Mix Tape

Things start to unravel once they leave San Francisco. 

“Do you have the right map?” 

“Of course, I have the right map.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I have the right map?” Dave finds himself falling into the pit, knowing it’s not about the map.  It’s never about the map. He’s explaining to Raymond, all the times he has been a competent co-pilot, always with the thoughtfully selected mix tape, and snacks, always there to light the cigarette, always there with the map, the right map. Didn’t Dave get them through the White Mountains in that rain storm when Raymond freaked out? What about the Catskills? It doesn’t matter, he knows it doesn’t matter, but he’ll keep flailing for a while longer, all through Carmel and Monterrey. He doesn’t even see the crazy cypress trees he’d read about in the Planet Out  guide. Red cliffs jut out over the Pacific, the highway clings precariously close to the edge, but he doesn’t notice these things, either. All he knows is that the windows of the rental are hermetically sealed, and the AC is cranking, and Air Supply is All Out of Love, and he is flailing, again. It’s all he can do to breathe. 

Raymond says, finally, both hands gripping the wheel and his eyes peering through his red-framed glasses at the winding ribbon of road, “It would really be different, if you could drive.” This is the bit of shrapnel he lobs, to end it. Their fights are now predictable. Raymond always has the last word. 

Dave stops talking. He blinks in the bright glare that bounces through the windshield. He doesn’t drive, it’s true. There’s nothing much he can say to that. He also doesn’t dance, or know how to properly cook a brisket, he can’t tie a tie, and his sense of style is on record for being childishly atrocious. He is not reliable. In so many ways, it is obvious he is a disappointment to Raymond. 

The plan is to head leisurely down to L.A. They have four days before they fly back East. Less than 20 miles into the trip, they are both silent. But the sun is, at last, making an appearance. Dave changes the cassette in the player. Patsy Cline. “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

The vacation has been a failure. San Fran was a ghost town. AIDs had taken its toll; its specter was everywhere. Castro, where bars and bathhouses once thumped with activity and non-stop Disco, was a yawning stretch of video stores and coffee shops. Haight-Ashbury? All straight yuppies now. And, it rained for three days. 

“This place is like a very long funeral,” Raymond huffed as they climbed one of the famous hills. 

They dutifully followed the itinerary: breakfasts in the 50’s-style diner, Coit tower, Golden Gate. They rode the trolley, ate expensive seafood on the wharf. At the top of the Mark, they watched the evening fog descend. But, each night, their enormous bed back in the hotel was like an ocean liner adrift, and they each kept to their own side.

 Yesterday morning, when Dave had come back after grabbing a paper from the lobby, Raymond was talking on the room phone. He was laughing, something Dave hadn’t heard in some time. He hung up when Dave came in.  

"Who was that?"

"My racquetball buddy, Bill. We set up a court time for next week. What’s in the news?” 

“Ivan Lendl beat McEnroe at the French Open. Who’s Bill?”

“I just told you. Is that what you’re wearing? What is that?”

“What? This? My Mighty Mouse T-shirt. My favorite. Who’s Bill?”

“It looks ridiculous.”

“Since when do you play racquetball?’

Raymond studied the pattern of the rug, which he was still doing when the phone rang.  Its shrillness punctured the bristling quiet between them. He snatched the receiver. “Yes? Long Distance? Collect? Yes, I’ll take the charges, thank you…Oh hey, what?... Yeah, we must’ve got disconnected…” Then he took the phone into the bathroom and closed the door. 

*****

 A few weeks before, back in Boston, they fought over milk.

 But it wasn’t about milk. It’s never about milk:

That day, Davewas sitting with his coffee at the window, watching a stunted tree just beginning to bud green. He heard bare feet pad the wood floors. He heard in the next room, the kitchen cabinet open as Raymond grabbed a clean mug. He listened as the coffee was being poured, and the glass carafe, still half full, was put back carefully into the Braun. The silverware drawer jangled, then the fridge door opened.

"Did you forget to get milk?"

.           “Isn't there any in there?" 

"No, David, there isn't any in here."

The fridge was shut. Firmly.

Raymond stepped into the livingroom. His hair was already combed, and his glasses sat primly on his nose. Dave had told him not to get those frames, told him he would look just like Sally Jessy Raphael, which he did, especially as he stood there with hands on hips. "You know I need it for my coffee."

"Drink it black." Dave took a sip from his own cup. "Mmmm. Delicious."

"I put milk on the list when you went shopping. I remember it was the first thing on it. MILK. Right on the top."

"I must have forgotten."

"How do you forget something written on a piece of paper in your hand?"

"Maybe I didn’t see it." He didn’t forget. He’d seen it clear enough. It was right there, at the top of the list, in Raymond’s perfect handwriting: MILK. 

"Well I can't have my coffee without it.”

"Have some OJ," Dave said, "I remembered to get that."

Raymond was not amused. “Fine. I guess I’ll schlep to the store then.”

Neither of them moved. They eyed each other for a beat. It was a dance they both knew, the passive/aggressive Tango. 

"I should go. I forgot it yesterday." Really, Dave needed to get out of the room. He itched for a smoke, he told himself, he needed air. But he wanted to run. 

"Get the Globe, too, while you’re out.”

*****

The map Dave is holding is in fact not the right map. They pull into a tiny hamlet called Buena Vista, where there is a gas station, a phone booth, and two picnic benches overlooking the eponymic view of a sheer drop to the ocean.  

“I’m going to take a leak and get some directions out of here,” Raymond says. “Try not to get into trouble.” He slams the car door in a way that seems unnecessary. 

“No, thanks, I’m all set,” Dave says to the vacant driver’s seat. “I don’t need a drink or anything, I’m good, thank you.”

Silence. Just the continued whirr of the air on full blast, and a girl group singing about a fool’s game.

“Who is Bill?”  Dave pictures someone athletic, someone tall, someone who is not a disappointment in so many ways. Someone completely unlike himself. 

Again, he can’t breathe. Scrambling to get out of the car, he slams the door, good and hard. Fuck you. 

He realizes, as soon as the door of the tan Escort thumps shut, with a stinging flux of panic-- he’s locked out. There are the keys in the ignition. And, there are the doors, autolocked. He tries the handle anyway. No go. Locked out, in the middle of nowhere.

He looks around, helplessly. The heat is beating down. The grass is burnt dry, like straw that would go up with the kiss of a match. It didn’t rain down in Buena Vista for three days straight. From the look of it, it never rains in Buena Vista.

Ideas fire through his brain, all at once:

Run. 

Hide. 

Grab a rock. Break the window. 

And, then, from out of nowhere:

Grow up.

Grow Up.

GROW THE FUCK UP.  

“OK.” Dave says this out loud, with resignation.  His sigh carries on the faintest puff of a sea breeze that stirs the flinty soil in the empty lot. A cloud of dust half-heartedly eddies around his Keds. “OK” –

Now, here comes Raymond. In each hand, something to drink, something cold, two cans that glint in the noonday sun.