The Last JoyRide

Foreword

"Life's the same. I'm moving in Stereo.

Life's the same except for my shoes.

Life's the same. You're shakin' like tremolo.

Life's the same. It's all inside you."

Moving in Stereo

The Cars

FRIDAY 7:40 AM

If you ask any guy my age what he thinks about when he hears that song, he will probably answer with Phoebe Cates. More specifically, Phoebe Cates and coming out of a sparkling blue swimming pool, peeling off her red bikini top, and walking right toward us. Such was our attraction to this girl that we sat through numerous movies, mostly bad, with talent-less male leads. Can someone cue Willie Aames! Even the occasional gremlin wasn't enough of a deterrent to catching another glimpse of those full red lips and long dark eyelashes. She was our girl, and long after our foolish attempts to order pizza in our history class failed, we remembered her fondly, untouched, unspoiled, and forever thinking we were so cute.

The thumping bass line of that song started the whole thought process. It was a warm spring morning, and I had the window down on my drive to work. I was sitting in traffic, tapping to the beat and letting my monkey mind wander, when it occurred to me the sound wasn't even coming from my radio.

A quick look around yielded the culprit. It was a Jeep painted Kermit the Frog green, windows down, sunroof open, music blaring. An excellent way to start the workday. It was in the next lane, but two cars ahead of me. I couldn't see the driver.

Finally, we moved but only briefly. The litany of traffic lights was arranged and timed to assure maximum fuel consumption and frustration bordering on nihilism. Their lane was slower than mine, and the baseline thumped louder as I pulled alongside and glanced over.

The driver was staring back at me with a slight smile. It was Phoebe Cates.

Hell, no way!

I blinked hard and looked again. I was wrong, but it was a girl, a striking girl with dark eyes and what seemed to be nearly black hair hanging long over her shoulders. Bettie bangs were cut across her forehead.

Traffic eased on, and she ended up behind me before we settled to a stop once more. Whatever happened to Phoebe Cates anyway? Incidentally, I looked her up on the web later that morning. Still pretty, still has an utterly sweet smile. Anyway, I couldn't believe I had even noticed this girl. Something in the universe had shifted.

Like having a cold, flu, stomach bug, or any other sickness, you go through days, maybe weeks of fever, pain, restlessness counteracted by sheer lethargy. At times it feels like there is no way on God's green earth that you will make it. 'And this is how people die,' you think in your lonely solitude. A broken heart feels similar, very similar. But, at a random length of time, you can feel yourself come out of it. It's almost like flicking a light switch. You wake up with no fever, and you are hungry. Finally, a smile comes a little more easily. Healing a broken heart is no different. Your body says to your brain, 'ef you, enough!' One morning you wake up, and the world is a little different. Your wounds have scarred over.

You are going to make it after all! You have changed a little, but it's still too early to tell how whatever you went through will affect you. You can breathe again without fear of panic. You can go about your day and begin putting your life back in good working order.

That's precisely the position I found myself in that warm June morning. It was going to be a pretty day. Springtime is always so lovely in the South. Nearly the weekend, and for the first time in a while, I could feel the coming delineation between work and not. Time was beginning to assume a normal rhythm. Oh, I hadn't forgotten about her. I just wasn't ready to think or say her name just yet.

My Landcruiser idled comfortably, then suddenly the slug of traffic moved, and we were off again. I had been chancing glances in my rear-view mirror at this girl. She was cool. She didn't move, didn't flinch, just stared straight ahead as if in deep thought. She kept the pace of the Cruiser almost exactly.

Funny, the Landcruiser had been the one near-constant in my life for years. In my downtime, I had taken to restoring it a little. I fixed a dent here, new glass there, carpet, then lost my marbles, removed the geriatricly slow automatic transmission, and installed a five-speed. Working on the Cruiser was something to do that kept me busy and did not involve crowds or other people. I learned and did everything myself, and it brought me comfort and a sense of accomplishment whenever I made it better.

As thoughts of Phoebe Cates kept drifting in and out of my mind alongside me pulled Bettie in her Jeep. The song was still hammering away. I chanced another look. She caught me, but no smile. No middle finger either, so at least there was that.

The light changed, and she sped quickly ahead of me. She was going nowhere, though. She was fast but not quite fast enough. The Jeep was trapped fifty or so yards up the road by yet another light. I pulled up behind this time.

When the light changed, I followed a little too close, then made a quick shift to third and passed on the left, which is a lot considering that Cruiser is a tractor. I never looked over as I passed, then once ahead of the group of cars keeping her behind, I pulled back over in front before the next light. I lost sight of her, then, not giving it another thought, started forward when the next light turned green.

I was temporarily distracted by the blathering of a sportscaster on the radio with a big obnoxious mouth and a penchant for using big thesaurus words to describe situations of infinitesimal importance. It is what sportscasters do, and always at maximum volume. When running the board, I had to babysit the VU meters every time one of the sportscasters was on. They were all the same, with no sense of an inside voice. I searched for stations as setting the presets on the radio only crossed my mind when I was nowhere near the car.

Peripherally a flash of bright green appeared beside me, then darted ahead a car length but settled back to match my speed. As I once again pulled alongside, I could hear the roaring of the Jeep's engine in an effort to stay ahead of me.

What? Games? Are you kidding me?

I couldn't imagine anyone in their right mind racing my ugly, gray Landcruiser, but there was no way in hell I was going to be left in the dust by this Bettie in her froggy Jeep.

I smiled at her as we approached the freeway and then floored my trusty tractor. A foolish thing, sure, but I was feeling better, remember? I did it and got good and ahead of her until a semi pulled out of a gas station just before the on-ramp to the freeway. The girl was still behind me and gaining fast, but she was in my lane, the only turning lane, so I would reach the on-ramp before her at my now snail's pace, thereby winning the childish little challenge.

"Ha!" I said in self-satisfaction, but she did not reduce her speed as she approached. In an instant, she was on my rear bumper, then beside me. Then, with a competitive blast from her horn, she sped ahead of the semi and me and cut back onto the freeway ramp. I saw her tear up the ramp and merge quickly left into the traffic flow. Then she was gone.

Steadily but quite frustrated, I followed the lumbering semi up the same on-ramp until I too could merge with the speeding traffic. From what I saw of her, I thought she was most definitely pretty but dangerous, and how could I respect a girl who drove like that?

'Wow,' I thought as I eased down the crowded freeway with the other morning commuters, 'how could I not?'