We'd been on the road for nearly two weeks.
Elle and I.
Not long, in terms of how long I dreamed to be aimless, wandering, learning, discovering. This country. This world. This person.
I had always had my eyes and heart set firmly on the sunset. A life built around the goodbye. The end credits. The smile, nod, kiss, warmth. At this point, though I had sacrificed more than I cared to admit, though I had seen my close and dear friends for possibly the last time in our lives, this was not the curtain call. This was not 'to be continued'. Not yet.
Elle and I were in bed, in air conditioning, in a motel room in Charleston, South Carolina. I had a terrible sunburn from the day before and our tire had blown out earlier in the day. The day before a forest had made clear it wanted to be alone and we left it alone. The south, in august, was not our best move, strategically. We were sat in bed, in a motel room, in air conditioning, drinking PBR and had been in a pool shortly before.
Night, well after pool closing though the night manager had told us he'd leave the pool open because he had had enough of this day and we had also and we thanked him, and found ourselves in the pool, staring at the stars and planes from the nearby airport and the palm trees and air and I said to Elle; "We could say we are in Los Angeles right now. It looks the same."
She nodded and agreed.
"But, we'll be there soon enough. A year maybe. I'd like to be there in a year. There are things I want to do there."
"Oh yeah?" she asked. "Like what?" Elle was sat on the stairs in the pool, in the water up to her waist and after such a long, trying, and hot day, she was beautiful and it was easy to forget the nails of the day, the stress of the moments, the sunburns, burst tires, and warning owls when I looked at her. It was hard to be angry when I was near her.
"I don't know. I want to feel California. All of the Californias."
"Californias?"
"Yeah," I dipped under the water and floated a bit, staring at the bottom of the pool through a pair of goggles I had found earlier and kept imagining myself as Fran Kranz on the poster for that movie I liked. "I want to audition for commercials in L.A., for one."
"Have you ever auditioned for anything before?"
"Nope. I just want to do it. I want to be in a hallway with thirty people all dressed the same. Muttering the same words over and over, in chorus but also static. I think it'd be a really surreal moment."
She drank from her PBR and smiled. "I think you could do really well."
"I think it'd be fun. But, also, the other Californias. Like... Mid-California. I don't know, work a weed farm, or something. Live in the forest and hunt Sasquatch."
She nodded and rolled her eyes playfully. I swam closer to her and laid my head on her thigh. "I could go be a sasquatch. Live in the woods and hunt apples."
"Do they like apples?"
"Yes."
"You'd be a good sasquatch, then." she stroked my hair and a plane careened to the south above us and I thought it was the most beautiful moment in my life in well over a year and I kissed her thigh and swam out.
"You could be my sasquatch squaw. My Sasquaw," I said.
"Oh, like queen of the sasquatches?"
I spit a small fountain of water. "Yep."
She put her hands on her hips and with a regal sense looked to the sky. "Do you think the other sasquatch would respect me?"
"Sasquatches, or sasquatch?"
"Sasquatch, like moose."
"Oh. Then yes."
"I'll find the reddest, most delicious, plump apples, and deliver them swiftly and bountifully through the kingdom."
I smiled at her. She continued her daydream gaze to the sky and I smiled at her.
I dipped again below the water and thought it was the most beautiful moment in my life in well over a year.
I smiled under the water.
I smiled and felt good.
