Love is a Finite Experience

by B Anders

  Courtney gave a reassuring smile. "Harper, that’s sweet. But, I intend to make it all the way to Florida today. So, eat up, we've got a big drive ahead."

  Harper frowned as Courtney closed the bathroom door. Her plan for the trip was four days driving, but she was willing to cut it to three. Now, Courtney was slashing it to two. That would not allow much time for stopping and getting her supplies.

  "Now she decides she's Hell bent to make time? Wonder what the push is all about," Harper mumbled forgetting her promise to speak up. “That's it! She got her curiosity about me satisfied, and she's ready to move on to her next project. She's probably convinced I'm too screwed up to survive much longer. People like her know it’s better to cut their losses while they can.”

  “Harper did you say something?” Courtney shouted from inside the bathroom.

  “No, nothing at all,” came the reply.

  ***

  "I want to make a stop," Harper blurted out as Courtney started the car.

  Courtney sighed, "We can't stop if we haven't started yet."

  Harper nodded agreement. "Right, but when you do start, I want to swing by the Lincoln Memorial for five minutes."

  "What?"

  "Drive to the Lincoln Memorial. I need five minutes there."

  Courtney rolled her eyes. "Cuz, that's what you did last time."

  "If you state the obvious at every turn, we'll never make Florida by tonight."

  "Lincoln Memorial, next stop," Courtney droned.

  We took the elevator up to see the statue. It was huge. Looked just like it did on TV. I was pushing your wheelchair. Mom even posed with us for pictures. Then we went to the long flight of stone steps. DC spread out before us. Dad snapped picture after picture. Then some guy came running up the stairs, taking two at a time. “I'm an EMT, need help getting him down the stairs?” Dad actually made a joke, “where were you when we were coming up?”

  ***

  "Kill me now," Courtney moaned.

  Harper smirked, "Can't. The car will careen into the tanker half a foot in front of us, killing us all, and take out the entire highway."

  "Ha Ha Ha," the laughter was deliberate and painful. “Have I told you recently, you’re not funny?”

  Courtney started playing with the GPS for alternate routes. The automated voice with a lilting British accent repeated over and over again that all optional routes were miles ahead. With traffic at a near standstill, there was nothing to do but wait.

  "Want a Pepsi?" Harper offered.

  Courtney rolled her eyes. "You're kidding, right? We just ate a great breakfast, and we're so stuck in end of the world traffic only God knows when we'll see a toilet again, and it's only eight thirty in the morning."

  "Points duly noted," Harper said as she unfastened her seat belt. "Guess that means it’s too early for Twinkies too?"

  "What the Hell, you only live once." Courtney surrendered slapping the steering wheel hard. "Grab me a package of those wicked yellow sugar cakes, woman."

  "You got it."

  Harper was much more agile than Courtney was when reaching into the cooler. Her hips came nowhere near the driver's head. Still, there was a gentle elbow to her thigh. Harper gasped at the contact before plopping back into her seat her face stark white. Her breathing was rough and uneven, the breaths coming out in strangled pants. She pushed back against the door with both hands up in a defensive gesture.

  "What the fuck is wrong with you now?" Courtney asked exasperated by Harper’s response.

  "Another rule," Harper struggled with the words. "No touching of any kind. None. Hands to yourself."

  "Technically, it was an elbow. And I wasn’t coping a feel. I did it to stop you from taking out my head with a hip check so get over yourself."

  Harper didn't laugh. "No, touching. This is serious." She coughed, but it was obvious she was forcing down a sob.

  Courtney did not show any emotion as she spoke. "Are you okay? Harper, are you okay or do I need to pull over? Tell me you're okay."

  Harper forced herself to nod.

  "I can probably pull to the shoulder, but you need to give me a chance to get across the traffic," Courtney spoke in a well-measured manner.

  "No need. I'm fine," Harper mumbled before clutching her head in both hands.

  "No, you are not fine," Courtney replied.

  Harper gulped air into her lungs. "I will be fine in a minute or so."

  "What do you need from me? Just tell me. Don't do anything..."

  "Crazy?" Harper asked with a bitter chuckle. "Think I tried crazy, but they didn’t have anything in my size. Found out a couple of days ago I wasn't really built for restraints."

  "Just talk to me, Harper. Don't hide behind jokes."

  Harper considered a snarky comeback, but Courtney seemed worried. "No touching, ever. Okay? You can't touch me. I can't stand to be touched. Can you understand that? Please say you do."

  "I understand."

  "No, you couldn't possibly understand," Harper scoffed at the response she commanded. "Nobody could understand."

  "You'd be surprised how much I actually do understand, Harper. You think you’re the only one with issues? You think that because terrible things happened to you that gives you license to act like a self-absorbed jackass?" Courtney stopped and bit her lip, but the bitterness could not be contained. "My dickhead of a father threw my sister out of the house in her pajamas when she told him one of his wannabe writer buddies molested her. She was thirteen. She had Mrs. Lopez from next-door call me and I had to call my grandfather at some fundraiser to get someone to come over and get her. My mother was at a party with husband number three and couldn’t be reached. Patty was never the same after that. He did this to her. It was all his fuckin’ fault. The men, the drugs, the drinking. It was his fault. She loved him and he called her a fuckin’ slut to her face. Told her, she was a liar who was too stupid to understand his friend was only being nice to her. What kind of animal does that to their child? Do you have any freakin’ idea how much I fuckin’ hate my own father, Harper?"

  "I think I'm getting a pretty good idea," Harper stammered.

  Courtney interrupted in a menacing tone, "Don't even pretend you get this because you don't."

  Courtney's outburst silenced Harper. The silence lingered longer than the Twinkies, which Courtney eventually retrieved on her own from the cooler as they sat trapped in the middle of the DC gridlock.

  ***

  "Can you figure out how far we've managed to come?" Courtney asked with barely restrained frustration. "What a shit show. It was worse than the traffic in LA. God, I hate that city."

  DC was hours behind them, but traveling remained slow. It was clear they would not be making up the lost miles anytime soon.

  "Certainly," Harper's mood had lightened after the morning's upset. "Let's see. Oh boy."

  Courtney was alarmed by Harper's tone. "What? What's wrong?"

  "We are only coming into Fayetteville now."

  "Does that Carolina have an ‘N’ or an ‘S’ in front of it?" Courtney crossed her fingers.

  Harper shook her head, "Sorry, ‘N’ is the letter of the day."

  "Oh fuck my miserable luck!" Courtney fumed. "We've been grinding through this Hellish traffic for eight hours..."

  "Seven hours and twenty-two minutes," Harper corrected.

  Courtney flashed Harper a dirty look. "Seven hours and twenty-two minutes well thank you Ms. Atomic Clock."

  Harper ignored the sneer and offered, "Want me to figure out how far we are from our destination?"

  "Yes, please do," Courtney sighed. "Maybe it's not as far as I think."

  "Sorry, its seven hours and twenty-nine minutes away, give or take an hour with the traffic."

  "Oh shit! After tap dancing on the brake, all day, I can't feel my toes anymore." Courtney was silent for a moment. She finally cleared her throat and asked, "Any chance I could get you to take the wheel for a couple of hours? Just until I get the circulation back in my f
oot and ass."

  "I'd like to..."

  "...But you have to write your little notes on the map. Of course, I understand. I get it." Courtney groaned in utter defeat. "Any idea where we could stop? Any decent rest areas ahead?"

  "That wouldn't be safe." Harper made a counter proposal. "Why not get a room for the night, eat a proper meal, and take a hot shower, followed by a sound sleep in a real bed. I know you don’t sleep at night, and that must really be wearing you down with the driving and all, but you could try to take a nap. I swear I’ll sit by the bed until you wake up, so nothing happens to you, and we could check out before dawn to get you back on the road. It'll only delay you a few hours. You’ll still be perfect."

  Courtney's response was grudging. "I hate it when you make complete sense out of the chaos around us."

  "Why?" Harper laughed. “Because you have this obsessive need to be ‘perfect’ all the time.”

  "Because it means I need to tweak my world view. I kind of hate having to do that. It makes me cranky. I have to work extra hard not to appear cranky."

  Harper shook her head, "Don't bother trying, blind chipmunks could spot your grumpy face across a golf course. Doesn’t mean you’re not perfect in your own unique way. But, forget that. We need to find a place for you to rest and I think I know the place. They have fantastic burgers, hot tubs, soft beds..."

  "...Nice towels," Courtney was snarky, but Harper didn't notice.

  "Yes, exactly. So, we just have about another hour or so to Doleland in Carolina with a capital ‘S’."

  ***

  "This is a joke, right? You're trying to make me laugh and not feel awful about losing so much time in traffic, right?" Courtney said with a slight shake of her head. "Okay, it’s funny. You got me good this time. Ha Ha Ha. Now, where do we go to get to the hotel you booked for us?"

  Harper spread her arm indicating the view beyond the dashboard was the destination. "Ta dah!"

  “Very funny, Harper. Come on, we need to get going.”

  “Ta dah!”

  “Harper, I’m not going to tell you twice.”

  “Honey, we’re home!”

  The complex was more than a rest stop, but less than a resort. A bad marriage between a bungalow style roadside motel and a Vegas Strip show. The flashing lights and amusement rides encircled a classic fifties style hotel in a halo like glow. It was just as Harper remembered it.

  Harper’s grin was wider than it had been in months. She felt a sparkle of life return to her bone weary body. The scene before her was so magical she completely missed how Courtney was slowly losing her temper. The meltdown to follow was a total shock.

  "That's it!" Courtney shouted as she cut the engine leaving the keys in the ignition. "Fuck you, Harper. I've tried, goddammit it. I really tried to understand. I turned a blind eye to your looting every rest area between here and Boston..."

  "I wasn't looting. It was just a couple of novelty hand towels."

  "Eight! Eight towels. You took two from our hotel this morning. I know I counted them before I left and had the front desk charge them to my account."

  "Okay, a few," Harper conceded.

  "You and your rules are fine and dandy, but there are still laws too, you know? There's also something known as common courtesy, or doesn’t that exist for you?"

  Harper interjected, "I've been saying thank you since you mentioned that last night. Courtney, please stop shouting at me."

  Courtney yelled right over her, "For hundreds of miles, I've been leaning left to avoid any possibility of physical contact with you, not that I would want to have any physical contact with you. Hell, I rather give Rush Limbaugh a fuckin’ blowjob. But, noooooooooooooooo Harper can’t have any touchy feely. I'll be lucky not to have stress fractures of the hip. You won't help with the driving. I can’t even feel my freakin’ fingers anymore. You wake up crying every time you fall asleep for more than twenty minutes, which can be six or seven times a night. I've lost count how often it happens in the car. I started humming lullabies back in Virginia..."

  "...I thought the radio broke. Hey, at least I sleep. That’s better than someone who sits up all night in the armchair staring out into space like a zombie." Harper's interruption was ignored as Courtney barreled along.

  "...I've eaten more peanut butter than the Planter's nut, and I absolutely fuckin’ hate peanut butter. I'm done, Patty! Absolutely, one hundred percent done. No more crazy clown car trip to Hell! Last stop, Bus Terminal B with a one way ticket back to Boston for you."

  Harper blinked at Courtney, but said nothing. Courtney was staring blankly ahead red-faced and huffing. Harper sat up straight in the seat and cleared her throat. Still, there was no reply.

  "Well?"

  Courtney looked at Harper with total disbelief, "Well, what? What the fuck do you want now?"

  “You called me Patty.”

  “Fuck you, I just laid it out there for you, and that’s all you got to say for yourself?"

  "I was going to say wow what happened to Courtney’s obsessive need to be perfect? Looks like it took a flying leap out the window, and there should be a 'young lady' catch phrase after a speech like that," Harper made air quotes.

  "This isn't funny!"

  Harper's voice grew soft, and there were tears forming in the corner of her eyes as she spoke. "I thought you'd enjoy staying here."

  "What? How could you think that?" Courtney shouted slammed the steering wheel hard to emphasize her point. "Whatever made you think I would want to stay here? This isn't a hotel. It's a friggin’ amusement park. Flashing lights, garish colors, offensive racial stereotypes, and fucking Tijuana music blaring on loud speakers. You think you’re better than I am, don’t you? Poor Courtney, her father’s some illegal who swam across the border. You think you’re so great with your white trash Irish working class background. Fuck you.”

  Harper chose to ignore the insult to her heritage and focus on the issue at hand. “It's a historic site."

  Courtney replied with a sneer, "So's Alcatraz. I don't want to sleep there either."

  "It's fun."

  "No, Harper, it's not fun," Courtney said with an air of resignation. "Nothing about this trip is fun. I made a mistake thinking a few days on the road would help you. Could help me. I thought I could help you sort out the noise in your head. I can’t. I can't even sort through the noise in my own head. It’s too hard. I’m sorry, Harper. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t pretend this situation isn't pink slip crazy. You need to get serious medical help."

  "I know." Harper wiped her eyes with her thumb. "It was good of you to try to help. I'm sorry I couldn't keep up my end of the bargain. But, I never said I wasn't nuts."

  "That's true," Courtney hushed. Her cheeks were flushed. "It would have been great if we could have hugged it out, but you’re too hard to be with. You're too much..."

  "Trouble. I know. Mom always said that. And I didn’t pick the place to make fun of you. I thought it would be fun. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings."

  "That wasn't what I was going to say," Courtney stammered. "I was going to say work. You're too much work."

  "Same difference."

  Courtney looked away to catch her breath. "You're right. It is the same. And, that was rude of me. I'm sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way."

  Harper gave a small shrug. "Don't think you can actually be wrong telling the truth, Courtney. Listen, I bet you can find your own way back to the highway from here. Hey, you got the super car with the GPS. I'll just grab my bag out of the back. Keep the cooler. It would be too hard for me to go anywhere with it anyway."

  "Wait," Courtney was alarmed. "You're just going to get out here? How will you get home?"

  Harper opened the door as she answered, "I'm not going back. Can you pop the trunk?"

  "No, I won't pop the trunk. Get back in the car! I'm not going to abandon you in the middle of this...this...whatever this is."

  Harper stood outside the car and leaned back in, "It
’s a hotel and it’s extremely popular. You can check it out on Google. It looks like a few laughs. I haven't honestly laughed in a while, so I'm not going to give up my chance for a chuckle. Could you pop the trunk for me?"

  Harper shut the door before Courtney could argue. She walked to the back of the car to wait. A light drizzle was falling. It was warmer than Boston, but it was still cold to be out without a coat.

  "Harper!" Courtney was exasperated as she got out of the car and slammed the door. "Would you just hold on a minute? I can take you to the bus station."

  Harper shook her head, "No buses. I'm sure that’s another rule. They’re too dirty. Too much danger of metal money on the floor."

  "For the fuckin’ love of God," Courtney tossed her hands upwards as she spoke. "You won't drive, you won't fly, and now you won't take a bus. How are you going to get back home?"

  "Maybe I should live here," Harper said.

  "What?"

  Harper was startled by Courtney’s response to what she thought was a private thought. "Did I say that out loud?"

  Courtney stood in front of Harper and looked her straight in the eyes. "You can't be serious? South Carolina? Live in South Carolina? You should be committed for even considering living here."

  Harper raised an eyebrow, "Either that was grossly insensitive or you made a joke." She added as an afterthought, "A joke which was also grossly insensitive to the good people of South Carolina."

  "It's been a long day, so sue me," Courtney fumed. "Just get back in the car, let me drive us to a nice hotel, and we'll get some sleep. I'm sure that in the morning, we can find a nice clean bus for you to ride home."

  "Pop the trunk, please," Harper ignored the offer and pointed to the trunk.

  Courtney reached into her pocket. "Fuck!"

  "Are the keys still in the ignition?"

  "Yes!" Courtney raced to the driver's door and frantically pulled at the locked handle.

  Harper started walking toward the hotel lobby, "Want me to call somebody?"

  "Call Triple A," Courtney shouted as she hit the window with her fist.