It was a beautiful day.
The sun was up, the sky was blue, and the grass had never been greener. A light breeze touched the cheek, a hint of cool in the sun. There were children playing in the pool down the road. Three old women with enormous hats sat on a porch a few houses away, holding unused fans.
You looked over at me from the other side of the front steps. You had that look in your eye, the one that told stories of far away. “Wanna go?”
Before I knew my own response, I had some clothes, a toothbrush, and a blanket in a bag and tossed it into the back of my car. Your things were packed a little less neatly, thrown into some duffle you found under my bed. Between us, we had something that amounted to four hundred dollars. We were set.
I looked over at you. You knew my question.
“Just drive,” you responded.
I threw it into reverse and we were out the driveway. I had three seconds to say goodbye to the sight of my house before it went into first. The wide front door, the lazy cat in the yard, the hiding spots where we used to play. The tree you climbed up in the middle of the night and tore through your sleeve while opening the screen, and I had to give you a Band-Aid before you tumbled into bed with me. The fireflies. The buttercups.
The street was empty save for the sights of summer coming in through the windows, open because the air conditioner was broken. The door stood ajar to the yellow house on the corner, so the little ones could run in and out for popsicles. A bicycle lay in the road, abandoned for a trampoline. We could see the kid over the fence, at intervals — up, down, up, down; there, gone, there, gone. A rickety grandmother watered flowers as her grandchildren begged her to spray them with the hose.
I came to a halt at the end of the street. You nodded to me. I smiled.
I turned west.
We didn’t stop until it was dark, when you took over and I slept. We had planned this route for years, since we’d first heard of the golden land. I’d seen it on TV, and you’d gotten a postcard from some relative. We drew pictures of it and tacked them on our walls. You played your guitar and I sang you songs, always about the beautiful place we’d go. Our dreams were filled with the place, heads next to each other on the same pillow.
We drove through the night. We bypassed the giant cities with their famous skyscrapers. I kept you awake through the long, straight, flat roads that never ended. You guided me through the winding roads that took us over the mountains. We traversed the desert beyond.
We were close. We could smell it. Our skin was tingling. We were on edge. At the state border, we cried. But we couldn’t stop.
Finally, we were in the city. Finally, finally, we traversed the hills in your postcard. We saw the buildings in person, not blocked by a television screen. The indistinct grey of early morning was settled over the place. The bridge arched away into the horizon.
And then we smelled it. We opened our mouths and tasted it. We were like Spaniards; we were like virgins; we were like angels. You kicked on the brake and parked. We tumbled out of the car, legs aching, using each other as a prop. We stumbled through the sand and fell — fell — fell — into the ocean.
Somewhere our happy tears ended and the sweet salt and the water began; somewhere your exhausted body ended and mine began, all entwined in an embrace that would never end. The waves rushed over us, begging to take us out to sea, and it was a challenge not to accept the offer. The tide was rising over our heads and we had to move back. We sat on the sand, soaked, and simply watched it.
At some point later in the day, we managed to tear ourselves away from the beach we had dreamt of for so long and wander into the city. We were in slow motion as the city bustled around us. We knew we would never go home again.
