using laughter like it’s punctuation, but right now she’s serious. Contemplative. I watch her lips
curve to form words. She says, “He always was a tosser.”
Tosser. Pronounced TOSS-uh. I’ve never heard hersay that word before, and I want to
hear it again. Pluck it out of the air and put itin my pocket. I like the way her teeth come
together at the beginning of the word, biting on thesound. And I can see her as others must have,
when she was eighteen with heavy eyeliner and cigarettesand a profane mouth. I wonder if she
would have loved me, had we met as our younger selves.I was bookish and insecure, the greatest
excitement in my life the prospect of college andnew episodes of Glee every Tuesday. I would
have been too afraid to speak to her and she wouldnot have given me a passing glance, or maybe
that’s the teenage insecurity talking. I have hernow, after all.
The rental car she gets looks exactly like the rentalcars back home, except for the
steering wheel. She offers to let me drive but I decline,partially because I’m afraid of driving on
the opposite side of the road and partially becauseI like when she puts one hand on the steering
wheel and the other on my thigh. We rarely drive backhome because the streets in Brooklyn are
always so congested. This is a treat. I can pretendwe live here, that we’re going over to a
friend’s house or coming home from a friend’s houseand she drives me somewhere every single
day. It’s starting to get dark out and it sets infull force, that she really is serious about this.
The drive is long. I’m all abuzz and can’t stop bouncingmy knee. She tries to talk about
our cats back home and the plane ride back on Thursdayand what museums we can go to before
we leave but her attempts at mundanity go nowhere.I watch ancient trees fly by and think about
the ancient thing up ahead and the ancient thing wewill do there.