ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
SELECTIONS FROM
DRIVEWAYS, FIVE RIDES:
THE EXIT AND ANY QUESTIONS?
by Reamy Jansen

The Exit

She's not expecting him to slip his hand into her blouse right then, not just now, even though it's their second date and she'd loosened that top button and then another, on leaving the diner, just as she was getting into the car, hers, because he'd lost both license and car because of a DUI and maybe he noted the greater opening, that promising bit of a curve, a slight swell, but she didn't expect this right then, whizzing up the highway and it was already awkward because it was now up to her to pick a spot, if she was going to, if at all, and so she'd suggested Bear Mountain, liking the joke name it had after you got your license, Bare Mountain, but his hand was cold, you'd think he could have sat on it a while, just warm it up a bit and it shocks her now, the cold, she can feel herself shrinking, pulling in, holding her breath, and she's no longer sure about doing it, doing anything, or even being with him again, not that she's desperate, and he is somehow drunk and that one carefully poured Bud Light must have landed right on top of a full tank, topping off a quart or two of colorless, malt liquor because he was now groping and she remembered now, back in the restaurant, the dirty nails on his right hand, and she glanced away from them and pretended to be paying attention to the old postcards of the highway, the exits north, in a frame, so he wouldn't notice that she'd noticed, but when he came back from peeing she noticed he might be beyond noticing and she noticed again that those dirty gray arcs were still under the uncut nails of his middle and index fingers and even though she'd worn a dress (and of course he hadn't done anything to himself at all, except for a new tee-shirt--Black Sabbath, no real surprise there--and a gold chain with his initial) and she wasn't going to let him touch her there, no way, not with those hands, except here was that hand no longer touching, but groping, grabbing, now hurting, and he must have been really rocked and her trying to push the hand away and now she half-missed the turn-off at exit 14 and hasn't had time, because of his fucking hand, time to even think of slowing down, so she brakes a little too hard and the little sedan bumps over the curb and rolls and he's shrieking, the baby, like a little girl and the car rolls again onto its side, the driver's, it's shooting and sliding over the grass and now going through reed grass, the kind her dad pointed out when they went hiking, and now here it was, coming up like a fist, and she kind of figured with this thing, well, it was all over, this big, smooth rock, one looking nicely curved and soft, like a couch or the back seat of her dad's car when he took her and her friends to the multiplex in Goshen to see The Little Mermaid, and she now lets out her breath, and he hardly ever goes there any more, to the hard rock to put flowers on it, removing the wilted things was just too much for him, and then there are the cars shuddering by and making him feel so exposed to the wind and traffic and now he really doesn't ever have to go because he'd found the spot in a photo on the highway's website, on the home page the fall colors of a postcard both bright and dull, the rich gray road north, and the exit curving east, making a Y like the top of a woman's blouse, like his wife's when she'd get dressed for dinner, and there in the picture were the reeds, phragmites communis, which were now everywhere and there it was, behind them, the rock, and he would sit endlessly at night before the screen and look at the exit, Exit 14_______________, and every ten minutes the screen saver would come back on with the picture of the two of them hugging after her sophomore recital and then he'd hit the space bar or "enter" and then the exit, her exit, would come back on.

Any Questions?

Sooner or later someone was going to ask, and so he does (no woman would, likely wouldn't understand)....you ever think of, want to, been tempted to?...the question getting off the ground for a while, the one he knows I want him to ask and so he's asking, not that he doesn't want to know, too, of course. You mean plow headlong into a big rock? Like that scary dark Nevelson coming up on the right, or the Caponigro "Rock Wall #5" farther up? How can I say, yes, but somehow not think, well, yes, you're right. And how can you ask me this question you knew I wanted you to ask and now I have to answer and would have answered even if you hadn't asked, and I guess the answer's, yes, every once in a while, yes, yes, I sometimes want to, why do you think I'm writing this stuff? Still, I don't think I'd choose a rock, I'd just feel too much like a crash test dummy. I'd go for the shock of pines in the middle, tall and arrowy, still in their youth. And I guess I'd first have to steal a car, a Tahoe or an Explorer and go out in a blaze, or crunch, of irony. Better yet, though, would be a van and, yes, I'd want to wear a seat belt, it would be a van with some sort of writing, maybe a Korean church van with those great block ideograms, the middle one saying "temple" or maybe a Dunkin' Donuts, but not Sal's Plumbing, the tools, wrenches and pipes--hard, heavy, unforgiving metals--getting me before the wheel did, and any van, of course, I'd have to clean out, not wanting to be conked by the Psalms or the Gospels or the Good News Bible, and I'd even have to clean out the donuts--double chocolate, munchkins, jelly, worst of all, cream filled. I don't want those things flying around, making comic spatters on the windshield. And don't think I wouldn't do it, although there'd be all that space, then, and maybe friends and family might climb in when my back was turned just while I was setting down the last bit of stuff and, of course, of course, of course, the boys would be there, too, just a sudden glimpse in the rearview mirror breaking my heart before the steering post.