That was love

Somehow I miss driving up the 5, 115 degrees Fahrenheit outside, passing a rapidly-melting frozen water bottle between the driver and passenger seats to hold against our temples and necks and cool us down. We could barely make out the voices of Bill Calahan and Palace Music over the hum of the engine of my shitty Volkswagen that would overheat after two minutes of running the air conditioning. It was too hot to talk but we’d scream over the wind rushing through the cracked windows when we needed to say something, or to say “this one is so good.” “What?” “THIS SONG IS GOOD.” 

We didn’t make many stops for fear of the car not turning back on. We put on our masks and ordered horrible Chinese takeout from a sweet lady standing behind plexiglass, who put our styrofoam container of orange chicken and lo main into a wooden box with a little door on each side, like the kind they have at a bank, that she had rigged to protect herself from being exposed to travelers’ germs in this little pit stop town off the freeway. We sat in a parking lot, under the shade of an oak tree, cooling ourselves and the car down. You passed me a gloopy piece of broccoli and laughed as I turned it down, slumping over the pavement pretending to have heat stroke and singing Castaways from the children’s show The Backyardigans. I was exhausted and sad and desperate to be home but so happy to be there with you, making you laugh, loopy from heat and laughing too. That was love and I wish I had known it.