Part 5 - 5 Hours Before
“I dressed you in her clothes, now drive me far... away... I don't care where, just drive.” Deftones, Be Quiet And Drive
Although I’d thought about it on more than one occasion, I’d never before actually had the courage (or the horsepower) to hurtle down the Interstate at speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour. The trees were a blurry mass as they whipped past us. Several cars honked loudly as the captain of our vessel, Katherine, weaved in and around and between every single vehicle which impeded our progression. My adrenaline was flowing and my blood was boiling and I was sweating profusely despite the below-freezing winds which rushed into the cabin of my car.
I had never before felt so alive.
I turned to face Katherine, who’s unnaturally bright red hair was flying chaotically across her face. She raised a casual hand to her face and flipped away bands of the red ribbons of her hair, revealing sparkling eyes and a maniacal grin which, oddly, matched the one I wore on my face. Biting her bottom lip, she returned her face forward, clutched, dropped into fourth gear and romped on the accelerator, pushing the needle well past the 100 miles per hour mark. Fear crept into every crevice of my brain and sent my heart rate into the triple digits.
I loved it.
The sky was quilted with rows of pillowy gray clouds that followed us south, barely managing to keep up. They moved at speeds which nearly matched ours and mocked us to go faster – and so we did. The sun hid behind them and highlighted each row slightly at the seams where they met, which made each individual band look as if it were lined in silver.
I, uh… I really don’t know shit about clouds.
The winter dogmatically refused to give sway to the approaching spring, teasing evilly by disappearing for a week or so before Katherine’s arrival only to return with a vengeance the moment she landed. And we couldn’t care less. In stark defiance of the unplanned cold spell that had situated itself across Georgia, we rolled down the windows and removed our coats. Thousands of icy needles stung my skin as the unseasonably icy air rushed through the opened windows of my brand new car. Sure, I had to close my eyes to keep them from freezing and grit my teeth to keep them from chattering so hard it cracked the enamel – but oh, the rush!
We had long since left civilization and entered the realms of Middle Georgia, a vast expanse of cows and pasture and… well, not much else. Signposts and fences streaked past us in one gigantic blur as the mile markers counted higher and higher, the whirring and beeping of some guy named Moby’s music blasting from the stereo system. I’d never heard the guy before, and really, it wasn’t NORMALLY the kind of thing I’d listen to… But Katherine was a huge fan, and she put the CD in hoping to share his brilliance with me. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the drummer’s name was Casio or Sony – but hey, who was I to judge? This entire experience was all about sharing new experiences together, right? Besides, I was really starting to kind of get into this Moby guy. And while it took a little effort, I’d also found my way clear to get into Bauhaus and Dead Can Dance as well. One thing I was beginning to notice – for a punk rock girl, she sure was into a lot of… Well… Let’s just say eclectic material.
Things were proceeding along just fine down mundane lane, when suddenly, she drew her breath in sharply and her eyes opened wide. I saw her mouth open and close as it said something – but what, I could not tell. I reached for the volume and turned it down, and asked her to repeat what she just said.
“DUDE! It’s an outlet mall!” She said again, this time pointing ahead and to the right of us.
“Oh, cool!” I responded as I turned to face her. “This is a truly remarkable twist of fate! Deals galore await us, my dear! Shall we?”
“Oh, we SHALL!” she replied enthusiastically as she swerved across four lanes of traffic to make the exit in time. Immediately, I knew that the very first shop we would visit would be someplace that sold fresh, clean underwear.
The outlet center was a mass of capitalistic bliss. Should you have money and occasion to wish to spend it, this was certainly THE place to do so. There was literally one of every single retailer amassed into a conglomeration of irregular merchandising splendor. A slightly scratched DVD player with Dolby Surround Sound and progressive-line scanning could be had for only $100 at the Sony Outlet Store. Gap Jeans with a seam sewn just a little strangely or missing a button were plentiful and could be had cheaply. And if you were in need of lightbulbs that may or may not work, you could play the Lightbulb Lottery at the Phillips Lighting Outlet Store. There were bookstores, there were kitchen appliance centers – this was truly heaven to anyone with a paycheck and a need to acquire goods.
We parked the car, clasped hands, and skipped to the very beginning of the literally mile-long row of storefronts. The very first place that grabbed our attention was the “CD’s and MORE” store, situated in an alley between buildings. We rushed in exitedly and began browsing the thousands of “clipped case” CDs. The shop had forewent any pretense of sorting the music by genre, choosing only to put them in loose alphabetical order. We found it funny that Jeff Buckley fell under “J” and The Smiths fell under “T”, but the real killer was our mandatory tribute to the Dead Milkmen. We asked the geriatric sales clerk for Mojo Nixon. The clerk replied, and I'm NOT kidding, "I, uh… Nope, I don’t think he works here." We nearly fell through the floor laughing.
“HEY!” I said, pointing with the hand that wasn’t carrying a frozen yogurt treat. “There’s a Nike Outlet Store! Let’s go in there!” She smiled and nodded and within seconds, we were trotting diagonally across the lot and toward the home of awesome Nike deals. We entered the store and were immediately instructed to leave, as it is the custom of all Nike Outlet Stores to refuse admittance to any persons carrying food items. I attempted to explain to the middle-aged woman who couldn’t find a better second job that frozen yogurt was actually a
treat, nearly devoid of nutritional value and as such, it hardly qualified as a food item. She answered with a stern look and an extended index finger pointing toward the door. We pouted, exited, and stood shivering in the thirty degree air as we finished the remainder of our frozen faux food.
With sticky hands, we fingerprinted the glass of the door windows as we opened the doors to enter once more. We were met with a glare from the unhappy employee that let us know that she did not appreciate our causing her another two minutes of work when she attempted to close this evening. We returned her glare with a shrug that let her know that we didn’t really give a fuck. We split up for a little while, browsing our gender-appropriate sections of the store in search of great deals on irregular sportswear. As someone with an unnatural affinity for footwear, I browsed the rows of shoes looking for the latest addition to my collection of over thirty pairs of sneakers. I “Ho’ed” and “Hummed” as my eyes scanned over basic white and simple black models of shoes which didn’t really impress me too much. But then…
“OH MY GOD!” I exclaimed as my eyes rested upon a pair of ACG "Freestyle Walking" shoes (shoes designed to pull off tricks while walking. Stupid? Yes. Cool? Even more yes.). They had a huge metal plate embedded in the arch of the shoe. Holding my breath in reverence, I reached forth and picked up the display model, carefully examining every vent, every eyelet and every strap of Velcro on this godly mid-high. The Michigan yellow-and-blue piping blended perfectly with the kakhi outsole, and the support straps around the Achilles tendon matched only the solid steel plate in the arch in terms of coolarity.
Immediately I closed my gaping mouth and scanned the boxes in the immediate proximity, hoping beyond hope that this store would, somehow, have a… YES!!! A size thirteen!!!! With all the patience of a six year old on Christmas morning, I tore into the box and removed the left shoe. I laced it with a practiced dexterity and had it on my foot in under a minute. I paced the aisle to ensure that the fit wasn’t absolutely horrific, and it wasn’t! No immediate pains, no abnormal pressure points. In fact, the fit was quite, well… fitting. And the price? Originally $120.00, marked down to an astounding FIFTY BUCKS. You know what that means?
It means these shoes were
MINE.
I set to lacing up the second shoe and placed my old sneakers (and by old, I mean about three weeks worn) into the box. With a giant grin on my face, I trotted the aisles of the store in search of Katherine to show her my absolutely fantastic find. Almost like opposite poles of a magnet, we met in the center of the store. On her face was a giant grin nearly identical to mine. I looked down at her feet, which were clad in the women’s version of my new shoes.
Oh, glorious fate.
With not a word spoken, I paid the clerk for both pairs of shoes and we rushed out the door, excited to take on the world in our brand new kicks. As we marched up the sidewalk, I spied with my little eye a stairway just beyond the storefronts. Along either side of this stairway was a handrail – a beautiful, shiny steel handrail that was approximately the same width as the gutter in the arches of my brand new shoes. It immediately struck me as the best idea in the world to get a running start and hop upon this rail in a dazzling display of my immense agility, putting my brand new "Freestyle Walking" shoes to the test. I released Katherine’s hand and began trotting toward the rail. Somewhere in the distance I heard “Wait! Don’t –“ as I leapt into the air and planted firmly both of my feet atop the rail. Reality set in almost immediately as I realized that the only thing immense about me was my physical size, which lent itself toward helping gravity better do its job.
I came crashing to the Earth like a Russian space station. My face slammed hard against the frozen concrete. The sensations glided smoothly from icy to burning hot, alternating with each pump of my heart. I struggled to reconcile within me exactly what the hell had just happened. I could see grass atop a grey concrete retaining wall and cars in a parking lot just ahead of me. I rolled over slowly and faced the sky. The first thing that struck me was that the clouds I remembered being pillowy and highlighted at the edges had blended together into a solid sheet of grey. Into my field of view came a bright red head of hair, followed by a mouth cupped with a delicate hand to shield the laughter that was involuntarily pouring forth from it.
“Are… Are you okay?” Katherine struggled to say between giggles. I shook my head from side to side in order to clear the cobwebs. She took this as a negative response. “Oh my God, you’re not, are you!” Her mood went from giddy to somber. “Do you want me to call a doctor or someone?”
“No, no…” I said with a shaky voice. “No, I’m fine, I think… I just – OWWWW!” I yelped as I touched a gooey spot on my cheek. “FUCK. That hurts!”
“It doesn’t look too good,” She replied, placing her fists on her hips. “Why the HELL did you do that?”
“I… I dunno,” I replied, quoting the answer I give over 90% of the time I’m asked that question. “I thought it’d be fun, I think.”
“You weren’t trying to impress me, were you?” She asked sternly, standing over me and frowning.
“NO!” I answered a little too quickly. “I… uh… I figured that, since I’d bought them, I might as well try them out, you know?”
“You aren’t going to make ME do that since you paid for mine, are you?”
“Of course not,” I answered. She stared back at me for a second, then shook her head and smiled slightly. “What?” I asked in response to the strange look she was giving me.
“Nothing,” She answered, expecting to be asked again. I didn’t disappoint her.
“What’s that look for?” I begged.
“It’s just that… Well… You kinda DID impress me,” She said. “But only a little.”
“Enough to maybe get a kiss?” I asked, being unusually forward.
“Hmm…” She replied. She kneeled down and brought her lips very close to mine. “I guess so,” She said as she planted one on me.
Just then, I felt tiny flakes of cold on my burning cheek. We separated slowly and I looked up. “Holy…” I said in shock.
“That good?”
“No,” I answered. She sneered. “Wait! Not like… Yes. It was good. But that’s not what I was talking about.”
“What ARE you talking about?” She demanded.
“Well, it’s snowing,” I replied.
“Yeah. So what?”
“It’s March,” I stated. “In South Georgia. It’s not supposed to be snowing.”
She shrugged, then extended a hand to help me off the ground. I clasped my hand around hers and she put her full weight into pulling me up. “Well,” she said with a grunt as I leapt up, “Maybe none of this is supposed to be happening, you know?”
“What do you mean?” I said, dusting my sore bottom off.
“Well, I mean, what are the odds, you know?” She replied. “Of us meeting, of us getting together? It’s all strange, it’s all odd.” She grabbed me around the waist and looked up at me sweetly. “So just shut up and
go with it.”
I looked into her eyes and immediately realized that she was right. With abandon, I bent down and kissed her softly as the snow continued to defy the odds and fall scattered among us.
Special Thanks to Ben Jones, who kept my loopy mind straight with a timely search on Google.
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