Sunday, January 13, 2008

Me and Bob and Jesse and Rosemary

So it was me and Bob (Dylan) sitting in the backseat of a big old jet black Lincoln while a pale blonde guy named Jesse was sitting in the front passenger seat smoking a big cigar and shouting into a cell phone and a buxom Mexican-Irish woman named Rosemary was behind the wheel pushing 65 down a winding road circling a steep mountain.

Rosemary negotiated each curve with a calm aplomb that belied that fact that each screeching turn could be our last while Jesse smoked and shouted and Bob was lying back with his eyes closed humming the tune to a song he was writing in his head.

Me, I occasionally broke the fourth wall of the experience and realized that it was all a very vivid dream and, in those fleeting moments of lucidity, I wondered what exactly Darryl had put in those brownies.

Rosemary, who laughed every time we took an especially sharp turn but who was otherwise quiet, kept a steady hand on the wheel; she was dressed all in black…black t-shirt, black jeans, black leather cap…something I prayed wasn’t some kind of omen.

Bob looked over at me and mumbled something; I couldn’t make out a single word he said. He fixed me with a laser-hot stare as he waited for me to reply. I shrugged and said “Yeah?” Bob smiled and punched me in the arm and then he closed his eyes and started to hum again.

Jesse cursed and threw the phone out of the window as we took an especially sharp curve with apparently only two wheels on the road and Rosemary laughed. Bob hummed and Jesse smoked and Rosemary gunned the big old jet black Lincoln down the seemingly endless mountain road laughing around every perilous curve and me, I was surprisingly calm throughout it all.

And then I woke up.

“Okay,” I said as I reluctantly acclimated myself to the morning light sneaking in through the window shades, “that was interesting.”

I made a mental to note to ask Darryl about those brownies the next time I saw him.

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