by John Domini
Ernie nodded so hard she could feel it in the seat-springs. “Yeah babe. Yeah, good.” Nonetheless his look remained serious. “But see, Nellie, see. It’s like you were saying earlier about games—politics can also seem like a game. Same as sex, exact same problem. And you’re like already an outlaw to Fitzie about sex; just wait’ll she sees you getting into politics. You think that won’t be way too heavy for her? I mean when I give someone like Fitzie one of my contracts, I want to say, Look! This is for real! They’ve got your whole life right here between the black lines! But she just sits there trying to figure out what the trick is.”
“Well I realize she’s just trying to protect herself. I guess I can learn to handle that.”
More nodding. “It’s not like it doesn’t make me crazy too, Nellie. I mean, we’ve gone from ocean to ocean here. We’ve shucked our whole former lives. We’re outsiders, all of us. Outsiders. And still we all go on trying to play the same old pissant games inside the same old black lines.”
She nodded, then shook her head more firmly. She hoped he understood. They were well off 20 now, out of the Valley now, rocketing up into the hills along an old logging road. Ridiculous trying to hold a conversation in such rough going. The bigger oaks and birches closed overhead, and this early after New Year’s the sky was nothing but murk anyway. Murk, webbed here and there with darker clusters of dangling tattered moss. She may have glimpsed bright trillium fingertips, or the spastic knots of a dormant wild rose. But by and large roadside details were lost under a rain so fine and steady you noticed it only when the clay along the edges of the way ahead caved outward to fall among the undergrowth. Amazing, trying to do serious relationship work under such conditions. Ernie at least had lightened up. His face was a horror show, good and toothy. But Nellie could barely grin back, the ride was too hard on her breasts. She almost regretted turning in her leotard.
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