Snowy Road

There's Elliott, who strolled into the bar and my life on a glorious Saturday summer afternoon. We seemed to bond almost immediately despite him being nearly twenty years my senior. Elliott quickly became my best friend, my favorite mischievous comrade. Now, for as much as I adored Elliott, he never possessed the morals that most upright citizens do. He had mastered the chemical balance between uppers and downers in a way that would frighten even Keith Richards. Nonetheless, we became nearly inseparable for a good portion of time. He was guaranteed to be in for at least more than half of my shift on any given day. He became a legend of small town debauchery...and a fixture at most of my family's holiday functions.
I watched him throw his life away one drink at a time and wondered how deep the hole he was trying to fill was. When do you get to that point where you suddenly wake up one morning and decide "Fuck it. I'm going to turn into a piece of shit and not live up to any standard of common human decency."? I'm scared to find out....although I had moments where I embodied that attitude too...but Elliott, well, he made a life out of it. The constant party that concealed a deep seeded unhappiness at the core of his very being was a clever disguise that fooled most of us. He was always a tragedy, but never ever did he admit this to me. He accepted his choices and the man they made out of him, which was admirable in a fatalist sort of way when I first met him.

We had a friendship that was founded on our shared interests in literature, deep distaste for this town and frighteningly similar quirks and fueled by the occasional coke bender. Our conversations sounded like something out of a Dorothy Parker short story, peppered with obscenities.. We drove to Cheyenne one night on a whim after realizing that we wanted nothing more than to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee somewhere that wasn't my apartment. In a city such as Denver, where smoking had been all but outlawed, that is impossible, unless outside. It being November and all, this wasn't really feasible. I had called Elliott up on my way home from my mother's and asked if he wanted to grab a cup of java with me.
"Elliott. Whatever it is you had planned for tonight, I need you to drop. I served my sentence at my childhood home, and I need to bitch and complain, and I can think of no one more deserving of me bestowing this privilege on than you. I command that you come get coffee with me. I am en route now," I said to him as I navigated the icy streets.

"Why, my dear Edie, I can think of nothing lovelier than a cup of coffee on this miserable Colorado night. When will you show up at my door?" Elliott asked me in his flamboyant but not really gay but just as much fun at parties sort of way.

"A couple of minutes....be ready when I get there," I hung up. When I arrived, he came bolting out of the house and jumped a snow bank before posing at the passenger door of my car. Laughing at his acrobatic feat I unlocked the door.

"Hello, dah-ling. However have you been? It's been a terribly long time since last I saw you," he lit a cigarette and threw his head back chuckling. I had worked the day shift and had seen him not four hours prior to our outing.
"Living the dream, you know. Mediocrity is exciting. That and I'm freezing my tits off," I backed the car down the drive and pointed it towards the closest Starbucks. We spoke of regulars, of the ridiculous things drunks say and do on the short ride.

"I want a cigarette. The only thing better than coffee is cigarettes and coffee. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, really, as long as you can chain coffee and cigarettes," Elliott looked crossly out the large window to his right.

"But we can have cigarettes and coffee, outside, in nature. Ah, nature. Frigid, windy, barren nature. Glorious time of year to be sitting outside, don't you agree?" I shivered at the thought.

"Edie, my dear, I don't know how the hell you survived this shit all your life. I have never seen a winter. I think it looks great on postcards and Christmas cards, but seriously. When does it end?" Elliott was born and raised on the lovely west coast and spent his last few years in the Virgin Islands.
"That's a rather misanthropic way of looking at the whole season, isn't it? I see it as...well, yeah...there really is nothing I like about this season. Except wearing jackets. I have a closet full of fantastic winter coats, scarves and hats," we both laughed for a minute.
"Elliott. I have an idea. Do you work tomorrow?"
"No...we're closed on Thanksgiving," he said.It hadn't even occurred to me that the next day was a holiday.
"Wanna drive to Cheyenne? We'll hit the first god forsaken truck stop diner we find and proceed to drink horrible coffee and smoke cigarettes until our lungs up and leave our bodies to seek salvation." His eyes lit up and the devious smile I'd come to both adore and dread spread across his face.
"Fuck yeah I do. Let's go," Elliott pulled me up from the chair and we were out the door before I could put my coat on.
We drove for an hour or so up I-25 with a carton of smokes and a full tank of gas, sipping our coffee and speaking seriously about nothing. That was the beauty of our friendship – I found someone I could vent to, someone I could ask questions of, someone I could let loose and let all the ugly out in front of. I was the same for him. We spent time scheming, spent time taking each other's mind off of whatever it was that was bothering us at the moment – parents, siblings, work, kids, life. We never lingered on what was wrong with us in remorse; we laughed and shrugged it off. We thought these things made for great jokes. That's how it was between us for months and months. We enabled each other in our own personal destruction, but at the time, we never saw it that way.

Once we arrived, we found it necessary to buy a disposable camera and come up with an alias as to who we were. Edie and Elliott quickly became Maggie and Connor of Boston, Massachusetts, respectively. Our reason for being at a 24 hour truck stop diner in Cheyenne shortly before midnight? We weren't sure, but we joked about the Pulp Fiction diner scene. We played up our alter egos for the sweet waitress who kept our coffee cups filled and our ashtray empty. Elliott had a vivid imagination, a brilliant way with the English language. We spent the wee small hours taking photos of each other with cigarettes in our mouths and cups of coffee in front of us. He spoke of one of his ex-wives, about their first Thanksgiving together in San Francisco. I told him I despised Thanksgiving, almost as much as Easter.
"Oh Edie. It was great. The whole place was filled with smoke. We had the place decorated with furniture from Blu Dot, which retained the smell of burnt domestic bliss for years. Whoever bought the couch off of her after I split has a piece of my history," Elliott's laugh traveled across the somewhat empty restaurant. I smiled. Only Elliott would identify mod designer furniture with a ruined holiday meal.
"My grandma had her second heart attack a few days before Thanksgiving when I was about nine, I think. She was in the CCU at St. Joe's for about a little under a week. The family dinner was postponed until she was released. My mom and I spent most of the day there with her. We had pancakes with my dad when we got home from the hospital that night," I was tapping my rings against the coffee cup. Very politely, Elliott reached across the table and put his hand over mine.
As sweetly as possible, he said, "Edie. I love you. With all of my cold black heart, but if you do not stop tapping that god forsaken ring against your cup of coffee, I will fucking break each and every one of your sweet piano fingers off." We both smiled as I stopped my twitching. "My dear, I think you're continuing that tradition right now," he pointed down at the stack of pancakes in front of me. We laughed. We laughed a lot that night.
We left a large tip and bought an ashtray as proof of our spur-of-the moment road trip on our way out. We rode home in a comfortable, tired silence broken occasionally by our singing along to certain Tom Waits and Pavement songs that were playing as loud as we could stand. When I pulled up in front of Elliott's door, he squeezed my hand.
"Thank you, Edie. This has been by far my favorite Thanksgiving." Even in the darkness of the car, I could see it in his face that he meant every word of that.
I smiled.
"Elliott, it's really not Thanksgiving. I haven't been to sleep yet – it's still Wednesday in my mind. But, yeah, mine too. I'll see you tomorrow, won't I? I'm working at one."

He nodded. "See you later Edie."
"Good night. Sleep well," I said as he climbed out of the car.

Ginny, Virginia
has a mother in Maine
and three darling daughters
all different in name
One is called Lily, and her flowers grow in our shared garden
One is called Sarah, and she pulls the blooms from her sister's namesake
One is called Sophie, and she pulls the grass out and throws it on me
all four I adore
who bring my mom bread, pies and more
our four girls Dane, with family in Maine