after I arrived in California. Ironically, leaving Ashlee in Kentucky wasn’t as hard as I would have imagined in the previous days. With every mile west I felt like I was cleansing my soul from a previous life and starting new, like erasing a full chalkboard piece by piece until there is nothing but blank space remaining. I would cherish the memories we made, but not dwell on the misfortune of the prospect of never seeing one another again.

As a matter of fact, we did keep in close contact in the months following the trip to Kentucky. We spoke on the phone a number of times a week and arranged a trip for another visit which actually happened. One drunken night, we had talked, and apparently I decided it would be a good idea to book a flight when drunk. Upon my arrival, we were very happy to see one another. However, the next day, she received word that her grandfather had passed away and she needed to leave for Florida that day. She dropped me off at a hotel near the airport, where I stayed alone. I flew back to California the next morning on my dime. After about a week of unreturned phone calls, I heard back from Ashlee. She had driven down to Florida to her grandfathers’ funeral, whereupon she met up with an old ex-boyfriend. They wed on a nice ceremony by the beach at the end of that week. I never talked to Ashlee again.

The stomach rumblings started about four hours into my drive away from my initial trip to Kentucky. Not a breakfast person by nature, I can survive on coffee, cigarettes, and desire to get to a certain destination. As the scenery driving north changed from the rolling Appalachians to the plain lands of Indiana, I could see for miles. Although I still traveled well above the speed limit, life seemed to slow down just a bit as, through the landscape, I could stare into the lives of farmers from generations passed, envying them for roaming these same farms, not knowing a thing about the fast life we’re all so accustomed to living.

I deciphered a bit in my head where I was, how much longer I had to travel until I reached Chicago. Maybe now would be a good time for a lunch break and regrouping. I was about halfway to Chicago, and just a few hours from finally having some companionship on the trip. Staying a few days with some friends would be good for my psyche. They would then join me for the second half of my trek.

Doubling my need to fill my stomach, I also was looking to fill my gas tank and empty my personal tank. The next exit in Crawfordsville, about 20 miles north of Indianapolis, offered both food and gas, so I pulled off the road and into the parking lot of a small diner.

Upon entering, I could see that the place wasn’t exactly a hub for healthy eating, but I sat down anyway. The place reeked of stale coffee and overnighters. Actually, my initial reaction was to turn out the door and look down the road for any sign of a chain restaurant. My conflict was interrupted by the blonde tending the mock-50’s café style bar.

“Just you, sweetie?” she inquired from her post, stroking just one menu.

I nodded wearily. She smiled, and I forced one myself and offered to take a seat at the bar. After taking care of a bill for a young couple, she came over and handed me a menu saturated in grease, ripped at the edges on the one page selection sheet, one side with the choices, the other with a brief family history behind the place, which I read was erected and established in 1957 by local farmers looking to raise a few extra bucks after a flood wiped out their crops earlier that summer. It was still town owned to this day.

“I’m actually ready to order,” I told her. “Just some white toast, some scrabbled eggs, and some sausage. And a coffee please.”

As she filled my cup, she offered sugar and cream, and cringed while I declined both options. “Takes away the coffee flavor,” I smiled.

“And makes your breath smell wonderful,” she winked. She had a charm about her I couldn’t place. The accent made her appeal raise a couple notches, as she leaned about three feet away, looking over her tip money. She smiled a lot, I thought, for someone stuck in a place where another house couldn’t be seen for a few miles. She turned to me, and positioned her elbows in my direction on the counter, palms to her chin, and we chatted seamlessly in between the few customers coming and going.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” She asked, as the cook placed my order on the window connecting the kitchen from the bar.

I laughed, and told her I wasn’t. I told her that I had just graduated college, and I was driving across the country for no reason whatsoever, just to “see what I can.”

“You’d be amazed (making the word three syllables) that I could probably tell you the names of all the regulars,” she laughed. She was probably about 20, pretty, too, with pigtails accentuated with tiny blue ribbons at the end. I was impressed, and charmed when she lit a match to counter my increasing propensity for a smoke with my coffee.

“Oh, I’m Jenny,” she said rolling her eyes, mocking. “And I’ll be your server today.”

Her nametag said “Alice” but she mentioned that it was her mother’s name. She had forgotten her name tag this morning.

“I was trying to refrain from the Brady Bunch jokes,” I said, quickly realizing the corniness of my joke, and my eagerness to keep the conversation going.

“I’ve been here since 6am and I’ve heard that twice, and of course people have made the ‘wow, Alice, you look a lot younger today’ jokes too,” she countered without a beat, secretly stealing a drag from my cigarette, since the last of the customers had walked out.

I told her where I was coming from, and that for a while there, I thought I was lost. I had stopped seeing signs for Chicago about an hour ago. “I was getting worried,” I said. “and on top of that I was hungry.”

“Sometimes being lost can be a blessing.” It seemed like she was flirting. “It helps you make sense of why you’re going exactly where you are.

“Sorry, I’m taking a philosophy class at the junior college around here,” she added quickly, sensing my raised eyebrows at her sudden disposition of psychologist.

The cook leaned over the open hole in the wall with my eggs and sausage, which my new friend handed to me. I laughed because there is nothing funnier, in an immature way, than making fun of someone for ordering sausages because of their phallic appearance. Today, however, I had no one but myself to make fun of my order.

She disappeared for a few minutes and I ate alone, contemplating how this casual experience with someone would agree with my theory that these solemn encounters are what life is made of: meeting people you will never see again in places you may never return to. There are so many different people with their own interesting stories and backgrounds, who enjoy life just as much as anyone else, regardless of where they live or what they do. I knew Jenny and I would never meet or talk ever again, but in our time as “single-serving” friends, I hoped that she would at least smile at the end of the day, as I would, at good company early that Indiana afternoon.

She came pouncing through the kitchen door.

“It’s on the house,” she confidently whispered as I started to pull my wallet out of my pocket. I tried to argue, but she was pretty adamant about not letting me pay the $4.62 I owed.

“You’re a stranger; you’ll never be back here. Besides, your eggs were watery anyway,” she sincerely smiled. “Please, good luck with everything.”

As I reached into my pocket for tip money, I told her that I was a writer, and that perhaps should she look for her name in the acknowledgement section in my first book. “You know, for that ‘lost’ quote that I might steal one day.”

I casually put a $10 bill on the table out of her sight then started for the door.

“Hey,” she sounded. “Don’t think about the tip before you even look at the menu.”

“Good advice,” I said, turning back to her, understanding the analogy.

“Philosophy,” she shrugged.