Don Hotey: Lawfully wedded nymph

I hesitated, then did as he suggested. I felt very small in the front seat of the car. And very much alone. I sat huddled over in the corner, away from him. The plastic coolness of the seat under my naked legs made me shudder.

He looked at me and laughted softly. "The door…"

I stared at him as though he were speaking some foreign tongue. "What… Oh! The door."

I reached to pull the side door closed, but he beat me to it. I felt him lean across me, brushing my body lightly, and his fingers closed on mine around the door handle. He pulled the door suddenly, and it slammed shut The loud sound made me jump. The smell of his body filled the front seat with the light, not unpleasant fragrance of masculine sweat

The car pulled back onto the road with a silent, unseen surge of power, and I was pressed back into the seat. My head was spinning, and I felt anxiety throbbing in my blood. Yet I knew I had no choice in what I was doing. I could not live with Peter again after I knew… what I knew about myself.

"My name is French," he said, staring out at the road, "French Crandell. What's your name?" I stared at the darkness of the road. Lights flashed and night swept by us at a frightening pace. I could no longer see the stars. "What?" I said, realizing he had spoken. "My name is French," he repeated. "French Crandell. Since we're gonna be riding together for a while, I just thought I'd ask you ya name. Ya don't hafta tell me."

"No," I said, softly. "That's all right. I don't mind. My name is Sally. Sally Bryant."

Tm pleased to know ya, Sally," he said. "Where ya headed for?"

I stared at the blank, empty road stretched out before me. Where was it taking me? Where would it lead me? Where?

"I-I don't know," I said. "Really, I don't I just know I have to go… get away. Somewhere. Maybe anywhere. I just don't know."

French was quiet for a while. I could hear the sounds of the night sucking past the dark windows of the car. We cut into the night, like a knife cuts into flesh, and I could hear the cry of the wound bleeding over the rushing car.

"Well, I'm gonna Washington," French finally said. "Dee Gee. You wanna go there? There's gonna be a three-day rock festival, if it comes off. You wanna go there?"

I thought about that for a while. "I've never been to a… rock festival. What's it like?"

"It's pretty good. Lots a good music, good people. Lots a good vibrations. People love each other.

People are nice to each other. Sharin', you know what I mean?"

I turned and looked at him. His profile was to me, and his face seemed so clean and new and innocent. His eyes were deep blue and his long fine blond hair fluttered in the breeze of the open window, like soft silk. "Are people happy there?" I asked.

"Happy?" He repeated the word as if he didn't understand what I was talking about. "Yeah, I guess so. As happy as anywhere else. Maybe happier than most."

I felt relieved, as though some unseen heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders. "Yes," I said, staring out at the road of the highway. It seemed to stretch out to infinity. Maybe over the next hill, I thought Maybe over the very next hill!

'Well?" French asked. He turned his head for a split second and looked at me. "Do-ya wanna go?" "All right. I don't know where else to go."

We drove on through the night, eating into it with long monotonous hours. For a while French put on the radio, thea turned it off after another while. I slept, woke, and then we talked together, about general things. French was a pleasant conversationalist, and I found myself opening to him, confiding in him as I never have in my life. He listened well, and he was a stranger. That helped. That helped a very great deal.

"Sally," French asked, breaking into one of the longer silences. "Can I ask you somethin'?"

I was feeling relaxed and happy. I leaned my head back against the soft cushion of the seat. My hair dripped down like pale white water.

"Sure. What is it?"

"It seems to me that you're a… little older than most hitchhikers. Not that yer old or anything."

I laughed. "I am. I'm twenty-eight. And right now that feels very old to me."

He thought about it for a moment. "You're married, ain't yaP"

Something cold and very sad touched me in the night. I thought of Peter. I said: "Yes, I am. You're very perceptive."

French turned and stared at me, perhaps a little longer than he should have, for when he returned his eyes to the road, I felt the car bank suddenly to the right as he negotiated a sharp correction. Then the car sped on, straight and steadily, as though the sudden swerve had been an emotional reaction of surprise. "How come?" he asked simply.

I knew I didn't have to answer, but I wanted to. I wanted to speak it, say the words, get it all out from inside of me so that I could examine it as well. I was reacting, I knew, but it was time to find out exactly what it was I was reacting against. It was time for the truth.

I told him about Adam. In detail, including the part about the three orgasms. "It was my first affair," I repeated, as if the words meant something. "In eight years of being married… and it was my first affair."

French shook his head. For the first time in the night, he seemed at a loss for words. "That's really… somethin'," he said. "Somethin'."

I thought about it. I said: "It was. It really was… something."

French took his hand from the steering wheel and rubbed his chin. "But what happened, Sally? I mean, what happened to make you change? So sudden-like?"

The coldness of memory touched me, and I shuddered again. "When I was coming," I said, remembering, "the third time, I felt something. A change. Like my body was changing. Like a door was opening in my brain." "And… r

"I felt myself change. I looked through that door, at myself, at my husband, Peter, and I saw that I was unhappy. I had everything… but it didn't mean anything." I looked at French, but he was staring at the road,

"I felt suddenly trapped… dissatisfied with life. I had to get away… Don't you see?"

He rubbed his chin again. "I guess so. Everybody feels like that sometimes. Like you just gotta go… break out. Git out. It's not so unusual."

"It is for mel" I insisted. "I mean, rny God-I'm middle-classed… Really, middle-classed. I have a husband, a home. A car. Everything. It's so strange… so frightening."

"The Age of Anxiety," French said. "Like the Age of Enlightenment or the Romantic Age, this is the Age of Anxiety. No doubt about it."

I talked on, covering over bis words. "I knew I couldn't go home again… to Peter, to the house. It was all so… meaningless. So empty. I had to run… to escape."

French cut in. "I know… filled with a restless urge to move, to wander. To seek new horizons, new experiences-"

"Yes, yesf Then, when I realized he was poking fun at me, I lapsed into silence. I thought for a few moments, then spoke on, with less animation. "That was it… what you said, regardless of what you think of it. That was it."

French coughed. "I wasn't makin fun of you. Not really. I'm sorry."

I didn't need his sympathy, nor his apologies. I searched for words to match my feelings. I reached out, blindly. "It was almost as if… I was looking for something." "What do you think you was lookin for?" I brushed my hair away from my face, as if I were brushing cobwebs from my brain. "I… I don't know. Escape, maybe. Happiness? I don't know." French snorted. "Happiness?" "Why not?" I said, defensively. "Life should be happy, shouldn't it? I mean, I'm twenty-eight. Twenty-eight! All my life… everything, everything has been meaningless. Life should be more than that Life should be happy."

"Why?" French asked. "Who says it should? Television? The Constitution?"

I ignored him again. My brain was racing, like the dark, starless sky that was gushing past our dart-Mke car.