Hallelujah's Are Optional

The road between Las Vegas and Los Angeles is long and open. You can see the few casino stops in between from miles away and there aren't any gas stations with the exception of a few. Last Thursday night before we went to LA to celebrate my best friend's twenty fifth birthday, my car was broken into. Instead of my radio was a hole with wires hanging out, and instead of four hours of music and dancing around in the car, we are settled into conversation.

When we get to Hollywood, California, we are of course greeted by traffic, then my best friend outside her small apartment. We eat at a cafe nearby, and he orders the best friend chicken I've ever begged for bites of in my entire life. Things are defined in palm trees and red, marble stars. We have some drinks and prepare for a day on the beach in Santa Monica, California.

We are visiting the LA area for my cousin's wedding as well, which is in Riverside on Saturday night. I start thinking about seeing my parents, who aren't too happy about my recent move out west. At first I didn't tell them about my plans to stay in Las Vegas for a little while and the last time we talked things were pretty tense. Moving across the country at the risk of your heart doesn't make any sense when having a job and making things practical are all that seem to matter. Decisions aren't supposed to be made like this and things are supposed to be back in an apartment in Charlottesville, getting ready for my job to pick back up again. But I'm not there.

The water in Santa Monica is a perfect chilly-cold, like swimming in a lake up in the mountains. I look over at him while we are all swimming, thinking back to those mountains where we first met and became friends. And how we barely knew each other before I moved up to Boston, but how over the next couple of years we would see each other over holidays and graduations and vacations. And now, from those mountains, we are diving into the waves in the Pacific Ocean. We go out that night to celebrate, and the back of my legs are on fire from the sun. I can't sit anywhere without feeling their sting, but after a couple of drinks I don't feel them anymore.

Riverside, California is a small college-town-city sixty miles east of LA. When we get to the hotel my parents and sister are staying in, things seem hot and out of place. Too much time in the car without a radio to listen to and I'm not even looking forward to going to my cousin's wedding anymore.

But when we get there my mind changes. I talk with some of my family, and there's talk of what I'm planning on doing while out west. Most still think I'm going out to LA and for the first time I really don't know. I don't have an answer to what's going on and it feels great. The ceremony is warm and full: my cousin and her new husband standing across from each other and her belly six months swollen. People read poems, someone plays the accordion, someone sings and plays the guitar, and we all sing a song together.

During the dancing and music, we sneak off upstairs in the open art gallery and make out. I taste like white wine and my dress is starting to stick to me from the sweat of dancing. I know my parents are looking for me and getting ready to go, and I know that I've already upset them enough lately, so we walk back down and continue dancing until we leave. My cousin looks happy as she dances with her new husband, and I feel good knowing we will be close.

On the drive home there's a thunderstorm up ahead, and unlike in Virginia where they creep up on you and come over the mountains, we can see the gray clouds and lightening from miles away. It moves along with us almost, and the rain begins and ends over a stretch of desert. There are cars lining back from Las Vegas to California, and once it starts to rain everyone slams on their breaks. Since it never rains here, people go from confidently speeding along to hesitant and awkward. I'm just hoping the rain cools things off a bit. At least, for a little while.



Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.