The Disillusionists cont'd...

We drove for another hour. It was tiresome now. The road was getting worse. It was smaller and not in regular use, without shoulders and cut deep into the side of a hill. A line of concrete ballisters came into view as the road widened around a curve. City reasoning dictated that this was a good place to stop, as any traffic would have a way to get by. But in reality anything out here at this time of night would not have a chance to stop. Alexis, in a rare gesture of self-consciousness, climbed over the concrete, dropped her shorts and squatted. Loose gravel shifted under her boot and she rolled over, an arc of urine sprouted up, glinting in the star light. Both Jay and I caught this rare and spectacular display and it took us at least five minutes to recover. Alexis denied everything - her ankle was probably broken, she said, and then sat in silence for the rest of the ride.

Mike wouldn't let anyone put anything other than his music on the stereo. It began to blend into one song. One distorted jangly guitar bleeding into another. Mountain peaks to the north and south of us rolled by in the dark. This road would be impassable in the winter. There appeared to be snow on some of the trees but it was in fact frost caught in the headlights. Suddenly, to one side of the road, stood hundreds of blackened tree trunks. Like skeleton sentinels, the remnants of fire, they urged us to turn around and leave well enough alone.

Everyone grew increasingly tired and edgy. Eager to arrive at our destination we were all piled in the front of the camper, peering through the windshield for some kind of landmark. Alexis was the only one with any kind of idea where we were. Even Mike and Jay seemed lost. May and I might as well have been in Tibet. It felt like we had been driving for days. Mike sat in the passenger seat, furtively smoking and habitually picking his nails. We drove down into a valley and at the base of a hillside I thought I saw a car. I looked behind to see if anyone else noticed but the other three were dozing on the couch by now, their heads bumping together at every turn. Then the road ran out of road...

This was as far as they could go. Everyone stood in the cold night air. Even Alexis wan't quite sure if this was the spot because it was pitch black and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. We could hear what we thought were waves crashing on the shore but could also just be the wind in the trees. I managed to get a fire going on the gravel behind the camper and we pulled some lawn chairs out from storage. Jay and Alexis crashed early, Jay on the slide out couch and Alexis in the back bedroom. Mike pulled out a bottle of wine, some olives and a hunk of brie and we sat by the fire to warm ourselves up.