Sandbox Installments, #2

The sun crept over the sidewalk, as it soared higher and higher into the sky. Natalie and I sat at the breakfast table, and I was eating a pancake. It was a blueberry pancake, bathed in syrup and shaped like the moon. Natalie was telling me how much she didn't want to give me the pancake. "A pancake? For you? What did you do to deserve a pancake?" I just smile and wipe my face. Then I peer down at the car keys that are dangling from my belt loop. I laugh, because I know she is teasing me, or at least hope that she is teasing me. I know she is, that's just Natalie. The sun continues to blast through the morning, and she takes a drink from a cup of orange juice, taking the sun in.



We get into my car and head out of Santa Cruz. Natalie lives in Berkeley, and I have a meeting to be at in San Francisco. So we think like responsible adults, and decide to take one car and save energy. If I've learned anything though, it's that there is no conservation of energy when hanging out with Nat. That is one reason that I enjoy being with her. The car smells like mildew and toe fungus, but I have no idea why. "Notice, I did not roll down your window. See? I remembered." And I'm glad that she did. My window has been broken for a while, and more often than not, passengers have rolled it down and gotten it stuck. "Thanks," I say. "You rock, rock." I rip off another movie line.

It is a few miles up Highway 17 that things get windy. The sun was up, high up enough to drop a huge meteor onto the surface of the Earth and have it explode like a giant capsule of dust. I was thinking about that, and how dumb Natalie and I would look if a giant had caught the capsule and saved our lives, opened the top of my car with a giant can opener and peered into our faces. What would we have looked like, staring up like a couple of dumbfounded UFO watchers? The music lathers up any silence which surfaces between the two of us, which is rare. "Hey, are you good?" Natalie asks. "Yeah, fine. Why?" I say. "Tripper." She says.

There is a slight rest after she says the "er" in "tripper," and she looks perplexed, as if my outward gaze has dropped her into a stupored frustration. A vine is growing out of her ear. She looks stern, letting out a "keep your mind on the road" kind of vibe, and the vine is emerging slowly, curling like a vein towards the brightest sun-lit spots in my car. It is a desperate survival maneuver, as it continues to slither towards the window, hoping to flower and seed before Natalie discovers it and rips it from out of her head.