I'VE GOT YOU BABE

         I think I’m ahead of rush hour traffic. It was only four o'clock as I passed through the Bergen County tollbooth. If I remember my distances, it is only thirty miles to the exit for the Turnpike. I am not getting off there, but it can't be more than another five miles to the rest area on the other side of the bridge where I will meet Pam. From there I will follow her to her new home.

         Brake lights ahead, traffic is slowing. We're coming to a stop. Oh God, look at the backup ahead. Here comes a beige/gold Nissan down the on-ramp. Could it be Pam? I see the driver now, it's not. First gear, plod; second gear, plod a little faster; third and we are doing thirty and now we are stopping again. My phone!

         "Hi, where are you?"
         "Coming into the last toll booth before the bridge."
         "I just passed '155'; traffic is horrible up here."
         "It's bad all over; I'll see you when you get there."

         Forty-five minutes later I pull into Cheesequake Rest Stop. Someday I will find out where it got its name. For now my face lights up when I see Pam standing in the sunlight next to her car, in her sleeveless top and jeans. Her hair is up on her head. Up or brushed out, she looks great.

         I find a parking spot and get out. Pam asks if I have to use the facility. I was smart enough to empty my bladder at the rest area above the traffic jam. Now I want to walk off the pain I feel in my left thigh just above the knee. An hour of constant pushing in and letting out the clutch has done in my appendage. I hobble off and return shortly. She waits for me to back out and then pulls out in front of me. In a flash we are back on the Garden State Parkway for the journey to her little bit of paradise.

         I promised recently not to write about traveling to see Pam again, but here I am doing it. As my daughter would have said, "So sue me." At least I didn’t say 'Read my lips' when I made the vow. I've made a discovery: it's hard to find a subject when the proverbial bluebird makes an appearance in the writer's life. Give a man a modicum of happiness and all reason to set down his thought flies out the window. Why he even thinks it's okay to shift into the third person. The point-of-view police will surely arrest him, though he'll challenge them in court. So he’ll U-turn back to the vertical pronoun to keep the Pecksniff posse happy.

         Note that I’m not unleashing a anti-Jersey Jeremiad on my reader about the traffic, or the new electronic signs on the Parkway that told me to "Click it or get a ticket" in reference to seat belts, instead of flashing "Get off now while you can; Ten mile backup ahead." I wait until the restaurant where we ply the other with our bitchies. We understand we each need a sounding board, just as we need someone to hear our triumphs. In front of each other or on the phone, our conversations turn into feeding frenzies of stories, complaints, doubts and plans.

         Pam is now renting in an adult community. I expect to see new garden apartments and townhouses with minimal landscaping. Instead once inside the gate, I find winding streets with tall trees. She has been here less than a week, but I can tell she loves it and wants me to like it too. I do; I'd like to buy one, or buy one together with Pam, not so much to live in but to be there when we want to be together. We both want to keep my house in the country where I sit and write this. "Don't ever sell that house, I love going there to get away," she says. We’re feeling our way along, two survivors in their mid-to-late fifties.

         We both hit the lottery once. Now we think we’ve won it again. It was a real thrill ride the first time with so many ups and downs. We can’t expect the same good times of the past from this new friendship. We were younger then and had different needs, but what we have is the second chance to dodge the mistakes and make our own memories. We carry our past insecurities into our friendship, and we talk about them. We are at the stage of “being there for each other,” as Pam puts it. I would add the new cliché ‘24/7’ to her words, but that is assumed. We like where we are.

         As writers we met and as writers we continue. She reads my work and emails: “I loved it.” I read hers and correct her spelling and tense and sometimes make suggestions that she accepts, or retorts, “Who’s writing this blankety-blank thing?” I don’t blame her. She is a medieval minstrel, spinning tales from her past and telling new ones about the present.

         That first evening in her new place, we both realize that push is coming to shove when it comes to our comedy routine to be given at our Stories.com convention in Baltimore. We know we will be lip-synching a Sonny & Cher song, but there is dialogue to write. Pam the jongleur, though she doesn’t know it, sets down our hazy ideas in patter that will bring down the house. It is one time that spelling and tense do not matter. I sit and marvel, watching her write, her tongue clicking on her teeth. Of course, maybe my opinion is wrong. We might be pelted with tomatoes and eggs, but as Pam says, WE are in it together

         As for my writing, she knows that I wing it as I go along. I start with a fact or incident and get lost in the byways of my mind. The reader wonders if he will be returned safely, but I have yet to lose anyone. Today’s monologue is different. I am not blowing smoke; I am writing unadulterated truth. Getting it down on paper is the best way to feed the bluebird and resume my trip through life as a writer, with my friend along for the ride and taking the wheel when needed. Like Desi and Lucy, we’ve pulled that long, long trailer up the mountain, and now are starting down again, and without brakes. Here, Pam, you drive!

Valatie August 1, 2002