Here they are on Interstate 15—escape route for gamblers, showgirls on the run, and near-miss brides. Julia drives her heart out. Mile upon mile, faster and faster. She wants to drive this way forever. A freeway sign flashes by: Los Angeles 225 miles. She remembers the salesman saying the Beast can do 185. If only she could take him up on that—they’d be in Santa Monica in just over an hour. A fat moon keeps pace with them, as if tethered to the car, and wafting in is the fragrance of chaparral and sage. Terence, asleep beside her, is still wearing his loincloth. For a moment she pictures Terence gone, herself alone. She thinks of the woman in Play It As It Lays—the one who drove all day with a hard-boiled egg on the passenger’s seat as her only companion. Is she like that woman? And what kind of woman is that? She hits the gas.
Cars have always been Julia’s refuge. Julia recalls simply walking out of high school one day and spending the afternoon driving country roads. She’d parked by a river and lay down in the grass, listening to the car radio. One of the happiest days of her life—the simplicity of it, the way the car was her friend and accomplice. She’s always driven to make decisions, to work through the tangles of life, to escape. There is a purity to it. A person can drive anywhere. A person can be completely different once she gets there. Joshua trees fly by, white flowers open like so many small hands. No matter how fast she drives, she can’t outrun the moon.
Terence wakes up when she pulls into the motel driveway. The sign on the office door says: forget about the dog, beware of owner.
“Do you think we should knock?” says Julia. A piece of cardboard that boasts color tv and towels is displayed in the window.
He knocks on the door, and they hear a cough, but still no one appears. Terence turns to see Julia leaning over the hood of the Beast.
“Are you petting the car?” Terence says. “Don’t pet the car.”
“I’m not petting the car.” But there is Julia’s hand moving along the sassy fender of the Beast.
“Did you know that in England a peacock fell in love with a blue Lexus and tried to mate with it?” he tells her.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Google,” he says.
She flutters her lashes. “You saying I’m a peacock?”
“All I’m saying is you don’t want to be like that bird.”
“Let me ask you something,” Julia says. “Do you ever wish the cannibals ate you? I’m just saying. In some little corner of yourself, do you wish they’d at least tried?”
“You two wanna talk wildlife, go do it on your own property.” They turn with a start. The man in the doorway is tall, and his twisted gray beard, which looks like a rat tail, hangs almost to his navel. He wears a name tag that reads ed bob. “Anyway, we’re closed due to no beds. Come back next year when we buy some.”
“Are you saying we can’t stay here tonight, Mr. Bob?” says Terence.
“That’s what I’m saying. But I can sell you some happiness. That I have. And no offense, but you two look like you could use some.”
Three hours later. Julia and Terence, the only two passengers on the Pacific Ferris Wheel, look out over Santa Monica Bay. Last ride of the night. Higher and higher they go, while beneath them scraps of life come into focus—a child in a red sweater running across the pier, a couple slowly dancing near the arcade, a lone tanker off in the distance. All of it tiny and thrilling. They still smell of the sage that Ed Bob burned over them. The limpia, or cleansing ritual (for which they’d paid $100), involved chanting, praying, and burying their shoes in the desert sand. Ed Bob promised that all negativity would be swept from them, adoration restored, and that, shoeless, they could set forth as the innocents they were. At the end of the ritual he quoted Blake: “We are put on this earth but for a little space to learn to bear the beams of love.” He looked directly at Julia when he said it.
“Did you know this baby runs on sunshine?” says Julia. “I love that. I love California!”
“Let’s chuck it,” shouts Terence, throwing his arms in the air.
“Yes, let’s do,” answers Julia, and she leans in to give him a long kiss. “What are we chucking?”
“The plans that do confine us!” Terence seizes Julia’s hand. “Let’s get in the Beast and drive to Mexico. We could drive to San Felipe and live with painters and ex-pats, and sell guavas or carved wood or something—we won’t even care what we sell, because we’ll be so damn happy.”
“Like now!” Julia says. Below them she can see Larry where they had tied him to a piling. He never takes his eyes off them. Julia’s heart gushes with love for Larry and Terence and the world spread out below them. They have so much to see. Why not Mexico? Why not anywhere?
But something happens the next morning, as something often does in that strange gray slice of dawn, that time of reckoning and doubt. Once again, she’s awake, he’s asleep. Julia paces their room. Sits down. Stands up. Maybe it’s the job at Google. Maybe she doesn’t want it after all. But maybe worse, maybe it’s Terence. She closes her eyes and she can smell ocean, barely. She goes to the bed and gently shakes his shoulder.
“I’m going to go buy new shoes,” she tells him. He smiles at her and it pierces her heart. The trust. She waits for him to argue but he falls back asleep. Larry lifts his head, looks at her. As if to take a stand, he pulls tightly into Terence’s back.
And so, Julia finds herself heading north on the Pacific Coast Highway. The sky is pale pink. She wishes she could drive every road in America, and then drive them all again. Julia can picture them on the beach—Larry trying to gobble up seaweed, Terence running after him. Good man, good dog. She means to turn around any second. She keeps driving.