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Friday night in early March. You say: “Let’s go have breakfast
in Nebraska and drive back. Let’s go right now.”
All right. I’m ready to go anytime.
But I can’t leave without certain things like a blanket, pillows,
a pair of warm socks and my toothbrush. Of course, you think I’m
being ridiculous, especially about the toothbrush. Carrying the pillows
and the blanket you tease me, asking if there is anything else in the
apartment that we need to bring. I take the unique collection of cassettes
from your high school days and we leave town just after midnight.
By the time we get to Iowa the whole
idea seems pretty pathetic, especially since we’re driving right
into a snowstorm. Snowflakes dance in a dizzying twirl, reflected by the
bright carlights. It’s amazing how there simply isn’t anything
right or left of the highway but snow on a vast, flat ground.
We make it to Nebraska by around 5:30
in the morning and you ask the guy at the gas station if he knows of a
breakfast joint nearby. He points to the other side of the street to a
place called “Karousel”. It is shaped like an octagon with one
of those children’s carousel horses in front of each window. All
the furniture is in a bright blue, yellow or orange except for the dark
brown finish on the tables.
We have bacon, eggs and hashbrowns and
some very bad coffee. I wonder what would happen to us if all the other
guests could hear what we say about them. You remind me not to stare at
the two old ladies. The color of their cigarette smoke matches their big
hairdos. Everything is really quiet as I wonder if the two Domino’s
Pizza employees are stuffing their faces with burgers and fries before
or after they go to work.
When
it comes to pay the bill, I hand them my credit card. This causes anxiety
behind the register. “I haven’t done this in a while...”
says the waitress, her hair in a peculiar tone of blonde. Probably the
result of a cheap hair dye and the bacon grease she’s working in.
She calls the chef to show her how to use the credit card slider and apologizes.
The chef is very quiet. You can tell
that he doesn’t like leaving the kitchen. His right hand is replaced
by a metallic hook. The kind I remember seeing in pirate movies from my
childhood. He holds the machine in place with the hook and slides the
card with his left hand. I sign the receipt, separate the white from the
yellow paper slip and leave him with the original.
We get back to Minneapolis by noon and
I sleep for four hours straight. No dreams, no nightmares. I wake up and
the Karousel seems like a scene from a late night road movies that you
watch half asleep. Everything is a blur.
Wherever I was last night - it feels
like I left all my worries out there. I sit down at my desk to start working
again, feeling
very relaxed and calm. I search my bag for my sketchbook and wonder why
your toothpaste is in there.
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