We're driving down a deserted stretch of Highway 50, a piss-stop southwest of Salt Lake, in the empty hours between midnight and dawn.

There is no quieter place, no greater solitude, than being alone in a car, plunging through the night.  The hum of the motor is the wash of your blood, pulsing with each heartbeat.  The glow of the dash, each dial, each light, is your own body checking in, the tingle of nerve, the murmur of the senses.  The occasional flicker of oncoming lights, the intermittent presence of other drivers, only seems to emphasize how alone you are.  The diminishment, the negation of self that occurs while gazing at a star-filled sky.

The man behind the wheel makes a sound.  A sigh, or perhaps a yawn.  It's a small sound, a human sound, and I doubt he even notices.  But I notice.  The invisible presence that rides alongside, watching the road, feeling his thoughts wash over me.  Does he sense me here?  Know that I can read those thoughts, those emotions?  Apparently not.  Like every driver on the road, he too has his blind spot.

But me, I can see it all.  Feel it all.  The pain, the confusion, of their first real fight, almost a week ago.  Weathering her anger, feeling his own, that sick rush of joy as they took turns lashing out, slicing into each other, tearing apart the fragile little apparatus of trust they'd spent months cobbling together.  Doors slamming.  Her leaving.  Him leaving too.  Calling into work, jumping into the car a half-hour later, no clothes, no destination, just go.  Old Black Flag pumping out the speakers, needle spiking red, almost hoping some CHP would pull him over, toss him in jail, punish yourself, punish the bitch, it was all one and the same.

Then the gradual slide off adrenalin hill.  The formulation of a plan.  He'd owed Mitch a visit since his move up to Mormonville.  And antclear was still holed up somewhere outside Salt Lake.  Kill two birds with your one stone.  Maybe kill yourself in the process. 

The man behind the wheel makes a sound.  A sigh, or perhaps a laugh.

Because that's the thing about anger.  You just can't keep it up.  By the time he'd hit Ely, that righteous ire was gone, leached out by all those empty draws and tilting telephone poles.  And the stuff that was left?  Guilt, resentment, doubt.  Like the monkey's ass in last night's bottle, you couldn't get high off that.  So instead you wind up replaying the words, reliving those last few hours.  And like it or not, are left with an unavoidable conclusion.  She'd been right all along.  You are a flaming asshole.

Not that Mitch would cop to the fact.  They were old work buds, level C clearance, and candor had never been part of the service clause.  But antclear was a different bird.  Sensing his mood, she'd cracked open the Cuervo, and they'd started trading shots.  By the time the bottle was empty, it was all laid out like one of her Tarot readings.  His mother, his father, their fucked-up lives, and the fucked-up child they'd raised.  Of course he'd managed to screw up the one good thing he'd stumbled across in life.  What else did he expect.

The man behind the wheel makes a sound.  A sigh, definitely a sigh.

Right before they'd that bottle was dead, she'd pulled out a photograph.  Antclear, much younger, snuggled up to some guy, torn sweatshirt and Neal Cassady grin.  That's Walt, she said, her voice slightly slurred.  My one, my only, my never.  Then she set the photo down.  Stared him straight in the eye.  Once, just once, I'd like to see someone I know, someone I love, get it right.  Just to prove it can happen.

So now the road spools backwards.  Going home, not going away.  As near as he could figure, there were only three possible permutations.  Live your life with the wrong person, don't live your life with the right one, or go ahead, try the impossible, try to actually make things work.

This time it's a yawn.  No doubt about it.  With it I can feel how tired he is, how low the batteries have run.  The long drive up, Mitch and his herb, antclear and her Cuervo, and now another eleven hours behind the wheel.  He could've taken another day, or at least a few more hours of detox, but no, he was desperate, as desperate to get back as he had been to leave in the first place.

I wish I could spell him.  Take the helm while he nods off in the back.  But I am a ghost, a specter.  When he yawns again, I lean over, scream at the top of my lungs into his right ear.  He doesn't even blink.  

As long as the road keeps throwing out curves, it gives him some kind of focus.  But soon we hit a long, straight stretch, and I feel the stupor set in.  His lids start to waver.  His head starts to slump.  There is a moment when the car begins to drift, to cross over into the next lane, and then there's a quick burst of what sounds like machine gun fire as tires connect with bott's dots.  He snaps back awake.  Jerks the wheels back into line.

And me, I just sit there.  Watching.  Waiting.  I figure the way his heart just spiked, the shock of this near mishap, will keep him going for a while.  And then what?  There are two or three hours until daybreak, two or three more hours of pitch black sky and tunnel vision, the hypnotic pulse of the broken white line, lulling the brain to sleep.  And that's when I finally get it.  His brain.  My brain.  They're linked somehow.  Maybe he can't see me, hear me, but that doesn't mean I can't reach out to him on some level.

When you want to go to sleep, you count sheep.  So if you want to stay awake, do you go with wolves instead?  I try them, just to see.  I try biplanes locked in a dogfight, a chorus line of Rockettes kicking their heels, some guy with a goatee playing hepped-up bongos, then throw in a whole Cuban conjunto just for good measure.  I try every nerve-wracking, anxiety-provoking, stay-awake thought I've ever been tortured with, the ones that visit at three am, and take your soul at gunpoint, and when you finally check the clock, hours later, it's to discover that it's only 3:01.

For a while it seems to work.  His eyes stay open.  The car stays under control.  But the mind is a tricky thing.  Try forcing it do any one thing, think happy thoughts, think wide-awake thoughts, and it wants to do the exact opposite.  And it's not just my mind that's the problem.  Back home, back in the so-called real world, my body is sound asleep, dreaming all this.  So really I've got two foes, two palookas working me over.  The strung-out, sleep-deprived, hung-over guy sitting next to me, and the guy who's tucked away all nice and cozy in bed, reminding me how tired he is, how much he loves his zzz's.

Two against one.  Just the thought of it makes me sleepy.

Then I'm back in the car, back on the road, and my eyes are barely open.  Or wait.  It's not a road, not a strip of asphalt racing by at seventy-five miles an hour, it's a picture of a road, a film we're both watching.  And it's not a car, it's a room, a safe, warm room where we get to kick back, him and me, and watch the movie play out.  Or if we get tired, if we doze off for a while, hey, it's no big deal, we'll just hit rewind, finish it off some other night.  Maybe even watch it with Claire.

Claire.  

The black ribbon, the white line, all of it fades.  We're staring instead at her face, the face that chased him onto this road, the face that's calling him home.  The face that will stare back at him someday from within an old photo.  Will she be standing right next to him, studying that same photo, smiling at how young they look, how alive?  Or will he be alone?  Contemplating a memory.  Remembering that road, the road he didn't take.

The road.  Our eyes snap open at the very same instant.  Watch as the line starts to veer away, only it's not the line, it's the car.  The car that's leaving the ribbon behind.  That's seeing if it can fly.  And it can.  Fly. 

There's a wonderful, glorious moment.  We're airborne.  We're free.  And only one tiny, nagging thought still tethers us to the earth.

What happens when we land?