Gray
I’m leaning against the side of my car in a parking lot in Omaha, Nebraska, and I’m watching a girl. White smoke curls around the open hood of her station wagon, and I can only make out a skinny leg and a faded, gray tennis shoe.
The sun bakes on the blacktop between us and I swear the ground is so hot it has a pulse. I’ve been outside an entire thirty seconds and my forehead is already drenched in sweat. I can feel it beading on my neck and sliding down my back like a tiny fingertip tracing my spine. It’s the kind of humid heat that touches everything, even the thickest spots of shade, and it’s too heavy and stubborn for a gust of wind to blow.
She takes one step back and I notice a baggy blue skirt stick to her knees in the stagnant air. The rest of her body is lost inside a white cloud. I slowly walk towards her to see if she needs help.
She tries to wave the blanket of smoke out of her face with a long, skinny arm, as wiry as a tree limb. She takes another step back and her face comes into view. I freeze. I melt.
Oh. My. God. It couldn’t be.
I stare at her like she’s haunting me. Maybe I’m hallucinating. What is Dylan doing in Omaha, Nebraska of all places? She coughs and takes another step back and manages to smear engine grease across the side of her face. There’s no doubt that it’s her. She’s the same, all six feet of her long, lanky body. The only difference is her hair is cut short, tied back in two, messy pigtails that barely graze the top of her shoulders.
She glances around the parking lot, her eyes passing over me at first and then they focus and then they hold and expand to twice their normal size. Her mouth falls open like she’s staring at an apparition. I wonder if I am, if I’m dreaming up this entire scenario. Maybe I fell asleep at the wheel. Maybe any second I’ll collide head-on with an eighteen-wheel semi truck. I would almost prefer that nightmare to this reality.
I spent the last year trying to purge every memory of Dylan from my mind. It was a Dylan Detox. I listened to Anna Begins, by Counting Crows, and let the melancholy verses nurse me back to emotional health. It’s nice to know somebody out there understands. Music can save you from yourself. It’s like a friend whispering, Hey, it’s alright. I’ve been there. I got through it and so will you. It’s my self-prescribed medication for post relationship therapy. I convinced myself those song lyrics carried into my own life, my own situation with Dylan, and it all was starting to make sense. It helped me to move on.
But Anna doesn’t come back at the end of that song. She doesn’t suddenly reappear at a road stop in Middle America and say ‘Hey, remember me?’
What do I do now? Adam Duritz, where are your song lyrics for this prophetic situation?
I used to hope that one day I would run into Dylan again, but Hope can be a dangerous demon disguised as an angel. Hope works alongside Fate and Luck and Timing, and they’re all co-founders of the conspiracy group I like to call Team Asshole.
We both stand there, facing each other like we’re
statues glued to the asphalt parking lot. I hear car engines moan to life and tires peel away and I wonder if I died and went to hell. What do you do when you run into the ex-love-of-your-life? Say hello? Hug? Shake hands? Run for your life? I’m afraid to open my mouth. I might scream.
Dylan smiles, this elated, glowing smile as if our chance meeting should be serenaded with a marching band and fireworks.
“Gray? What are you doing here?” she asks me, as if I’m the one that’s out of place in this picture. Her voice knocks me back to reality and I have to take a side step or I’ll fall over. It’s amazing how just the sound of a voice can make your entire stomach cramp and your head spin and your heart convulse in one simultaneous jerk.
“I played ball out here this summer,” I say, a little roughly.
“Oh,” she says and nods. “Was it a summer sports camp?”
I almost laugh at her question. “Summer sports camp? Otherwise known as minor league baseball,” I clarify for her. Her knowledge of sports is up there with my knowledge of cosmetics. I cross my arms over my chest, displaying the muscles that I’ve worked on building for the last three years, as if to back up my statement.
“What are you doing here?” I demand.
For a tiny, split second I get the crazy feeling Dylan followed me here because she desperately missed me. She showed up to surprise me at a roadway oasis to confess she can’t live without me, that if she graphed all the happiest times in her life, all of her peaks exist because of me. Her indifferent shrug dismisses this idea.
“I was on the highway until Orson decided to crap out,” she explains and points to the open hood. I walk up to her latest beater-mobile. Where did she get this car, a junkyard? The station wagon looks like the one my grandparents used to drive that we called the ‘grocery-getter,’ complete with wood paneling along the sides. I stop a few feet away from Dylan, careful to give us some distance. The engine is still steaming.