Edward Adrift

Victor’s. I won’t get to take pictures of Idaho, and if I’m late in arriving, I won’t get to follow the Dallas Cowboys’ game tonight against the New York Giants, but I also don’t want to be confused by Kyle any more than I already am.

    After dinner at the Pizza Hut in American Falls, I settle back into the seat of my Cadillac DTS and turn on my bitchin’ iPhone. I can’t help it.
    A voice mail is waiting for me.
    “Hi, Edward, it’s Donna. I got hold of Kyle’s phone and saw the crap he’s been sending you. I am so, so sorry about the ticket. We’ll pay for that. And you can bet you won’t be getting any more messages. This young man seems intent on digging himself a bigger hole than the one he’s already in. Gosh, we’re really so excited to see you, if you can stand to come still. See you in a few hours. Call if you’re going to be delayed. Bye now.”
    Hearing Donna’s voice makes me feel funny, but not ha-ha funny and not bad funny, either. It’s like a warmth inside my body, something similar to the way I would feel when I was a little boy and I was sick and my mother would stroke my forehead and tell me stories about bunnies who live in the clouds, which is of course impossible. It’s something I haven’t felt at all since Donna has been gone. She is my best friend. Kyle was also my best friend, and I’m hopeful that he can be again, but right now Kyle and I are in difficult circumstances. Kyle seems to be in difficult circumstances with a lot of people.
    That Donna would offer to pay my traffic ticket just shows what kind of person she is. That’s silly, though. I would never let them do it. I know Donna and Victor are financially comfortable, but $250 is a lot of money, and it’s not like they did anything wrong. If anybody should pay the ticket, it’s Kyle; he’s the one who caused it. But Kyle is just a boy, and he probably doesn’t have $250.
    I’ll pay the ticket. Regardless of what Kyle did, it’s my responsibility. And fuck it, I’m loaded.

    A half-hour’s drive down the road, after the sun has dipped below the horizon, I see the headlights coming at me from the eastbound lanes as long streaks of light. I’ve already stopped once to pee, which I should have done back at Pizza Hut. I’m close now, less than three hours away if my calculations are correct, and they usually are. (I’m not including gas in that statement, as those calculations continue to flummox me. In American Falls, I needed 13.013 gallons of gas to fill up, at $3.0699 per gallon. That came to $39.95, which sounds like a television commercial price. From Butte to American Falls, I traveled 278.3 miles, which means I got 21.4 miles per gallon.)
    Despite my relative freshness, I do not like driving in the darkness, and I especially do not like it on a road that I haven’t been on before. At home, in Billings, I know the roads just fine, and I even know most of the right-turn-only routes through town. Here, on the interstate, at least I have the knowledge that I will be heading in a consistent direction: west. What I don’t know are things like where the rises are, if any patches of the interstate are in disrepair, or whether lanes will be closed due to construction. I will find these things out as I go, in the darkness. And that’s why I’m ill at ease.
    I remember that one time my father had a bad wreck in the darkness. He and my mother had been in Sheridan, Wyoming, visiting some friends, and my father hit a deer on Interstate 90 as they were coming back that night. It was a bad wreck. The car—a Cadillac, naturally—wouldn’t drive anymore, and a tow truck had to come and get it and bring my father and mother the eighty-something miles back to Billings (I do wish I knew the exact distance, but I never did find out). The insurance company said the car was totaled, and it gave my father the money to buy a whole new Cadillac, which he of course did. My father wouldn’t driveany other kind of car. He used to call the Cadillac the greatest negotiating tool in the world. He would say, “When they see you coming in a Cadillac, they know two things: first, that you know quality, and second, that you don’t need their deal. You know why? Because you’re driving a goddamned Cadillac, that’s why.”
    I also remember that my mother was very angry with my father about that crash. Every time the subject would come up, her face would twist and she would say, “Ted, you should have never been