Two brunettes
went out for a ride.
They hopped in the car without knowing where to go,
and they left towards the north.
They were looking for an AAA
to get some free maps
and advice.
After bombarding the employee with questions
they went out satisfied
and got on the freeway,
the eighty.
They got confused a bit at the jumble near Oakland
- Cuca got scared on the bridges,
those thin asphalt lines hanging over the water abyss-
but they succeeded
and found their way towards Napa Valley,
land of wine and tourists.
"This is like a Road Movie,"
said Patricia,
and Cuca corrected her,
"A Road Trip Movie."
At their arrival to Calistoga they stopped at a burger joint
Where they ate burgers and ingested wine.
Then they continued to the hot springs,
to which they sneaked in for free
entering by the back door,
the one for the trash,
like the rats.
They saved twenty-five dollars each
and spent four hours jumping from pool to pool,
at the Jacuzzi,
and taking sexy photos in their swimming suits.
From there they went to visit the town
-- one street and three blocks--
and to look for a place, not to expensive, to eat.
They found a bohemian looking bar and went in.
Live music, it said.
There were musicians leaving,
cleaning the stage.
Bullshit, they thought,
It's nine pm and everything is finishing.
But after a little while, a sax started to make noise.
Then a piano
Drums
Bass and guitar.
They nicknamed the guitar player Cacho, because of Cacho Castaña,
an Argentinean singer from the seventies.
El Cacho and the sax player were entertaining the audience.
They climbed on the tables,
strolling among the clients that were drinking beer.
Cacho was wearing sunglasses and a long black hair almost Afro.
A total rock star.
On the guitar he had a sticker that read "Women"
like that, in plural.
The people started to dance.
Patricia wanted to join them but Cuca didn't move.
She was glued to the chair.
The old guy sitting behind Patricia was looking,
and he understood the situation.
He got up and invited Patricia to dance.
Patricia didn't want.
Cuca and the old guy insisted.
They went.
Cuca stayed behind looking at the people.
Some middle aged women, whatever that age means,
dressed with black dresses,
were dancing together like teenagers.
A black man
was dancing with one of them.
He was an elegant guy,
Fraizer style
- high middle class and liberal.
The music ends.
Patricia returns to the table.
The musicians take a break.
The old guy seats with them.
He starts to talk.
The story of his life.
His family lived in Calistoga for generations.
Ford dealer.
He sold.
Girlfriend in Hawaii.
Two daughters.
One of them is a peace corp.
She is in Panama
helping the poor, miserable Indians.
He shows them a picture of the peace corp.
After a little while,
the picture of the other.
The sax player walks towards them and stands next to their table.
He just stands there,
waiting.
The old guy keeps talking.
Cuca looks at the sax player.
Hi, she says.
The old guy keeps talking.
Patricia also looks at the sax player.
The old guy keeps talking.
The sax player leaves.
Humiliated, perhaps.
He was defeated by an old guy.
Cuca says that the sax player reminds her of a flute player,
who was also on his forties and had an asshole and womanizer look.
He was following her around when she spent three weeks working at a chateau in France,
to which Patricia replies,
"You are so negative."
The old guy asks them where they are staying.
They say that nowhere
because they are going back to Stanford that same night.
"Here is too expensive.'
The old guy says that if one has connections with the locals can find better deals.
"Ah, si?"
and they wrote down his number and address in a bit of paper,
for the next time,
although they probably lost that paper later among the trash polluting their respective bags.
They left the bar and up the car to go.
But first they went in search of a gas station to clean the windshield
and put some gas.
They found an ARCO that had cheaper gas
but it was closed.
So they just cleaned the windshield
and kept going,
now in search of coffee.
They found something open, it was midnight,
but they didn't have any more coffee.
Only decaf.
So Cuca just got a Coke to wake up.
Cuca wanted to avoid all the bridges because she already knew she was going to piss on her pants.
She knew already that she was a scare cat.
But she couldn't.
Patricia was the co-pilot with the map
and the route she chose had bridges too.
It seemed that around there the bridges couldn't be avoided.
It's full of puddles.
In the middle of nowhere they stopped to pay at the toll booth.
They thought they were entering a toll road.
But a few feet later the car entered the most absolute darkness.
And there it was obvious.
This is not a toll road.
This is a bridge.
A damn bridge.
"Where are we? Where did you send us Patricia?
A bridge! Is it long? When does it end?"
Cuca was afraid.
She was trembling, sweating while crossing that bridge in the dark
where nothing could be seen around
only blackness
and those thin white lines marking the difference between life and death.
You have to follow them or else fall to the emptiness.
While Cuca suffered a panic attack,
grabbing the wheel with her nails,
her body tensing
like a knot
stretched as much as the skin on Pamela Anderson's tits,
she became small
like a black dot on this page
.
invisible.
And between her teeth she was mumbling
"I want to leave... I want to get down... take me out of this nightmare... I dont want to be here...."
while moving forty miles an hour.
The other cars passed her zooming on the other lane.
Savages.
They were probably cursing her from inside their stylized cabins.
But the bridge ended, somewhere,
and them,
triumphant and changed after their expedition to paradise,
drove to Stanford
in silence
contemplating their small humanity.
Meanwhile,
the car lights were breaking the nothingness.
April 2007
