I can’t find a to-go cup for my coffee. I’m juggling my car keys and my phone, and I say goodbye to the dogs. “Be good,” I say. They look at me like they won’t.
It’s 75F at 7 am and raining in bursts like a car wash. I keep trying to turn the wipers up, and they don’t go any faster. I spill a couple of spoonfuls of coffee out of my cup and three long trails traverse the dashboard. I plug in my phone and it plays that one Clem Snide song (1989) instead of the book I’m trying to read. A Toyota pulls up to the red light ahead of me, pauses to look without stopping completely and runs the red.
I fight with the phone-car interface and get another song, Billie Holiday singing “You Go to my Head.” On the way to the barn it plays five, six times. I sing along for parts of it. It is my car’s second favorite song.
At the barn my arm gets soaked punching the buttons at the locked gate. I am there to put sport tape on my horse for her trip up to Vermont. Staff ask me what it is and why I’m doing it and what it’s supposed to do. I run out of explanations and say simply that it can’t hurt and might help.
I stop for breakfast at a diner where a handwritten sign on the door says they don’t take credit cards. I order eggs. The waitress calls me hon when I ask for the restroom. There is no mobile coverage here. The music asks do you like piña coladas and says she’s a rich girl but it’s gone too far. Sweet home Alabama and my coffee cup is refilled three times.
She brings the check during desperado and it’s for $10.31.
Gimme the beat boys that frees my soul I wanna get lost in your rock and roll when I put my raincoat back on.
I have cash and I’m out of here, but I do buy the five flavors roll of Lifesavers at the register, and this is the ticket to 1972, when the rainbow roll of Lifesavers was my favorite.
Despite the three cups of diner coffee, I’m feeling a little sleepy when I get in the car.
The navigation software has failed to hold onto the route I picked and tries to send me to the big boring interstate, back down the Taconic the way I came. I pull a U-ey and head north without anything but a vague sense that it’s the right way to go.
Almost Every Thursday 