Asphalt Summer | Alexander T. Damle

Based on a true story.

            It’s a Saturday or maybe it’s a Tuesday and I’m just coming up to club lights, color of spring leaves lit from behind with fast food sign looking out over the freeway. My body is clung to by a thousand strands of electricity, hot cocoa against a snowstorm, mom telling you it’s going to be okay, and the strands twirl my body in time to the music, beautiful tingling synth-angelsongs. I grasp for the hand of another so that I may hold something warm and I find her.

            Against the darkness so that we may never die, so that the lights may never go out, so that the music may never stop, so that we may never find ourselves in chains, I was coming up and now I’m up. I’m seven years old watching seagulls play at the surf, eating cotton candy in the sun by the sea with my parents three weeks before my dad and I move away from LA and I never see the ocean again. I twirl my body, hair flies up around me, about my face, blonde, wheat fields across the heartland, dress like Marilyn’s, and then his hand finds mine.

            She pulls me in close and I smell perfume and sweat, summer pine, my uncle’s cologne, fresh baked cookies, and in the smell I’m set free. I lean in to her and our faces almost touch and at once we see each other, and in her eyes I see my Zelda, my Courtney, my June Carter, my passion in a place without passion, in a time when we’ve let love die to move ever faster, in approach of an imaginary zenith, an impossible, wonderful floating dance towards an end to a beginning that we just can’t let end. Six months ago, I dropped out of college, six hours ago, my parents discovered the deception.

            His eyes reflect pink club lights, sparkle like limousine windows, paparazzi flash bulbs, pulling through Paris, pushing ninety, brick wall, ending and from the ending is birthed legend. Through the sweat and cotton of his shirt I feel his body and it is no longer of flesh, no longer of this existence, this limited, closed minded, shut off echo chamber, a different life and different path, something beautiful and grander, pushing towards a brighter tomorrow. Trailer trash shit hole meth head mommy, she left us behind, he should’ve been the next Hawks, so now I’m here and in the night I push and in the day it’s “Thank you sir/madam, what denomination would you like, you fucking recycled air, cheap cut suit, cubicle nightmare cocksuckers,” but between the two I pay the bills that’s what matters.

           

            The music tugs upwards, aiming to grab a hold of my soul, at the drugs, the dopamine pull, the kick, and in the moment even the dry mouth, dilated eyes, locked jaw, it’s all beauty in the face of a particular nothing, then duh duh duh duh duh a piano chord pushes up, speeds up slightly, “just a small town girl...” and the entire club screams up in ecstasy, an affected meaning for a song that spells nothing but a certain kind of TV ending for Tony Soprano. All the bodies begin to move faster, a greater strength, more beautiful for the group that we are become, then “Strangers... waiting...” and I lean in and I kiss her, the moment legion, endless, indestructive in the swell of guitar chords, voice pulling out a second into a life, a love that can never die until then we become...

            We and we shall never be again as separate, even if we don’t yet know it. The kiss lasts even as all else we let fall dead. Outside, the smoking area, we finally meet with words.

            “Jason.”

            “Lana.”

            And that’s all we need, for in the lights and drugs our minds make themselves up, fish for a lure, virgin for a whore, killer for the dead. In our mind we see it all happen, swinging forward, pendulum of a clock back and forth, watching a child grow, crawling then walking then yelling then drinking then fucking then leaving, all in the moment we see the pendulum and we become a future in memory of a past that we made Dan to Harvey, John to Ronald, whoever the hell it was to J.R.

            The rest of the night is vodka red bulls and then shots of absinthe then smoke, but we remember the thrusting and yelling, the sweat, the tension and release, that impossible pleasure down there, the two bodies become one, as our minds made already.

            Time becomes as  immortal and as fleeting as the universe’s birth, a swirling palpitation of bed sheets and sex, flesh and warmth, falling away of old shadows, love versus oblivion, fight of the century, Mayweather and Pacquiao, but we all know who wins because fairy tales all end the same even the ones you have to wake up from. We swallow down pills then we sink into the sheets, into each other, something for nothing, love for power, beauty for a lifetime lying awake never sleeping. The flesh against flesh through the early morning light shines with a radiant glow beyond what the city lights at night can ever offer, a divinity without resurrection, a summertime drive by the seaside, wind in our hair, arms all over each other, no pigs to pull us over and put us away and tell us to wake up/go to work/die.

            Somewhere in the haze, maybe a week in, we sit in the sill of my window, looking out at the night time city spread wide below us, gridded network of streets stretched out for a hundred miles up to the toes of the mountains, blinking lights, cars flashing past in the darkness, a million lives saying all together now, and every morning starting the song over from the top of the page. We hold each other and she turns to him and kisses him on his lips and we grab hold of each other and don’t let go for the secret fear that neither will proclaim even to each other, even as we are become one, that if we let go we will lose our grips, that the other will slip out the closed window, lost to the city night, and the survivor will find themselves as they promised again they shall never be, the killer to the newborn babe.

            We hold each other like that for what feels as hours, eyes closed, hearts beating with the synchrony of a pop song, then finally she whispers in his ear, against the black,

            “We should get married,” and he breathes heavy for a time that she shall never feel again until in death.

            “Yes.”

            Once upon a time, in a land shrouded in deep forests, broken only occasionally by castles rising above the treetops like skyscrapers above the sprawl, a hero turned her horse down a long dark road. She rode for months, towards a point imagined as well as realized, a glimpse of chestnut hair, a flash of death’s blue bomber eyes. She rode and rode and yet still she did not find the end. Finally, she broke the forest and was surrounded on all sides by devastation, volcanic rock and smoke and sulphur and then fire, but rising out of all of it was a mountain to rival the castles, a god to challenge the men, a face against the darkness. She pushed her horse till no more it would walk, till the leather of her boots wore through with the force of a million years of river against unchanging stone. And yet still then, the hero had the mountain to climb, but still she did not stop because, if there was nothing at the top, after all our hero had been through, then there would never be anything at all.

            We wake up and we drop and in the middle we just hold each other close and feel the blood pulsing through each others’ veins, find a secret rhythm at which all our hurts lose themselves to seas the color of nightclub lights, a place where all we need is the E and each other, and in that only we are happy, no more medication passed over the counter by old men in white coats, skin as foreskin, vague proclamations at our self destruction, current courses continued, boats not righted against the storm.

            Money is tight, sure, money is always tight. We’ve got his apartment, but only through the end of the year, when his rent is paid out for, and his folks are losing patience, and when that patience is run out, they’ll come for us, and then we’ll really be left only each other.

            One spring morning we’re sitting in his kitchen, windows open to the thirtieth floor, Denver out for the sunshine, big sunglasses, couples hanging onto each other, tree roots to earth, lost artists to some vainglorious past. Roomate.

            “C’mon Jason, man, when you gonna give this shit up?”

            “Give up what?”

            “I don’t know man, not doing anything? You can’t just, like give up on school or whatever. You don’t have any money.”

            “Lana makes money.”

            “How? She quit her job.”

            “I’m right here.”

            “Yeah, you quit your fucking job man.”

            “I’ve got another job.”

            “What, dealing drugs? You ain’t Pablo Escobar, you sell weed to high schoolers.”

            “Dude, it’s none of your business.”

            “Listen, Jason, you can say this is all you all you want, but it ain’t. Your folks are still paying for this place. Hell, they bought the drugs you two haven’t come down from for the past two weeks.“

            “It’s our fucking lives bro.”

            “Whatever. You’re only still here cause’ your folks pay the rent. That’s it. I wish you two would fucking do something.”

            “What, like you’re any better?”

            “Yeah, I’m going to class. I’ll see you two later.” He leaves and we are whole again, his lies forgotten in door’s slam, twisted metal against metal.

            “You know, he kind of has a point.”

            “I know. Don’t worry, I have an idea.” She says it and we kiss and he takes her in the small of his arm, and she puts hers around his neck.

            One night, we find ourselves on top of a building with the entire city spread eagled below us, all the same streets as out our window, now just twice as far off, a garden party, rich people, ten thousand dollar suits and dresses, cut up and pieced back together again in the images of their new owners. We don’t know how we ended up here, all that matters is that we’re here together, pretending to be as them, the walkers, the journeyless, the office drones who found themselves at the top, so much money and not a hint of love, all glassy reflections in shop windows, daytime television picture of what an American is meant to be, advert soundtracks for an age when we all fast forward through the adverts. We see a pretty young woman off to crowd’s edge, building’s edge, tears in her eyes, and when we go to her she tells us she’s alone and we tell her they all are and she just looks around. We leave soon after, not wanting to look over the edge for fear that we will see the bottom, and at the bottom there is only blood.

            The next morning, his dad has left a message on our answering machine, saying that they’re coming today and basically kind of implying that he’s dead as soon as they get here, and then we know it’s time to make our way the fuck out of dodge. We pack what little we have, some clothes, mementos of a time gone by, a stuffed unicorn her dad won for her on some boardwalk cast in rotten wood, in a summertime when the sun still shined bright without a chemical suggestion, a watch his grandfather had worn through the shit coming up in a 50s America where promise was simply a proclamation to try just one iota harder, because on the other end of the long death in an office was a future for your family.

            Out on city’s edge, buildings grown short enough that we can see the desert above and around all, the sand in a desperate battle with the asphalt for dominance of our realm. Old motel, paint chipping, lights of the sign shattered, bored middle aged woman sitting behind reception. We sit in his vintage Trans Am waiting for the text to come through on his phone, contract paid out to the end. A light wind blows, fastfood packaging swirls up between the cars, dust is stirred through the air, the grease and garbage of the 24 hour diner across the road lets its smell be heard all through the air, a part of the place as the ice machine, always out of order, the suburbanites with their adultery.

            Phone vibrates across the car’s dash, plastic hot with the sun, we stare at it but we don’t reach out to take it until it’s buzzed five times and we know if we leave it we’ll have to give this all up, so we answer.

            “Room  17.”

            We get out of the car, and we shelter our eyes against the sun, look to each other for the confidence to walk, and we find it. We see a beat up old Pinto pull into the parking lot, slow down as it drives through, then speed up again and drive out the other side, the driver’s face old and tired and lost.

            We knock on the door to the room and we’re ushered in, the room dark. Dean sits on the bed, overweight, greasy hair, shitty concert t-shirt. We’d make fun of him if it wasn’t for the 1911 resting on his knee.

            “Hey Lana. And you must be Jason.”

            “Yeah. Nice to meet you.”

            “Sure... any friend of Lana’s, as they say. So, Lana, let’s go through this. I front you what amounts to $15000 of coke because you say you can move it for a clean profit in 48 hours.”

            “Yeah?”

“How you going to move that kind of volume that fast?”

“Sister of a friend of a friend. Lot’s of money, not a lot of sense.”
            “The most you’ve ever moved for me at one time is maybe $2500, always with cash up front. Why move to the big time now?”

            “We’re getting married.”

            “You’re getting married? Damn... well, good for you, congratulations. I guess, in that case, here’s what I’ll tell you. Because I like you Lana, and I trust you. 48 hours. I’m not paid back in 48 hours, then I’ll find both of you, and I’ll kill you.”

            “Uh, what the fuck Dean?”

            “Yeah I mean... I mean I probably won’t kill you it’s just... you know I want to make myself clear. I sometimes... But I trust you.”

            “Thanks Dean. We just need enough to get a place, you know?”

            “Yeah, I get you.”

            “So why are we meeting here anyway? What’s wrong with the mall?”

            “Oh, I have other business. This isn’t my room. Look, uh... I mean, this isn’t really my style, but, uh... I mean we’re doing some big business here, so I want to... I guess I want to make a point. And I’m sorry I have to do it, but, I mean... you get it.”

            “Sure Dean, whatever.”

            “Chaz. Bring him out. You know, people think they can take advantage of me, because, you know, I try to be fair, or whatever, try to be nice. But...”

            A kid, and that’s the word, a kid, 16, 17, bright eyes, bushy tail, the whole deal, is dragged out of the bathroom, one eye swollen shut, blood run down his t-shirt, sitting heavy on his jeans, but he’s still moving, thrashing about, threat-of-death-induced epileptic seizure, trying to yell through the duct tape over his lips. Dean gets up from the bed, the motion an effort, takes a Bowie knife out of a sheath on his hip, walks up to the kid, holds the knife out and stares at him.

            Their eyes meet and connect, and it’s a true connection, an honest transmission of thoughts and loves and dreams that’ll never come true, and though the kid can’t speak, he’s begging for his life, for Dean not to do it, and of course we’re begging silently for him too, because the three other assholes in the room, all way more of physical presences than Dean, well they’re telling us we better not open our mouths as silently as we’re begging for the kid’s life. Dean just stares at him for a long time and his eyes look tired, like he wishes he was anywhere but here. Finally, he makes a decision.

            “Fuck this. I can’t do it.” The kid’s entire body slackens with a release of tension, a lease on a life he thought he’d lost. Then Dean hands the knife, hilt first, to one of his guys. “Ray, you do it. C’mon Lana, Jason, let’s go outside... I...” He’s defeated but the kid looks already dead. “Jack, give them the shit.” Another guy hands us a brick, and we step with him out into the light and walk back to our car without another word.

            In the car we head down the highway too fast going the wrong direction and he won’t look at her and she can’t look at him, instead they just stare out at the vast open country, the cars rolling by, a thousand faces we’ll never know. Cacti and across the desert gallops Wyatt Earp and Jesse James and Pat Garrett and then they all vanish as suddenly as they appeared, forgotten.

            “We need to go the other way. Stacey lives back towards the city. In the morning, her friend’s sister will come by, we’ll clear $25000, pay Dean back his fifteen, then we can get married and we’ll be fine.” He pulls the car off at a lonely exit ramp, a road leading to a town that isn’t there anymore, ghosts of the American frontier, and pulls back onto the highway, heading north.

            At Stacey’s that night we go quickly to the office that Stacey has laid an air mattress out in, stash the brick under some clothes, then go out into the living room, plan on telling her we’re going to take an early night, but then she says she’s got people coming over. We think about turning her down, just going to bed, but we’ve been down for a couple days now, and if we know anything, we know we need to get back up. Depression is hard, we all know that, but it’s harder when you’ve tasted something better, and, when you can have that something again, why not take it?

            People start to flood the little apartment, a slow trickle at first, but as the drug is taking its hold on us the entire place begins to heave with people, sweat and body heat, drugs and booze and ten grams of pure crystal uncut pleasure, the day’s glimpse of ultraviolence forgotten in the patchy half light of a night never ending, and the music ebbs and flows in amongst us, chords sinking in between bodies, then it all blurs and fizzles out in a cloud of bright lights and we wake up the next morning to harsh sunlight, clinging to each other on the floor of the apartment, harsh pounding on the front door, and our first thought is cops, but we see out the window it’s just our buyer.

We look around the apartment, dozens of other people all asleep, some together, some alone, some naked, some clothed, in the madness we see a bit of light, and we stumble together into the office, and then we know that we are done. As bad as the living room was, this is ten times worse, booze splashed everywhere, needles lying on the floor, our clothes tossed everywhere, the brick gone. We yell and we scream and we get everyone we can wake up to help us look, but it’s still gone and we know it isn’t coming back.

We get in the car and again we can’t even look at each other, ashamed of our mistake, terrified of Dean, Dean of all people, Dean who she’s known since high school, who she kissed behind the gym when they both skipped an assembly to smoke freshman year, Dean, the only drug dealer in the world to bake his street level guys cookies for their birthdays, make them ornaments for Christmas, Dean, the Mr. Rogers of the drug community, the one who you could always trust to buy from, because you knew his own sense of twisted decency would keep him from spiking your shit.

“We need to get out of here.”

            “Here where?”

            “I don’t know. Fucking Colorado, the USA if we can. This whole country has us cursed.”

            “We’re not cursed, or at least not totally. We stick together, and we’ll make it.” And then we look at each other and like that we are one again. We decide to go to her dad’s place, some trailer park halfway between Denver and nowhere, hide out there. The man’s love of Russian made assault weapons with potentially illegal modifications suggest that it might just be the one place in the world where we can be both safe, and together, at least for a time.

            On the drive south, we pass through a town that’s falling apart, not just empty storefronts, but empty lots. On a wall standing free of any structure someone has graffitied the words “GOD BLESS AMERICA” in big black letters and we watch it as we drive past. She digs into her pocket and pulls out two pills.

            “This is the last of it.” Then he leans over and kisses her and we each take one.

            At the edge of the town, we see a huge dollar store, still open, a few rusty old cars sat on new asphalt in the parking lot, and we stop, go inside, browse about, separately, mostly, get something to eat, to drink, to finish out our drive south, and as we check out we see the deep lines cut into the face of the checkout clerk, hear the five packs a day trailing on the edge of her voice, and she doesn’t see us standing just in front of her eyes.

            Outside, the drugs just starting to dig into us, to take clawing hold of our basic perceptions, he fetches something out of the bag and puts it in her hand.

            “I never got you a ring.” She looks in her palm at a cheap piece of Chinese plastic, dark black, a little silver skull in its center, and she kisses him on the lips.

Somewhere near the southern border of Colorado, we pull up to an old, but, quite clearly, lovingly maintained airstream trailer, parked in the middle of a big trailer park, cactuses and sand and not even the sad attempts at grass that usually build places like this, kids playing in the dirt, running down the roads, freedom of summer for them but not for us. We knock on the door.

Inside we hear the springs of a couch creak, footsteps, a faucet running, footsteps, then the door opens, and a big man, strong, muscles showing clearly under a tattered wife beater, but still his frame looking over-strained, like all those muscles are too much for his bones to support, looks out at us, and a moment of realization passes through him and he embraces us both in a big bear hug, and those bones feel a new spike of life.

His place is as we expected, old bottles, trash, accumulated filth and grime, back alleys, abandoned buildings, big hearted people left alone by life’s collected circumstances and the casual injustices of fate. He shows us the couch and we say we’re alright on the floor, the couch held together now only by sweat stains, smell of whiskey and vomit.

He asks us how things are between us, and we tell him we’re getting married and his eyes, permanently faded, glimmer with a secret, quiet light, midnight tryst, I guess he figured she’d never make it, not after everything between him and mom, love gone at a young age, hard to get back, past receding ever into hazy afterglow of rockets arking against an early morning sky. Then we tell him we’re in some trouble, real asshole, and her voice trembles a little as she says it, and that we need to leave, but we want to get married first, and he says he’ll put something together, get some people, talk to the priest, a kid, hardly older than us, but he saw a problem and had the audacity to think he could fix it.

You wonder about something like that, a priest at 23, whether he ever loved, whether you can really know the love of God without knowing the true, absolute love of another human. Maybe, though, that’s the only way to truly believe in an all loving God. Love is about the broken, and God, by definition, can’t be broken.

We stick around his for a few days, lying low, keeping quiet, heads down, the whole B-movie rundown of excuses for not facing up to your past fuck-ups, while her dad puts together a post-modern shotgun wedding that, given the socio-political makeup of the surrounding community, is sure to have its fair share of literal shotguns as well. The guest list is built up and down of folks neither of us really know, distant uncles of hers, a few, but mostly just locals, happy to come out with the offer of a few free bottles of booze her dad scraped together from between the sofa cushions.

            The day of the wedding is a neat whiskey turns on the rocks sort of hot day, suit jackets, what few make it to the day’s proceedings, immediately cast aside in favor of loosened ties and half unbuttoned shirts, sundresses two inches too short for a wedding. One of her uncles has a big revolver on his hip, and the sweat forms in deep pockets around it, mid-aged belly fat, reeking outline, shade of death, vague threat of frontier justice across a closed frontier.

            We were expecting the back of someone’s double-wide mobile home, but her dad really came through on the venue, a proper chapel, old white wood, hand-made construction. The place has to be at least a hundred years old, and in its slightness, its charming delicacy, it truly feels a place of love. Somewhere special, to be remembered even as time’s sands sift slowly away at the paint.

            Even though the guests in attendance don’t number more than twenty, in the little chapel everything feels crowded and slightly claustrophobic. Everyone is drenched in sweat, and a half dozen of the men stand at the periphery, not bothering to find seats. In the front row is her dad and two uncles. He thinks with slight sadness at the absence of his parents from the affair, but he knows they would never approve of her, of a place like this.

            He stands at the front of the chapel with the young priest, and he watches her walk in, her father at her side. She wears a beautiful white dress, and he doesn’t know where she could have found it, but it suits her. It lacks the fragility of the standard wedding dress, instead it possesses the same strength that embodies her, a blunt refusal of the terms of its creation. It belonged to her mother, before she left. He wears an old white tuxedo, lent to him by a neighbor of her father. It doesn’t exactly fit, and the slight smell of mold suggests it hasn’t been worn in decades, but the imagery of the day matters, even as tattered as it is.

            The priest’s speech is oddly traditional, entrenched in the marriage tropes of an earlier time, more noble circumstances. He speaks slowly, with an accent a little too deep-south for southern Colorado, another call-back to an older world.

            We think on a future together, a period of running, of unsettlement, of shifting and moving and fighting and trying, but we know we’ll make it through, if only because we have no other opportunity in the face of our abandonment of the “rules.” And we think of being together from this moment ever onwards.

            Then our revery, and the priest, is cut off by the doors at the back of the chapel opening. Dean walks in, two very angry looking men by his side. The uncle with the gun rests his hand anxiously on the butt.

            “Sorry about this, folks, but I... I’m going to have to cut this off here.”

            “Dean, what the fuck are you doing?”

            “I... I warned you. I can’t just let you guys walk away, it wouldn’t... it wouldn’t look good.”

            “What are you going to do? Shoot me? Shoot us?”

            “Well...”

            “Because you don’t have any other way to do this. We’re getting married, then we’re leaving, and we don’t have your fucking money.”

            “I’m sorry, but I just can’t let that stand. I let you get away with this, then everyone will think they can.”

            “Dean, you’ve been in love with me since high school. You’re not going to kill me on my wedding day.”

            “Yeah, I’ve been in love with you. I’ve been in love with you, and you should’ve ended up with me... not this hipster motherfucker.” Hands begin to move for guns, but the moment is broken further when three more people come through the front door.

            “Who the fuck are you?” One of Dean’s men snarls out as his hand is inside his beat up motorcycle jacket.

            “I’m James Spayde, PI, and this is Mr. and Mrs. McManners, Jason’s folks.”

            “And what do you want?”

            “Our son. And the money he took.”

            “I didn’t take your money. Look where I’m standing right now, and ask yourself if that makes sense. Sorry mom and dad, but I got here on my own.”

            “Oh yeah, after you lived in the apartment we paid for for two years, getting drunk and high on the money we gave you for food and books. Son, I love you, but you’re an asshole.” Dean loses what little patience he’s ever had.

            “All of you need to shut the fuck up.” Then he draws his 1911 and the uncle his revolver and the detective a Glock and Dean’s men a Sig and a Beretta, and everyone has guns pointed at everyone, Spaghetti Western Mexican standoff, cold, hard looks, civilians screaming and diving for the ground, brows furrowed, beads of sweat eyes unblinking. “Now that we’re all on the same page, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. Spayde, you’re going to put your gun away. Same with you, you inbred motherfucker,” (he gestures to her uncle) “and I’m going to leave her with what’s owed to me. I won’t kill them here, not now, not in a church. But I’m going to make sure they get what they deserve for taking advantage of me.”

“I’m sorry son, but I can’t let that happen.” The detective has the sand of an ex-soldier.

“There’s one of you. Two, if you count the shaking hillbilly with the hand cannon.”

We turn to the priest and whisper

“Finish it,” and looking like he’s just seen the face of his god, he sputters out

“I now pronounce you man and wife” as conditions in the gallery are heading fast towards a scene out of any of a half dozen movies.

“Look son, I really don’t want to shoot you, but I will.”

“That makes two of us.”

That’s when we decide we best get going, before blood coats sticky the floor and everyone's ears are ringing, figuring that we’ll be the next target of whoever comes out alive. She thinks of her father, but then she remembers the man by her side and she does not falter. He sees his parents, but then he recalls how they scorn his love. We cling to each other, the last leaves on a tree as the first big flakes of winter start to fall on cold earth.

A back door and she kicks it open as we hear from behind us

“FUCK YOU!” identity of speaker indistinguishable, break and gas pedal in the moment of half-second from impact adrenaline.

We get through the door, into the hot sunshine and we see the sun, blue sky, emerald grass, with new eyes, life when it should’ve took itself from us, a feeling made all the stronger by the ominous crack of gunfire from within, screams, already deafening, now breaking through a certain respected standard, death cries now, beyond declarations of simple fear, the knowing realization of final approach, landing lights snow white night, destination: the void.

In front of the little chapel is his Trans Am, and never before has the burning leather of a car left standing in the heat of a Colorado July felt such a perfect relief. We drive like the devil himself is behind us till we reach the freeway, until we know we’re safe. She leans his head on her shoulder, and he feels her warmth. The future is hidden to us, sands of time, smoke of gunfire, haze of drugs, but one fact of it remains through all the great obfuscation. He hits power on the radio, and as soon as we hear the Boss’s scratched out voice, a smile crosses our faces, the perfect irony, but then we hear the song - “Everything dies baby that’s a fact...” and a black cat crosses in front of the car, too close to swerve to miss, but then “But maybe everything that dies someday comes back” and the smiles return to our faces. It’s not Born to Run, but that would be just too clean, too perfect, too fairy tale, just like all the lovers we aspire to never were.

So we drive on down the hot asphalt, the dry heat of the summer all around us as we hit the New Mexico border, and he kisses her on the top of her head.

“You think we’ll make it?

“No, no one does, but we can try.”