Before we left the party, we wanted to thank our host. We found him sitting on the steps with a screen door lying across his lap. W.S. couldn’t resist saying, “I hope you didn’t strain yourself,” but it didn’t matter because I got the feeling that Walker didn’t recognize us anyway.
We found our car and W.S. slid into the passenger seat. “I think you’d better drive,” he said. “I really don’t feel very well. I’m never going to dance again!” “You don’t think that maybe you drank too much of that Tijuana Tequila?” I said. “Just get me home,” he moaned.
“Okay,” I said. “Point me in the right direction.” I pulled off the gravel road and onto the expressway. There wasn’t much traffic, so I kept saying to myself, “I can do this. I can do this.” And W.S. kept burping. Then I spotted the light behind me. “If I didn’t know better,” I said to W.S., “I’d think that car is following us.”
“Slow down and let them pass,” he groaned. I slowed down. The car slowed down. ”They aren’t passing,” I said, and observed, “It isn’t a police car.” I was driving the speed limit, and although we still had an Indiana license plate on our car, I knew we were well within the time limit to obtain a California plate.
“Pull off!” W.S. shouted, “I’m going to barf!” I drove down the next exit off the expressway, and the car followed us. By now, my hands were glued to the steering wheel. My husband was going to toss his cookies, and the only weapon in our car was an umbrella.
I stopped. The car pulled up beside us. I grabbed the umbrella, and W.S. threw open the door. A sailor rolled down the window in the other car, and shouted, “Hey, where are you from in Indiana?” W.S. stumbled toward them, and let go with a green stream of vomit all over the side of their car.
I could imagine the guy mumbling, “Oh, Yeah, that place,” as they sped off. Miraculously, 30 minutes later, I pulled into our garage that we shared with our neighbor. Very considerately, W.S. missed their car when he let go one more time. He knew that he’d have to get up very early to clean up the mess before they woke up. After all, we had just moved in and this was not a good way to meet the neighbors.
I helped him up the stairs and left him sitting on the bathroom floor. Three hours later, I handed him a bucket of soapy water and a mop. Chastened, he slunk down the stairs toward the garage.
Later, when we met our neighbor for the first time, he said, “I can’t believe it. I have never had neighbors who wash a garage floor. My side of the garage looks even better than yours. Thanks a lot. Do you wash cars?”
“Nope,” answered W.S. “We don’t mind dirty cars. Just can’t stand a filthy floor.”
Esther Blumenfeld, CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld, c. 2006
The end
EPILOGUE
I was happy to share CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT with you. It has not been published, but now has been read. If I learned anything from writing this book, it’s the certainty that people who value their lives no longer ask me to bake a pie for the potluck. Now they realize that my expertise is limited to mixed nuts.