HIGHWAY ONE
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I should have called Damon. That was the grown-up thing to do. At least offer condolences. Damon had been my friend. I hadn't spoken to him in a long time and time wears a chasm on anything unattended. Our friendship had been unattended for years.
It had been a Christmas season when I last saw Damon. Christmas always puts me in a depression anyway and I was out of work again and he looked happy with his wife and little kids. He was friendly and we exchanged pleasantries but I knew I had to go before the gloom inside me began leaking out. I felt we had too little present in common and too much past in common. That chance meeting was many Christmases ago but a distance only in time, not degree. I was out of work once more and out of a family once more. My, my, how things have progressed for me. I'd like to see Damon again and this time I'd like to sit a little longer with the commonality that we once had.
I should have called. Maybe he'd say something that would allow me to say something else and we would chuckle and I'd have a friend again. I could use a friend.
A message blinked on the phone. It was one of the guys I use to work with. He had a job with a firm working on the new stealth technology and he thought he could get me in. He was a good guy and I appreciated his consideration of me. I made a note to call him when I was in a better mood and I could come up with an excuse to bug off. I wasn't that desperate. I'd never be that desperate. The truth is, it's the one thing left from my past that I hang onto and that isn't even an overt act on my part, more like a passive gesture. I don't work defense. When I see the ad that says U.S. citizenship required, I don't even apply.
I packed a bag. On a bookshelf stood an old surfing trophy. I picked it up and looked at it. It was a cool trophy. I hadn't won it or anything like that. I think Damon or Rallio or maybe even an old girlfriend had given it to me and I thought enough of it to keep it. I old enough to recognize that you can't cling to the way you were but I didn't put it down. I looked at the still figure with the wave sweeping behind him. I was not always like this, I thought. I once had clarity. I could read waves. I could surf.
I would head north up the coast. I knew where I was going and I knew no one would miss me except the unemployment office and I'd messed with them enough to be able to battle them to a draw. I wouldn't be gone more than two weeks and if they contacted me, I wouldn't claim benies, simple enough. No job, no wife, and a kid who could give a damn if he saw me.
Maybe I should have had a character building experience because I don't have any character at all, not good, not bad, just nothing. I've blown it. I've got nothing one way or another; nothing I feel the need to keep, nothing I feel the need to get rid of. Nowhere to go but I don't care about staying. Whatever I once had, I've lost.
My ex-wife wasn't going to toss and turn and fret over my departure. She didn't depend on any support from me. Smart on her part because I had none to give. She'd had enough of my uncertainties. When we'd first met it was one of the endearing qualities of mine she loved but the years had worn her tolerance thin. One more job lost. We'd been apart long enough so that I was uncertain about her. Uncertain if I was better off with or without her.
I don't hold a lot of blame towards her but the damn kid thoroughly pisses me off. I had tried with him, tried not to make the mistakes I was making with everyone else, tried not to separate him from me. And now, he refuses to look at me like the whole goddamn world was my fault. Jesus, all he does is play with that damn computer or ride that skateboard of his with those baggy pants. God he looks absurd. We never could have looked that ridiculous to our parents. He looks like a clown.
I planned to hug PCH staying within sight of the ocean. I wanted to be near the water even if it meant adding a great deal of extra time to the journey, extra time in the form of sitting at stoplights and slowing for traffic situations. The atmosphere on the road had grown ugly. The promise of open road freedom heralded by the automakers had been replaced by congestion. Automobiles prowled for clear spaces in traffic like hyenas in on a kill. Tailgating had become routine and common courtesy a rarity. SUV's bullied the smaller cars. Massive trucks pushed aside the SUV's. It didn't take much to turn people into a snarling pack of jackals; a closed lane, a car pulled over by the cops, Caltrans at work, a minor traffic accident. All excuses to vent rage. The more the roadkill piled up on the sides of the highway, the more the authorities made their appearances. And the more the authorities were on the scene, the more they felt the need to exert control. More lanes were closed. More cars checked. More agents out on the highway. More rage.