|
By chris Date: 2006 Feb 05 Comment on this Work [[2006.02.05.02.42.9324]] |
| Start the night with a light dinner at Tito & Mary's or Tio Oscar's or any little New Mexican cafe on 4th Street. Real adobe. Maybe. But lots of hot-but-not-too-hot red chile and homemade tortillas. Then head downtown and look for newly-designated "Entertainment District". Fail to find it. Drive past old dives from past relationships/past lives. Skip drinks and cigarette smoke and bad metal blaring from back rooms. Keep driving. Drive past the tall buildings and into Barelas. See men in white undershirts talking and laughing in tiny front yards drinking beer from 40-ounce bottles. 9pm. Take brief detour through East San Jose. The hood. El barrio. If wife says not to turn down that dark, forbidding-looking street, turn down that dark, forbidding-looking street. Next head over to the east mesa and the airport. Park at edge of runway - Aircraft Observation Area - and watch the jets come in to land. America West. United. The roar felt deep in the chest. Feel as well the chill desert breeze; take in cool blue runway lights; look at your whole city spread out before you. Realize you're the luckiest two people on the face of the earth. Then drive back down into the valley, stopping for soft-serve ice cream and melty chocolate chip cookies at the McDonald's your wife used to work at - long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Except you're there, now, in that galaxy. Together. So take in the wonderful strangeness of it all. Get back in car and drive up the other side of the valley to the tip top of the mesa. The west mesa this time. See city all spread out yet again. A million lights like stars. A night sky in reflection. Resolve that you're actually the perfect match; therefore from that moment on there will be no more need for any disagreements. Believe this. Watch for big-ass tumbleweeds blowing across the road and kiss on it. Quickly. Crest Nine-Mile Hill or some such sublime height and drive home. |