Glacier With Her Name Carved In It
Stolen from Jeff Harrell because it was necessary.
“Because I don’t give my phone number to strange men,” she said, fire in her eyes.
That was the answer. I don’t have to tell you the question. We’ve all been there. We’ve all heard this story a million times before. But I’m going to go back and tell you how it started, because context matters, man. Context is important.
Context is what’s going to keep me from looking like a complete jackass when you learn how this all turned out.
Rebecca isn’t one of those sexy names. It’s hard to say “Rebecca” in a flirty way. You can’t really imagine yourself crying out “Rebecca!” in the heat of … well, whatever. Rebecca’s not a sexy name.
But God. She made up for it.
She had this smile. I don’t know how to describe it. There are all these clichés. A smile that lit up the room. Smiling from ear to ear. Blah blah blah. It’s all nonsense. Just empty words.
Rebecca’s smile is indescribable. Literally. It cannot be described. You have to see it to understand it. It’s like … when she smiles, pure joy just surges out of her eyes and hits you full in the face, like being sprayed with a riot-control firehose wielded by puppies and kittens. And that’s just the side-effect. That’s just what it feels like to be in the room when she does it.
When she turns that smile on you, full blast …
It’s like seeing the face of God.
The first time she ever smiled at me, I wanted to call in sick the next day. I wanted to call in sick and get on a plane and fly to Tibet or wherever the hell it is and climb Mt. Everest. And when I got to the top, I wanted to carve her name into the glacier where it would exist for all eternity.
Do they even have glaciers on top of Mt. Everest? I don’t know. Whatever. I wanted to name a river after her. Or plant a flag with her picture on it on Mars. Or discover some new species of glorious bird and name it after her.
It took about three seconds for me to decide that I would do anything in the world for her. I’d cross an ocean, found a republic, raise up an army, anything at all.
I was nine years old.
We were in the fourth grade. Rebecca was a transfer student from out of state. We were halfway through our unit on fractions when there was a knock at the door. The assistant principal — somebody I knew all too well after that little incident in the cafeteria the previous fall — opened the door and led her in.
You know that scene in the movies where everything goes into slow motion and some cheesy 80s love song plays on the soundtrack? It’s supposed to be a joke, but I swear to God, that’s exactly what it was like. I got dizzy. The room spun. “Class,” Mrs. Emerson said, “this is Rebecca … Rebecca … Rebecca.”
She was shy. God, she was shy. I could just see it, the way she kept her eyes on her shoes the whole time. The way she clutched her Bionic Woman Trapper Keeper to her chest as if she was trying to hide behind it. The way a lock of honey-brown hair came loose from her barrette and fell in front of her face and she didn’t brush it out of the way.
There were a lot of empty seats in our classroom. Our school was built in the 50s, during that postwar boom when it seemed like everybody in the country was having kids as fast as possible. There were enough desks for at least thirty kids, but there couldn’t have been more than twenty-five of us.
There were a lot of empty seats in the room.
One of them was beside me.
I prayed. I honest-to-God prayed. And when Mrs. Emerson spoke, it sounded like the teacher in those Charlie Brown cartoons, all muted horns and no words.
She came over and sat down.
Next to me.
That’s when it sunk in. What Mrs. Emerson said. She’d said, “Rebecca, you can sit next to Andrew.”
Thank you, God.
She put her Trapper Keeper on the desk, opened it with a velcro explosion. Some of the other kids snickered. She turned bright pink, looked straight down into her lap. My heart broke a little bit.
Then it was back to fractions, two-thirds of this and five-sevenths of that — who the hell measures out five sevenths of something, anyway?
To this day, I’m convinced that I blew the math portion of my SATs because I spent the entire unit on fractions staring wide-eyed at Rebecca Galloway.
“Mom,” I said in what I guess in retrospect was a pretty whiney voice. “Can you take me to the store tonight?”
“What for?” she mumbled, not looking up from the Ladies’ Home Journal or whatever she was reading.
“Andy wants to buy a butt brush to wash his butt!”
“Shut up, Steven!”
“Andrew, don’t tell your brother to shut up.”
“Yes, ma’am. But can you take me to the store tonight?”
“What do you need at the store, sweetie?”
“You know,” I said. “School stuff.”
“Butt brush, butt brush, Andy wants a butt brush!”
“Shut up, Steven!” I slugged him in the arm hard enough to raise a goose egg.
“Mooooom!” Stevie whined. “Andy hit me!”
“I don’t blame him,” Mom mumbled.
The next day I showed up to school with a brand new Six Million Dollar Man Trapper Keeper.
Rebecca totally noticed. She didn’t say anything, or make eye contact with me, or acknowledge my existence in any way. But she totally noticed.
Recess was right after lunch. This was back when elementary school playgrounds were all concrete and wrought iron, before the child-safety people came through and wrapped everything in foam padding. The kids affectionately called the jungle gym “the Toothchipper,” and on a sunny day the slide got hot enough to cause first-degree burns through thick school-uniform pants.
Kids spent a lot of time making their own fun in those days.
Usually that involved some kind of physical or psychological torture. The boys played tag, and the smallest and weakest kid was perpetually It. The girls did their own thing, hopscotch or double-dutch or whatever girls did.
Once in a while, a fight would break out.
“Rebecca No-Hair! Rebecca No-Hair!”
It was the biggest, dumbest kid in our class. Alan, his name was. God, he was dumb, and he hated everybody. At least he acted like it.
Rebecca was standing next to the swing, waiting her turn. There was only one swing, because the other one had a jagged wooden splinter sticking up out of it that would have sent any kid stupid enough to try it on a one-way trip to the proctologist. Alan was on the other swing, pulling himself higher and higher, shouting at the top of his lungs.
“No-Hair, No-Hair, glows in the dark in her un-der-wear!”
It didn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe Alan thought it made sense, but as I mentioned, Alan was dumb. You know that thing kids do where they tell each other that “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary? He never did figure that one out.
After a couple more verses, Rebecca started to cry. Not all screamy and snotty like the other girls. Just silently. Not moving. Hot tears coming down her cheeks.
“Hey, fatass, leave her alone!”
I looked around to see who said that, and realized it was me.
Alan zeroed in on me with his bully-powered precision-guided laser eyes. He launched himself off the swings into midair, which would have been really cool if he hadn’t landed on all fours. He got up, grass stains on both his knees, and came after me like a kid-seeking missile.
I got a three-day suspension. So did Alan. But he also got a trip to the school nurse to get his bloody nose packed. I felt pretty good about that. Almost good enough to offset the dull ache in my hand from where his teeth had torn my knuckles up pretty good.
Mom practically had kittens. She grounded me for a month, which didn’t make all that much difference because there weren’t any other kids on our street anyway. I spent the three days in my room reading G.I. Joe comics and whispering dire and gory threats in Stevie’s ear late at night.
On Friday, when my suspension was up, I got to school early. Mom was in no mood for any shenanigans that morning — she’d said so: “I’m in no mood for any shenanigans, Andrew” — so I got my bike out of the garage and rode to school.
Most of the kids in my class either walked to school or rode their bikes. A few took the bus. Rebecca was a bus kid. She came in just as the first bell rang, the “no, seriously, go inside and sit down so we can try fruitlessly to teach you something that will keep you from growing up to be axe murderers” bell. She came in, opened her Bionic Woman Trapper Keeper, got out a pencil.
“Hi, Andy,” she said.
I was, at that moment, the stupidest kid in the world. Because instead of just smiling, all cool, and saying something suave like “Hey, good lookin’,” I stared at her slack-jawed and said, “What?”
She looked away, letting her hair fall in front of her face again.
“I mean, hi,” I said, scrambling like crazy. “Hi, is what I meant to say.”
And that’s when it happened.
She reached up with one hand, tucked her hair behind her ear, kind of glanced at me out of the corner of her eye … and smiled.
I bet you think you know what’s coming. We passed notes in class, held hands at recess, shared a stolen kiss under the mulberry tree on the way home from school.
None of that happened.
The next week, Rebecca wasn’t at school. I thought maybe she was sick. But she didn’t show up the next week either. Or the week after that.
I asked Mrs. Emerson. This was way before teachers had anything like ethics or a sense of privacy. “Rebecca and her mother moved away, Andrew.”
It was a total déjà vu moment. I got tunnel vision. The room spun. I felt dizzy.
Only that time, I got so sick to my stomach I thought I was going to throw up.
We’re skipping ahead a little now, because the truth is nothing happened for the next fifteen years. Well, not nothing nothing. I went to high school, got my driver’s license, smoked some weed, lost my virginity, graduated (a C-minus average is still passing, thank you very much), got into a state school, pledged a fraternity, got my degree, got a job, moved across the country. You know, life.
But none of it was really important.
I guess one important thing happened. Not important by itself, but important in the sense that it shapes the rest of the story. See, I always wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to write comic books. By the time I grew up, I decided I wanted to write screenplays, which are basically the same thing only with more money.
So I got an English degree, which to my dismay had more to do with reading than writing. And as soon as I threw my cap in the air, before the ink on my B.A. could dry, I loaded everything I owned into half a dozen stolen milk crates, packed them in my Honda hatchback and hit the road for Hollywood, California.
Stupid? You better believe it. I didn’t have the first idea what I was doing. For a week I actually had to sleep in my car. Then I waited some tables at an all-night burger diner in Westwood, made enough to move into a shithole in East Covina.
Life was pretty awful for a while.
But then things changed. I met a UCLA kid who knew a guy who knew a guy who got me a P.A. job at Warners. It was a rotten job, mostly delivering script pages to D-list TV movie stars and getting coffee that no matter how carefully I followed the instructions I somehow always managed to mess up. And the money was actually worse than what I made waiting tables.
But it was work, and it was steady, and it opened doors.
After a couple of years, I scrabbled my way up the ladder a little bit. I went from being a production assistant to a production associate, which is basically the same job only they pay you a little more and yell at you a lot more. Then I became a production coordinator, and so on, and so on, and eventually I discovered that I’d gotten myself into a pretty decent place. I was making enough money that I could afford both an apartment and a car at the same time, which is a very big deal in L.A. I had half a dozen screenplays in circulation among friends who swore they used to be roommates with people who totally work with guys who know agents. Once in a while, I managed to get into a decent party.
And that’s where it happened.
You know those houses up on Mulholland, the ones over toward the 101 that are nice but, you know, not that nice? There’s this producer who lives over there. Not somebody you’d know, unless you’re in the habit of reading the credits on unsuccessful TV pilots. But he knew people, and the people he knew knew other people, so when he threw a party, it wasn’t an entirely awful place to be.
The previous summer I’d worked on one of this guy’s shoots, and I met a continuity supervisor there who one time in the wee hours after an incredibly out-of-proportion wrap party had drunkenly slurred to me that she would totally sleep with me if she hadn’t decided to try being a lesbian for a year to see how it worked out.
A few months later that continuity supervisor started dating a make-up girl who knew a casting assistant who lived with an executive assistant at a talent agency on Sunset, you know the one I mean, and when the invitation to this party trickled down I decided what the hell.
No, I didn’t take any of my screenplays with me. But if I said I didn’t think long and hard about it, you could call me a damn liar.
So we get there, this house in West Hollywood that had probably sold for five million bucks a decade ago but that wouldn’t go for more than one point five on the market today. There are valets, of course, because God, how pathetic would it be not to have valets? We go in, and it’s just your typical vapid Hollywood scene. There’s a guy who was on “L.A. Law” for a few years back when I was in grade school. There’s the girl who married that big-shot producer and then divorced him when she caught him casting-couching day-players for “Baywatch.”
And there, over in the corner at the bar talking to a suit in an unbelievably bad hairpiece, is Rebecca Galloway.
Rebecca fucking Galloway.
I needed a drink, and I needed it bad, and the only way to get it was to go over to the bar, but that’s the one place in this guy’s house I can’t possibly go, because that’s where Rebecca fucking Galloway is.
Jesus Christ.
And this suit. My God. Why do people like that even come to parties like this? What is he, an insurance salesman? Does he really think he’s got a snowball’s chance with Rebecca fucking Galloway?
His glass is empty. He’s chewing open-mouthed on the ice. He turns to the bartender, and that’s when I see it. That’s when I see Rebecca fucking Galloway look desperately around for somebody, anybody to rescue her from this putz.
Sometimes opportunity doesn’t knock, you know? Sometimes it just clinks softly at the glasses.
The crowd parts for me like I’m Moses and it’s the Red fucking Sea. Next thing I know I’m at the bar, and the bartender’s looking at me, and I don’t even want anything any more, but I ask for a Makers on the rocks and when she hears my voice she turns around and looks at me and without even recognizing me she’s got this look of utter, blissful salvation.
And then the moment’s gone, because the fucking insurance guy’s got his martini-rocks and he actually says to her, “As I was saying.”
God, who talks like that?
“Excuse me, is it … Reggie?”
I look around to see who said that, and realize it’s me. Like, again.
“Ronald,” he says, sticking out his hand.
“Ronald, right. Listen, I just came from … over there” — I wave in the general direction of, like, the entire party — “and … Ian was asking if anybody’d seen you.”
“Ian?” he says. Then his eyes get big. “Really?” He turns to Rebecca and pours on the charm. He’s all “Excuse me, my dear,” and I want to laugh so badly I almost choke on my drink.
And then he slides off his chair and wanders into the crowd and Rebecca turns back to the bar and puts her head in her hands and say “Oh, merciful God!”
She’s shaking. Christ, is she crying? What have I walked into the middle of here? I make half my drink disappear.
“Hey,” I say. “Hey. I … um. Are you okay?”
Hand on her shoulder. Her bare shoulder. She’s wearing this halter-dress-thing and it’s red and her shoulder has, like, nothing covering it at all and then I’m touching it.
She reaches up with one hand and tucks her hair back behind her ear, and God, I’m nine years old again. There are tears streaming down her apple-red cheeks, but not because she’s crying. She’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe.
“Did you see that?” she stage-whispers between gasps. “Did you see that? I think that guy’s toupee was wearing a toupee!”
The rest of my drink is gone, and I’m not sure where it went. “Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to, like, interrupt you there. I could see you were getting your mack on.”
“Oh, you read me like a book,” she says, eyes sparkling like the room’s filled with a thousand candles. “But you were just being polite, right? I mean, if Ian wanted to talk to him” –
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, it must be important.”
“Right,” she says. “If it’s Ian it’s got to be important.”
“Right.”
“Who’s Ian?” she asks all innocent, setting me up and knowing I’m not just gonna fall, I’m gonna run right to the edge and jump.
“No idea,” I say, and then she’s laughing, and I’m laughing, and when she stops laughing she’s smiling, and I’m wondering where the nearest mountain is, and whether it has glaciers on top.
“Excuse me,” I call to the bartender, who’s been ignoring all this in a way that’s nothing short of commendable. “Can we get … we’re gonna need” — I look at Rebecca out of the corner of her eye and she’s smirking at me. “Could we please have a lot more drinks over here?” I ask. “Thanks.”
Life stories. Small town in Illinois. Yeah, I know that part, skip ahead. Parents divorced when she was ten. Okay, that explains a lot. Bounced around for a few years. Mom settled down and got a good job, moved them into a house in the burbs. Junior high, made friends. Shopping at the mall one day when all of a sudden there’s this guy with a business card, and next thing she knows she’s in a soup commercial. She’s twelve years old and she’s selling soup.
“You were a soup spokesmodel,” I say.
“Yes.”
“A soupsmodel.”
“Yes,” she says, draining her drink. “Can I finish my story now?”
“Not on an empty stomach,” I say, and I wave to the bartender making the universal gesture for another round.
“Big spender, huh?” she says, cracking an ice cube between her molars.
“Well, it’s an open bar,” I say.
She just kinda stares at me for a minute, like she can’t believe what I just said. “Big spender … huh?” she says slowly, carefully enunciating around each word.
“Are you kidding?” I say. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I throw money around like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Good,” she says, stirring the swizzle stick in the drink that’s just appeared by her elbow. “Where was I?”
“Soupsmodel,” I say.
“Right. Anyway, so there I was, twelve years old, in a nationally televised commercial.”
“For soup,” I say.
“Reggie,” she says.
“Ronald,” I say.
She smirks. “Clever. Okay, let’s do this the old-fashioned way.” She sits up straight, sweeps her hair over her shoulder. I almost fall out of my chair. She holds out her hand. “I’m Rebecca,” she says.
I almost lose it then. I almost give it all away. But no, I hang on to it by the skin of my teeth. “Andrew,” I say, taking her hand and never, ever, ever wanting to let go.
And you know, she’s not exactly racing to let go of mine, either.
Moments like that feel like they last a lot longer than they really do. We’re talking like a second here, maybe a second and a half. In the movies it would be at least ten seconds, long enough for the camera to push in and the soundtrack to swell. But here, it’s two heartbeats, and it’s gone.
“Andrew,” she says, “the soup isn’t really an important part of this story. This story is going to continue, you see, and the soup isn’t going to be a part of it. The soup, its purpose fulfilled, is now going to exit gracefully to stage left. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say, and nobody has ever been in love like I am right now.
She tells me the rest of the story. TV commercial at twelve, another one at fourteen. Made enough money to tuck away for college, but hardly a big break into stardom. A degree in broadcast communication, then after college, the starry lights of the Hollywood way.
“So what do you do now?” I ask her, not giving half a damn, just wanting to watch her mouth as she answers.
Only she doesn’t. She sips her drink instead. “What do you do, Andrew?” she says.
“I asked you first.”
“I asked you most recently.”
And there it is again. That fire in her eyes. Have you ever stood beneath a 10,000-watt klieg light? That’s what it felt like.
“I’m a writer,” I say.
“Uh-huh,” she nods. “And what do you do when you need to pay the rent?”
“Well,” I say, squaring my shoulders, “I don’t like to blow my own horn. But I’m a pretty influential production coordinator at a … major motion picture studio.”
“Really?” she gasps.
“I’m trying to keep it low-key tonight, though.”
“But you’re a very powerful man.”
“I don’t like to blow my own horn.”
“Is that your way of saying you’re looking for somebody to blow it for you?” she says. Her eyes go through me like spears, and I’m just a wriggling fish.
“And what do you do?” I say, operating totally on autopilot at this point.
She clears her throat, sips her drink again, blows a stray hair out of her face, basically goes through a petit mal seizure of tics and quirks. “Lately, mostly recording work,” she says.
“You’re a singer?”
“Only bad karaoke, and only when I’m so drunk I … come to think of it, I’ve never been drunk enough to sing karaoke.”
“Night’s still young.”
“And so are we,” she says.
“You’re changing the subject,” I say.
“I’m trying, but you’re not letting me. What happened to the suave, chivalrous gentleman who saved me from that awful wretch?”
“You forgot powerful.”
“No, I didn’t,” she says. “Not for a second.”
“You’re doing it again,” I say.
“And yet you’re still not letting me.”
I just let that sit there for a second. Oh, sure, I could pretend I’m being all cool. But the truth is my mind is completely and utterly blank. I think I’m literally hypnotized. Any minute now, she’s gonna have me clucking like a chicken. Or climbing a mountain for her. Whichever comes first.
“Voiceover work,” she says. “Mostly.”
“You mean like … radio?” I ask.
“Sort of. Television.”
“Are you the girl in the monster truck commercial?”
“If that were the truth, I’d be about a million times less embarrassed than I am right now,” she says.
“It’s like pulling off a band-aid. Just tell me.”
“I dub cartoons,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
“I dub imported cartoons. From other countries.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Mostly from Japan,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
She kinda stares for a minute. “That’s it?” she asks. “Just ‘okay?’”
“Yeah,” I say. “What did you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know, something sarcastic.”
“I’m not sarcastic.”
“You’re incredibly sarcastic.”
“See what I did there? When I said I wasn’t sarcastic, I was being sarcastic.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
For what must be the fourth time, maybe fifth, her drink is empty. So’s mine, but I forgot about it a long time ago. She’s playing with the ice cubes, stacking up against the side of the glass with her swizzle then knocking them down again.
“You want another?” I ask.
“No,” she says without really thinking about it. “It’s getting late.”
“It’s eleven-thirty.”
“I’ve got a call in the morning,” she says.
At this point in my life, I want nothing more than to ask her, “Did I do something wrong?” I’m a profoundly stupid man, but I’m smart enough to know that that would be a mistake. So I just sit for a minute, not saying anything, letting her not say anything, wondering whether this is an uncomfortable silence or a comfortable one.
“It’s getting late,” she says again.
“Want me to walk you out?” I ask. Look, I’m doing the best I can here. Get off my back.
“No, that’s okay,” she says. She opens this microscopic little purse and pulls out her valet ticket.
“Give me your number.”
I look around, but who am I fooling. You’ve heard this joke before.
“What?” she asks, then immediately: “No.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because I don’t give my phone number to strange men,” she says, fire in her eyes. Fire like a thousand candles, fire like a 10,000-watt klieg lamp, fire that gets inside my head and burns out every last vestige of reason or self-awareness.
“I’m not a strange man,” I say to her. “We’ve known each other since we were nine.”
If this were an Old West saloon, the piano player just would have stopped.
“What?” she asks, hitting the T so hard I can feel her breath on my neck from three feet away.
“Rebecca Galloway, from Culverton, Illinois,” I say. “J.F. Pierce elementary. Mrs. Emerson’s class.”
She starts to get it.
“Andy?”
“Andrew now, but yeah.”
“Glows in the dark in her underwear,” she half-whispers.
“Yeah.”
“You kicked that kid’s ass.”
“Got suspended for three days for it, too,” I say.
“I remember,” she says.
“You do?”
“Like it was yesterday,” she says.
I just sort of roll that one around on my tongue for a second.
“I don’t, really,” she says.
“What?”
“Glow in the dark in my underwear. I don’t, really.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I just wanted to tell you that,” she says.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
Everything sort of goes into slow-motion.
“Are there glaciers on top of Mt. Everest?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” she says.
“You sure?”
“No,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
From somewhere on the other side of the house, about fifty people all laugh at the same joke.
“Give me a piece of paper,” she says. “Right now, right this second.”
I fumble in my pockets. There’s a piece of paper, thank holy God above. No pen. The bartender’s been listening to this whole thing, apparently, because man, he is right there.
Her hands are shaking a little as she writes her number down. I think she thinks I don’t notice.
My hand’s back in my pocket now. It’s wrapped around that piece of paper like I might never let it go.
“I’m gonna call you,” I say.
“Good,” she says.
“Not tomorrow, though.”
“No?”
“No. I don’t want to be creepy. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.”
“Oh,” she says.
“Maybe this weekend.”
“I’ve got plans this weekend,” she says.
“Do you really?” I ask.
“Does it matter?” she says.
It doesn’t. She knows it, I know it. There’s no point in saying it.
“I’m gonna call you,” I say.
“When?” she says.
“Tonight,” I say. “As soon as I get home. Probably in the car on the way home.”
“Good,” she says.
She doesn’t say anything else. Neither do I. I can’t think of anything. I don’t know what her reason is. Anyway, she turns her body without turning her head. She starts to walk away without looking where she’s going. She bumps right into this guy. This actor. You’d know him. Household name. Very, very important guy.
“Oh, excuse me,” he says, standing straight as an arrow and smiling at her like she’s the most important person in the world.
“Uh-huh,” she says, and just keeps walking.
There wasn’t any point in staying at the party after that. I made an orbit around the room, saying good night to some people I knew, who introduced me to people they knew so I had to say good night to them too.
I went through it all in a fog, with the stupidest grin on my face you’ve ever seen.
Then I was at the door, making my way past people smoking cigars and cigarettes and maybe something else. The valet was leaning against the stand in one of those ubiquitous red jackets that seem to cover a third of the population of L.A. at any given time. I fished my ticket out of my pocket, gave it to him, waited while he pulled my old hatchback around from the very, very remote spot where he’d parked it. I slipped the guy a bill — I didn’t even look at it; it might have been a fifty for all I know — got in, and drove off. Headed down Mulholland toward the 405, windows open in the cool California night.
I didn’t actually mean what I’d said. I didn’t actually mean that I was going to call her from the car on the way home. But suddenly, looking out over the glowing hills as I weaved my way down into the basin, I knew that’s exactly what I was going to do.
I fumbled for my phone, got it out of my pocket, then reached for the piece of paper with Rebecca’s number on it.
It wasn’t there.
Checked my other pocket. It wasn’t there.
Checked every pocket. It wasn’t there.
That’s when it hit me.
I’d had exactly one piece of paper in my pocket. Just one. And I’d given it to her without looking at it. And she’d written her number down without looking at it either. And then I stuck it back in my pocket without so much as glancing at it.
And I didn’t look at it when I handed it to the valet, either.
She’d written her number down on my valet stub.
Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch! I did everything. I yelled. I pounded the steering wheel. I screamed curse words I hadn’t said since high school. I think I made up some curse words.
Fifteen years. I’d been in love with this girl for fifteen years. With absolutely no chance of ever seeing her again, ever, in my entire life. And then I ran into her by coincidence at a party I wasn’t even technically invited to.
And I lost her number.
There was just no way this was my life. There was no way this could possibly be real.
It just wasn’t fair.
For a second, I seriously considered wrenching the wheel over and driving right off the hillside. I was that angry. Angry at myself, angry at life. Angry at everything that ever was or that ever would be.
It wasn’t until I got halfway to Santa Monica that I realized what an idiot I’d been. I don’t mean for losing her number. Of course that made me an idiot. But the kind of guy who loses a girl’s number is just a garden-variety, everyday idiot. Any of us could be that guy.
I was a much bigger idiot than that.
I tore across four lanes of freeway traffic with just a cursory glance in my rear-view. Horns and swears, blah blah blah. Blew through the red light at the exit without realizing it, rolled through the red light at the onramp without giving a damn. Then back on the freeway, pedal to the metal, rocketing north toward the Hollywood Hills. Realizing that was my mountain all along, and that if it didn’t have a glacier at the top, at least it had a valet with a trash can full of used tickets next to him. And I didn’t have to carve her name in it myself. It was already there.
I weaved through traffic, screaming at the cars to get out of my way, laughing at the top of my lungs.
God, this is going to make a great story someday.
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Tagged with glacier, hollywood, jeff, love, name carved in it
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Careful Dude — As much as this story deserves to be read, Jeff is ornery with copyright.
Maybe smarter to do a small excerpt and tell people to buy the book.
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