The Drive (part 2)

Outside of a small town in the Midwest she came upon a collection of recitals by Martha Argerich. The Van Cliburn had somehow decreased her driving time significantly, it began almost imperceptibly then quickly came to dominate her mood. Most days she had only spent three hours on the road, she found herself wanting to be distracted, intrigued by the least significant details. At one diner the mugs they used were like any you would see in a thrift store, but here, in this context, she was utterly riveted by the collection. She would look at the tables of old-timers in overalls and faded blue jeans, gathered around their mugs from county fairs, local banks and fads from bygone eras and felt at last she was part of some intrinsic collective, a bloodline both indisputable and unifying. By this point she had been out for seven or nine days, time was merging and re-configuring in mysterious enticing new ways, and perhaps something within her was loosening, in both positive and less clearly helpful ways. She had stayed on two nights in one small university town (she already passed through several), they had an old single room movie theater and that weekend they were screening Sunset Boulevard. She watched it both Friday and Saturday night, marveling at the luring enticements of madness as portrayed by Gloria Swanson, it was like madness as a transvestite, reveling and delighting in the tropes of the genre. She almost stayed for the Sunday afternoon matinee, but knew she had to keep moving along or else she might find other reasons to remain in the town. She had developed a soft expanding crush on a barista at the downtown cafe she spent her afternoons, the young woman was intelligent and bright and optimistic about everything, she talked rapidly and jumped from subject to subject. She would watch the barista coyly while pretending to read a collection of essays by Sontag, listening to her talk with co-workers and all the regulars she knew by name. She could feel a slight addiction coming over her towards this barista and needed to continue journeying forward, this was why she had taken this trip. And this is when she discovered the Argerich. Somehow the very first notes broke an enchantment she had not been fully conscious of existing and growing within her, one that had kept her revolving around the smaller, more constrictive and short-sighted aspects of her being. She shook herself and let out a short unexpected laugh, thankful for this moment of returning unto herself. Now she could see the horizon again, her vision felt suddenly playful, freer, without a certain burden of her past. She could head south as a newer woman, some version of herself she had yet to explore. Maybe even the Van Cliburn would sound different.