Travelogue
Posted by Harry Haller |
His hand rests on her bare knee. Tires hiss on the pavement as the little car hurtles along the highway past mile after mile of greenery in the rain. In a broad pasture somewhere south of Hopland, she sees hundreds of sheep grazing in a grey-brown flock, their heads tucked down against the weather, their bodies claustrophobically close to one another. She tries to remember them as more than a blur, but the car rushes on, and the rich landscape, its greenness exaggerated by the cloud cover, fills her view.
Everything out the windshield is lonely. The wipers tick-tick hypnotically. When they pass other cars, their drivers seem dour, grimly pressing ahead to what? An evening watching television with the spouse in a bad marriage? A hotel bar for a quick drink before making a monotonous business presentation in a conference room filled with equally bored attendees? A nightclub blaring mediocre music in the ears of sweaty dancers packed like sheep on a lighted floor, each dreaming she was the star of her own life before going home to an empty tryst — or worse, to a house cat yammering for food?
She feels the weight of the man’s hand on her knee. She pushes hard into the headrest and then takes his hand in hers and moves it up along her bare thigh until she can feel his body heat radiating near her sex. She closes her eyes against the violent greenness outside.
The radio plays Miles Davis. She knows the song but cannot remember its title.
