Irrepressible Perserverence

"Ready?" you asked, voice muffled as you stretched across the driver's seat.  Even with Bucket's dim interior light on, I could barely make out your face but I know the sound of your smiles; I could hear the tug of your lips even through that one word and I couldn't stop my answering smile even if I'd wanted to.

"Alright, Merlin," I said, half-laughing, as I rested my hip on the cooling hood of my - our - car.  "Show me the magic."

Your laugh grew from a muffled chuckle into a warm crescendo as the car went completely quiet and, as my eyes adjusted to the sudden desert darkness, I heard you slither back out, heard the car door slam shut and, as I squinted in the inky blackness, heard the crunch of your sneakers on the sandy dirt beneath our feet.

I laughed, suddenly, when you walked right into me; it hadn't been deliberate and it was a delight, that sudden press of you against me, our personal bubbles bending enough to encompass both of us.  Now, when you laughed, I felt it vibrate through my hip and shoulder and my response wasn't verbal or physical - you couldn't see it.  That flip of the heart, that stuttering, that never failed to happen when you were around.

A hand on my hip urged me away from the car and despite the knowledge that there might be coyotes or snakes or even just a hole to fall and break a leg in, I couldn't help but follow your lead.  We don't go far; when we stopped, you slipped behind me, hands on my hips with finger tips slipping just so under the hem of my sleep rumpled t-shirt.

"Lean back."  Murmured like that into my ear, why would I not do exactly that?  Back against your chest, head against your shoulder, I know what you want me to do - I stared up.

Up, up and up.  Into the never-ending dark as ink night sky; I looked up as the millions of diamond like stars stared curiously back down at us.  I felt tears well up as I tried to soak in the universes that existed just out of reach - so close and yet so far away.  The tears couldn't fall, though, not as I felt our breathing fall into a familiar pattern as you started to move us, as we danced to the music that forever existed in your head, with the stars as the only witness.

For a moment, I had a weird sensation of falling up and wondered what it would be like to drown in a sea of stars; but you grounded me to the desert floor, to this weird and stupid life we attempted to wade through.


(Remember these?)

"Can you see up ahead?" I asked, again, hands hanging limp and loose on the steering wheel and legs stretched out to either side of the pedals.  We were in no danger of drifting as we had been stuck in the same spot for the last forty-five minutes.

He was only half in the car with me - a foot pressed against the dashboard for support, a hip hitched over the open window.  I couldn't see the rest of him but I knew him well enough to know that he would be resting his chin on forearms crossed over each other.  He could sleep anywhere and I worried that he would slip off from his tenuous perch, half asleep and unawares.

Shifting let me know that the danger of head wounds, broken hips and bruised egos had passed.  "Still nothing," he said as fingers that expertly played piano tapped out a tinny rhythm on the roof of the car.  "Nothing but brake lights.  Kind of pretty, though..."

I hated to admit it but he was right.  We were in the desert and night had fallen an hour or so before hand.  Brake lights, harsh and red, and the stars, cool and white, were the only illumination for miles around us.

We city folk - so inured to inexplicable traffic delays that a congestion that could have been set down by God himself had not phased us - were enthralled.  Amazed, enamored, frightened of the primal feelings it stirred.

He had grinned, wondering at what our ancestors would have thought.  'Of what?'  'Of how we scoff at the fear - it's there for a reason.'

The speed at which he fully rejoined me in the car had me wondering if he'd managed to insult gravity.  It was a graceless, but at the same time oddly graceful, movement that resulted in his shirt being rucked up.

Never able to resist, I placed my right hand on his skin, fingers splayed, to feel the warmth, the life, of this man in my car.  Laughing, he grabbed it and brought my hand up to his mouth, kissing the knuckles chastely.

A grin, then, with teeth white in the dark, before he playfully bit.  I yelped and smacked at him as I pretended the pain to be more than it was.  He snatched at my hand and I let him, as I always do, retake it within his larger one.

"Cars are moving," he informed me, buckling up.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah - they're being directed to go off the road and around."

My heart did an odd beat in my chest.  The car had been my father’s until he had to give up driving for good.  In a fit of goodwill that had been his trademark, he had simply given us the car.  To me, it was a precious thing, a legacy, but even my love of the car could not transform it from the slight wreck that it was.

"Off-roading?" I asked, aghast.  "In Bucket?"

However, how could I have resisted when he leaned over, lips against the shell of my ear, and said, "Come on, even Bucket deserves an adventure"?

I didn't even try.

After all, I would like to think that my father would have approved.