I'm pretty sure we are in North Carolina

As a state worker and a teacher, I find that the best part of my job is the breaks. I find no irony in suggesting the best part of working is not working. Thanksgiving, in particular, is welcome since nothing is expected of me but eating two days' worth of calories in one meal. Annually, Amber and I throw our Black Friday Turkey Day party, which is a stressor. Still, it is otherwise several days off to relax--or it had been for the last thirteen years, as we have gone to a buffet with my family. For reasons beyond me, my dear spouse wanted dinner with her father, grandmother, and aunt, a concession a good husband must make after a decade of getting his way. Surely, it is a minor change to eat with another family.

This branch of Amber's family tree lives in North Carolina and Georgia. This would be a tolerable inconvenience, except this plan was made only a few weeks before, and Amber proclaims plane tickets are too expensive at this late date (which is true). They state we might as well drive the twelve to sixteen hours each way.

I was unaware of how deranged their rigorous research into home buying had made them. They would be better served with a relaxing few days at home. Driving all that way is not a sensible decision for dinner.

"It's not just for dinner," Amber argues against my petulance about the sacrifice of my entire break.

I half-heartedly try the Hail Mary that Amber's animal hospital no longer takes boarders, and stowing our cats away at another hospital for a week would cost as much as a plane ticket.

Amber conscripts one of her mother's spare rooms as a den for our kitties, which is more comfortable than boarding. One of our cats is already of a nervous disposition, enough that guests have assumed we only have two cats—and barely then.

The only dispensation they permit me is renting a car, so I do not have to put 2000 miles on mine in under a week. Amber feels this is fiddly and that they wouldn't mind driving their car that far, which is easier to say given that theirs is an electric and would not make it to the state line without needing an eight-hour charge when it got there. (I acknowledge that they would drive four hours for a pizza party at their former college when they had a gas car. I married someone for whom the open road is not a curse and might sometimes pass as a joy.) Also, it couldn't possibly be 2000 miles, and they aren't sure why I think differently simply because I repeatedly mapped it on the internet on three sites.

When planning out the last part of my packing, I ask if any of their family members are particularly religious.

"My grandmother is Roman Catholic, and my father and stepmother are Born Again."

I reconsider my occult enamel pins, but Amber says they're probably fine. After all, Amber is also a witch. Still, maybe baby Baphomet won't make an appearance at dinner.

This trip is not a sacrifice I would make in Amber's position, and they wish they were not making it, especially when they have fielded calls every day about the house, something I hope can be paused until Sunday.

They do not think this trip is a good idea, but they have committed themselves, so we proceed with mutual awareness of our folly. If one is twenty and trekking to see some band, a day and a half in a car is a story worth telling. I can envision that movie, though then the trip would take under two edited hours, interspersed with shenanigans. Driving twelve hours to an airport to pick up one's sister-in-law to then go to one's father-in-law's for pulled pork lacks romance. That movie's climax would have one pulled on stage for a transformative experience--maybe singing one's favorite song, maybe getting an amazing kiss as the camera does a 360. Amber and I will have stuffing instead, and I have stuffing at home.

This is all too domestic for our sacrifice. It borders on responsibility in the right light, and you know how little I could want that in my adventures. No one thinks it is a sexy romp to drive down the East Coast and not end up skinny dipping in the ocean at 2 a.m. after some cosmic revelation. It is late November, and I don't know how far I would have to go before I would not freeze solid in open water.

I rank most time spent in a car as wasted. Even having just finished a complete draft of a road trip book, I write the few scenes in the cars before getting to locations where much of the plot happens. Sitting in one place for longer than the span of The Fellowship of the Ring seems akin to punishment, more so when there can be fifty miles between bathrooms.

We will leave Tuesday afternoon after I get off work, drive to exhaustion, and then stay in the closest hotel. Given that our trip down doesn't so closely abut the holiday, this should not be too burdensome. We will finish the drive on Wednesday, picking up their sister Rebecca from the airport and bringing her to their father's house, where we will have a big dinner, then retire to a hotel he is paying for since he does not have the space to offer us accommodations and has the hotel points. Then we will drive two and a half hours to their aunt's, have Thanksgiving, followed by sleeping on the floor. Friday, we will drop Rebecca back at the airport (earlier than she intends, but we have distance to cover and not much time in which to do it), then drive to exhaustion again. Unless things go catastrophically wrong, we should be home again Saturday afternoon.

To take the edge off spending more than a day and a half in the car--around 36 hours in total--I should find some roadside attraction or spooky site. I scour the internet and find nothing that is on our route and open. I briefly consider Centralia, a ghost town above a burning coal seam that will not extinguish this millennium, but Amber nixes this, as I cannot promise the police will look kindly on our urban exploration. Also, we will either pass by it (which is to say, be within hours of it) deep into the night or on our way home, when we will surely not want to stop any longer than necessary.

Our path does not intersect with Braxton County or Point Pleasant, West Virginia, by several hours, further lessening the potential of the trip. I cannot visit a cryptid Mecca. Everything else is closed for the season.

Coupled with the water torture bureaucracy of home buying, this trip stresses us--though mostly me. Should my relatives move more than three hours, I hope they enjoy me on social media because I am going to need a better reason than Thanksgiving to visit. If Amber and I had moved to Ithaca, I planned to visit the Hudson Valley several times a year, but that is barely outside that three-hour limit. If I lived in the South and flights were not cheap, I might wish them a Merry Christmas on Zoom, understanding it would be onerous to let them suggest they would visit me.

To the point we were headed to the car to leave, Amber directs me to sign disclosures--I had already signed these, but I needed to sign the new ones with a pen, which Amber photographed and sent to the lawyer, and then had me sign digitally. Amber dropped off half our down payment to the lawyer earlier, making this the most expensive day we have ever faced--though not the most expensive we will. Just dealing with a rental car, gas, and a hotel would have been unpleasant. Tracey had better cook one hell of a turkey.

Minutes into the drive, Amber has me check their phone to see if the lawyer has already emailed back, but he has not. I hope he takes the holiday off, as we should.

Once I am on the Taconic, Amber behind the wheel of our rental car, the tension ebbs. What else is there to do but take the ride?

I have not felt like myself recently. In part, it is sleep deprivation and recovery, but my mouth cannot make the right sounds to convey my meaning. This will be days of performance for people I have not seen in a decade, if ever. I do not know the character required of me, aside from being Amber's support. There are facets of me that are not appropriate to this familial melange. Even when it is only Rebecca or their mother, Amber is changed from the person I know every day.

"How much do you want me to enforce your pronouns with your family?" I ask.

"Rebecca knows," they say. "Just use the right ones, and see if anyone catches on."

"But don't grab anyone by the shirt and shout, 'Amber is a they/them causing mayhem?'"

"Probably not."

I begin with a mellow playlist inspired by Ratwyfe and egg, then switch to a 90s to 2000s alternative one until it decides Nickelback's catalog is the pinnacle of the era. I am not so far gone in the road madness that I can tolerate that long. I switch to a station of music from or inspired by Just Dance, which leads to me doing tiny versions of the routines I know best. I am positive this looks worse in reality than it does in my head, but Amber is kind enough not to mention anything, and it keeps me awake and perky. Given that my main job is keeping Amber vital as we dive indeterminately to North Carolina, I must take my duty seriously.

Amber wanted to drive through the night as that makes them less sleepy, which makes a counterintuitive sense. It would be faster by dint of fewer cars and no rush hour. My purpose is to tell them when they have again transcended the bounds of sanity--if initiating this irrational journey has not already--and must pull into a hotel for the night. If I do not, they would be at the airport to pick Rebecca up eight hours early and pass out in the parking lot at $13 an hour after having traveled almost thirteen hours in one go. Better to sleep in a hotel, as you might get a continental breakfast out of the deal.

I understand Amber's desire to see their grandmother, who is overwhelmingly kind. After Amber's grandfather's death, she became even more precious. Their grandmother sends us a card with a check for our anniversary every year, telling us to go out for a fancy dinner. Even without the check, I would find the card a lovely gesture.

Amber's relationship with their father is more detached. I wonder if we would be going if it was only to see him. Amber might be in no great rush, as it has been years, and we haven't seriously considered it.

While I consider traveling torturous, I have never enjoyed it with anyone as much as Amber—not only because they insist on driving. (As they should. This is their fault.) I am unclear why they do not want me to trade off, but I do not want to provoke an answer that might put me behind the wheel if it is unnecessary.

"I like driving," they say. "Did I ever tell you how I drove four hours for a pizza party at my old college?"

"Yep, it's already written for this entry," I assure them. "Did you sleep over?"

"I'm not sure," they say. "I might have just driven home again."

After 10 p.m., Amber concedes that the day has been too long, and they want to stop driving. We end up at a Comfort Inn somewhere in Pennsylvania, having shaved four hours from the journey to Charlotte International Airport. It will be a brisk eight tomorrow, which is tolerable.

Like all such establishments off a major roadway, the Comfort Inn promises grander amenities than it intends to provide. It is no more false advertising than restaurants claiming the best apple pie in the world. No one is going to ask to check your work, though it is humbling that their boast is providing the weary traveler basic comfort. We are fortunate they did not brag about having color televisions and HBO.

I make the requisite offer of my body when we enter. After the drive, I would have been gobsmacked if Amber took me up on it--which, of course, they do not. Even if we had stopped hours earlier in a place with lush mattresses, it is doubtful this week would put them in a romantic mood. In the coming-of-age movie that I wish this was, a series of mishaps would result in us sharing a bed. Through the nervousness of this accident, we would shyly begin kissing beneath sheets before the camera judiciously cut away. In the real world, we have been married for over a decade, and Amber can wait until we are home and rested. Having nursed one another through bouts of depression and intestinal distress, "shyly" doesn't enter our vocabulary.

The beds are a level of stiffness that one expects from a place where sexual fluids and biting parasites are concerns. One would not be better off on the floor--one should make sure the least of one's body touches it--but it is not by too wide a margin. Yet somehow, the silvery upholstered chain in the corner having the same density as a bag of cement comes as a surprise. I am startled as I plop onto it, expecting some give and bounce. I think at once of the sex acts that have incorporated this piece of furniture--and they surely have--and how much more awkward this odd characteristic made them.

Amber drops on the chair a minute after I leave it, their legs splayed, and I suspect their thoughts are not far from mine in the matter of the uncomfy chair.

I shower more from habit and the need to be revived than a matter of cleanliness. I suspect I am no cleaner when I exit. Maybe someone ran a brush around the toilet before the last guest vacated, around the time the sheets were tucked in but maybe not new, but it is not a freshened bathroom. There is an unwrapped soap in the shower and the bottles of shampoo and conditioner are half empty, but I decide I cannot care enough about the latter to dig out the toiletries we brought.

When we entered the hotel, the hallways smelled invitingly (if overpoweringly) of curry. Someone may have ordered a lot of takeout. In the morning, the aroma is no less. There is no Indian restaurant in the area, and there are no facilities within the rooms to cook, so it will have to be one of those mysteries of travel.

We get back on the road earlier than I expected, but it is still an eight-hour drive to pick Rebecca up and another hour and a half to their father. It feels wrong that driving well into the night had not spared us from more of this drive today.

The GPS actively spites us, prognosticating that our drive will be closer to eleven and a half, if not more.

"No one travels on Thanksgiving," I say incredulously. "There are too many people on the roads."

Rebecca refuses to believe this will take as long as it will, but we cannot argue against GPS and thick holiday traffic. Yes, this is four hours longer than we thought it would be. Yes, we will be on the road for around twelve hours--which is longer than the estimate had been for driving straight from New York through the night. We are on one of the most ridiculous paths I have ever been on. There is nothing to be done about that. We are in the car, of the car. It is our master.

"Is there any way I could have talked you out of this?" I ask, deep in traffic somewhere in Virginia.

"If you complained a lot," Amber grants.

Complaining doesn't sound like something I would do. "But you would have held it against me."

"I don't hold things against you," they say. "Except my body."

They shove their hand against my face in a way devoid of romance or eroticism, as though trying to press their knuckles into stubborn dough.

By tonight, I will have been in the car for around eighteen hours, arriving at Amber's father only long enough to hug and head to the hotel for overdue and entirely warranted sleep.

This trip was planned in ideal circumstances, assuming spherical cows and no traffic. We cannot pretend we did not know better than to trust the best-laid plans.

We get out of the express lane so Amber can stretch their legs at a rest stop that lacks even vending machines. This adds at least half an hour to the trip, maybe more, but Amber needs the break if their bladder is not going to explode like a grenade.

$13.25 and no snacks

We will discover later that Amber's brief sojourn to the express lane cost us $13.25 because Virginia is for assholes.

Returning to the road, we spend forty minutes to go four miles, which always makes me think, "I can bike faster than this. I could bike to the source of the congestion and back with time to spare."

We stop measuring time in numbers--these had betrayed us by increasing well out of proportion or permission--but how full the gas tank is. Amber declines to stop to pee again until the car is half empty. I would have waited until it was a quarter, then panicked I might not reach the next fuel oasis.

After what must be an hour of traffic, the sailing grows smooth again. There is an ease to this, though it underscores the needless indignity of the traffic. It is never some massive pileup. The reason for all this traffic is ten feet of ownerless traffic cones. For all I find this a waste of a day I could have been spending making love with my wife (unlikely), dancing and writing (likely), and making dinner (definitely), it does allow me to indulge one of my pleasures: listening to Amber's slightly off-key singing to the radio.

Rebecca calls again. We suggest contacting her father to pick her up (a trip of an hour and a half each way), which is nixed. Instead, we switch our destination to a barcade somewhere in North Carolina, where Rebecca will be hanging out with her friends. I do not understand how she can have friends in North Carolina, given that she lives in Texas and grew up in New York, but we return to my lack of object permanence outside the tri-state area.

I manage to be somehow upbeat when Amber and I finally get out of the car to load Rebecca's luggage.

Though I am far from fresh-faced, I don't blame Rebecca for this folly. She is pleasant, mentioning how we might not be able to get back in the bar because the bouncer in the front noticed her out-of-state ID was expired, but only after she had left and reentered before.

After this interminable distance, I need to breathe fresh air and refill my Hydroflasks with water.

I wave my ID at the bouncer. He eyes Rebecca instead, who shrugs and slips in.

It is 7:30. Dinner was half an hour ago. We put in their father's address. The GPS tacks on another half hour to our assumed ETA, but why wouldn't it at this point? It has made only too clear that it despises us. Having subsisted on nothing but Chex Mix for 10 hours, an unprecedented migraine visits me. I cover my eyes with my hat as Rebecca and Amber chat. Whenever I peek out from my pain, I see tall billboards and a sea of lights, indistinguishable from cities in New York, Connecticut, and Texas. We could be almost anywhere. I shut my eyes again.

My only hope is that the cure for this malady is pulled pork, as Advil on an empty stomach is not cutting it.

We arrive after 10:00 for dinner. I pull on a veneer of civility, greeting their father, Jay, and stepmother, Ruthie, with a handshake and hug, respectively (looking at Ruthie, with her bright red hair and brighter smile, you know she's a hugger). Ruthie's sons are there and seem pleased to see us, so I reflect that. However, they're not pulled pork or pain relief, so I cannot promise my warmth overwhelms with authenticity.

Is the pulled pork delicious? Jay had been smoking it since 4:00 a.m., though he took it from the refrigerator to the microwave. It was the best I've ever eaten. Also, I don't know. I was starved, and it was an edible protein with Ruthie's coleslaw (which I can assure you was probably excellent). My perception of quality may have been skewed somewhat until I had my third serving, and my head became more tolerable.

We do not linger. We are due to Tracey's for hors d'oeuvres at 3:00 p.m.

The hotel is only a 5-minute drive, but getting back in the car at this point fills me with anxiety.

The hotel clerk asks if we want to spend our points on a snack or put them back in the points pool. They are not my points, and asking me seems peculiar, especially at this hour.

I cannot take how sedentary this week has been. It is unnatural to me, so against my lively habit. After a yogurt parfait for breakfast the following morning, in my designated Nicer Clothes of a fitted gray shirt and black pants, I run around the hotel and its environs to get some steps in before we spend the next two and a half hours in a car to Tracey's South Carolina home. We came here in the night, and I had no sense of the city. I do not give myself much of an opportunity, jogging around the detritus of a condemned Mexican restaurant toward an abandoned Hardee's and a functional fast food restaurant past that (who eats fast food for Thanksgiving?). There is a tire shop, empty at this hour and on this day, and then a stoplight. It does not feel sporting to judge (where am I? Is Spartanburg a place?) based on these few artifacts.

Since Tuesday night, someone scattered the passenger's seat with crumbs and empty bottles. Who would do this? Why? Don't they know I will be condemned here for close to twenty more hours? Whoever did this is the height of rudeness and should apologize.

We stop at a gas station to refuel. Though we have just left the hotel, I use this excuse to pee again--one can never pass up a chance. Amber and Rebecca fan out. When I exit, Amber requests protein, dubiously scanning the Slim Jims. We are in South Carolina--possibly; I wouldn't swear to it--and this seems fitting for Thanksgiving. I can do with snacks in reserve that are not Chex Mix. I hope not to have another handful of it for weeks.

Rebecca interrogates Amber about childhood memories and animosities, which Amber doesn't recollect or care to, but their sister needs to talk. I am inclined to sit and quietly work if I have nothing to say, which makes me less compelling company for 12-hour stretches interspersed with naps and reading.

An hour more, and we stop again for a break at a gas station in South Carolina. It could be any place in the South. When I hit an enclosed bathroom stall, I see a hole at crotch level, spackled over, though subsequent occupants had begun to chisel the hole back. As though to give no illusions of its purpose, above it, graffiti reads, "I love BBC," which I assume was penned by fans of British journalism.

What is the etiquette? Do men set up meetings to share a bathroom? Is it random chance? If so, do they have a special knock to alert the other, or is it so overt as to make the offer aloud? Do men wait in a stall until they hear a promising candidate settle in the adjoining one? If the latter, it would take an awfully long time, but perhaps not. Maybe more men are keen on surreptitious, anonymous contact than I assume.

Even with the hole presently obscured, I do not linger over washing my hands and getting out so there are no misunderstandings or hurt feelings from truckers looking for a quick rub and tug.

When we are denied a bathroom at the next gas station, Rebecca enters into a long discussion about holding one's urine and the process by which one is tested for this (having one's bladder manually filled). This topic would be intolerable if one were in urinary distress and not within forty-five minutes of one's destination.

I don't know what Amber's family makes of me, but the driving has eroded my capacity for caring. A defensive part of me would have liked the excuse for an Oscar Wilde-level riposte to their rudeness, but it would be wasted. They are not rude people, and I have no cause to be standoffish. It is not directly their fault they have made the South their homes--though I would not be averse to having them closer in the limited circumstances where I am compelled to visit them again. I might feel more comfortable visiting them than my own distant family, whom I might implicitly have to see again, and who might gossip about me to cousins.

The home is so pristine that I hesitate to allow anything to be out of order. I cannot fathom how a space of this size could ever stay clean.

I ask Amber, "Is there a maid? Several maids?"

They do not tender an opinion.

Their uncle Tom has a shaved head and an overpowering, friendly demeanor. He is the sort of man who shakes your hand firmly and smiles, and you know he means it. When he welcomes me into their home, to the degree I am capable at first blush, I feel welcome.

Tracey has a composed, easy prettiness—not one who has not known worry but has seen more than she has not that she will come out on top surrounded by love. She has strong "Mom" energy and greets me as though she is genuinely happy to see me again.

I joke to Gracie, their daughter, that I know her because we have had a picture of her on our refrigerator for years, a graduation announcement that might have otherwise ended up in a box but somehow stuck around. This is not to say I know Gracie, who proves herself to be a playful intellectual who TA at a local college. She reads three books on history and foreign relations a week between that and her classes. This claim would beggar belief, except she delivers it with a beleaguered casualness. Tom states his daughter is resolute in her opinions. "There is no gray in Gracie."

Given the election, I thought better of overtly discussing politics—especially Trump—in this company. Even if they agree with me, it isn't a polite conversation.

Tracey mentions how they built this home, that she got her way in a windowed porch with a fireplace. It is not as though I am unaware that people have such homes, but I didn't expect to spend so much time in one.

Tracey shows Rebecca to her room, which contains exercise equipment the cost of cars and a serious piano "in case you want to play in the night. You can just plug in headphones."

Rebecca can play the piano? These relations know this about her?

I was prepared to endure an air mattress on a living room floor, and so I am delighted to be shown our private en suite. This guarantees a better sleep than any since we left New York, though I assure Amber the pattern will not hold; our next hotel will not miraculously rival, to say nothing of exceed this. Though Amber's and my room is smaller, it is the cozier. Our framed wedding picture is on the dresser, not for our benefit but a permanent installment. It truly is our room.

Aw!

We have appetizers on the porch Tracey had built, sitting by the fireplace even though it is temperate as I look at the pond a hundred feet down the lawn. It is cold and rainy in New York, and some parts of the area have inches of snow. We see autumn return, though a browner version. I would not care to make this trip to Georgia out of necessity (and my mother makes clear she resents our absence), but I cannot deny it is pleasant to be here.

Amber's grandmother, shortened by age but no less sharp, says she does not want to be photographed and that, at eighty-five, she has earned the right to no longer be recorded. To her, the best of her photographs are behind her. Amber's father talks about his career leading a technical team in a company that deals in potatoes. (The company provides them French fries on Tuesdays. I ask why it is not on Friday, but it is not.)

I lean toward Amber, whispering, "Do you think we would be getting a nicer house if I cared about technical potatoes?"

Amber rules that not worth the sacrifice.

"What does Tom do?" I ask.

"He runs a chain of restaurants," Amber says. "I think Tracey does the books."

That might also be a bit beyond me.

I understand intellectually that a life like this is feasible, simply not for me outside my books becoming bestsellers and then reliably persisting in occupying increasingly vast swaths of shelf space. If one were turned into a serious movie and I had points on the back end, I would have this house, but unlikely. This is a lifestyle for people I cannot be, which does not lessen my wish that I could provide it to Amber. They would not want it or think to ask, though. They are content with what we have, even if that is not a chain of restaurants and a walled-in porch with a fireplace, with enough rooms that I get turned around.

Though I lack the capacity for the business acumen that would allow me to own a home like this, I can visit well enough; I am not an uncultured boor. The better part of feigning manners is being inherently kind and interested, which my being an author has given me in spades. I do not simply want to know how the other half lives, but I wish to note it for future stories. Also, having sacrificed so much precious time and money to this adventure, I may feel more invested in its culmination. Either Amber's family would be infernal, which would make for a funny story on recollection (so, for your benefit), or they would be lovely (so, for mine). If it were only okay, what would be the point in telling?

The meal is elegant, but I am biased. A long table along the wall is covered with plates of whatever Thanksgiving food one could imagine, all of it homemade and superb. It feels as though this is the point of the movie, that the camera visits each of our faces, following us through conversations and gravy boats being passed. It's not the most exciting movie, granted, but it borders on justifying at least a few hours of this trip.

That night, I offer Amber the shower, sure they need it to relax. They say they are too tired and would rather stay in bed reading. Under the showerhead, the psychic grime of the trip sloughs away from me. After two hotel bathrooms, I finally feel clean.

We sleep as we have not in days, feeling we belong here and will not have to contend with the greasy sausages and rubbery eggs of the requisite continental breakfast, as I fail to effectively use the waffle machine yet again.

Tom makes us breakfast, and when that seems enough, he makes us more until there are muffins (cinnamon raisin English muffins and pumpkin chocolate chip ones Gracie made), eggs, chicken sausages, and hash browns. It is too much to eat all at once, but we don't want to drop Rebecca at the airport too much before her flight. Amber and I will be on the road all day. We could do with good food and company before we endure that.

While I am packing on the calories—made more wholesome by not being road food and by being made by a man who seems grateful we are eating it in his immaculate house—I am not stuck in traffic, watching the ETA on the GPS increase in half-hour increments because someone in Scranton stopped short for a deer.

Gracie, groggy, talks about how Italy and Poland are gearing up for war, according to her military boyfriend Bentley. She notes that after WWII, Poland became one of the most definitively defensive countries in Europe. And who could blame them?

The TV mumbles about the economy and the dire repercussions of Trump's proposed tariffs.

It all feels like the introduction of a political disaster novel.

I mention I am an author in passing, then show Tom the cover Amber made for The Curious Case of the Talking Mongoose. He buys the ebook immediately, though it is a niche book. I have learned not to apologize for my books, but I am unsure he will get into it.

They send us on our journey with leftover cookies.

We get Rebecca to the airport reasonably early without colliding with the many family tripled parked, saying goodbyes.

Amber asks for the nearest gas station, followed by the nearest food to the airport. Regrettably, both are a 7-11, though I assume we can get away with just filling the tanks and not our bellies. The quality of the dining options at a 7-11 are notorious among standup comedians and stoners.

Amber looks at the food under heat lamps near the front. I consider the actively sweating tubes on the rollers and get so far as to remove a bun to select my poison before coming to the revelation that the only way to win is not to play. I pick up a turkey sandwich--untrustworthy, but I don't know how toxic it could be--and Amber picks up chicken wings, reasoning that we already had the worst possible chicken at a murder mystery over a year ago. (I know I go for humorous hyperbole, but I want to assure you that it was inedible, freezer-burned, and dry with thick, greasy, salty breading. It was a charmless, insulting chicken thigh that I could barely bite into--again, not hyperbole--and shared with Amber only to prove I was not exaggerating. That an animal had to die so its corpse could be abused is a sin. I wondered if I had somehow killed the cook's mother to deserve such maltreatment. It was a meal so bad that the idea of 7-11 heat lamp chicken is mana from heaven by comparison.)

We sit in the car in this 7-11 parking lot until Rebecca texts that she made it through security. My sandwich was remarkably decent, and I would eat it again. Amber's wings are too spicy, and they offer some to me once they have had their fill. Indeed, contrasted with the murder mystery chicken, this is ambrosia. Put next to the bodega chicken in our town or what is fried up by the Colonel, you might look askance, but it suited road food. Caffeinated with watered-down fast food soda, I begin discoursing on my two trips to Free Spirit Gathering, the idea of community, the strangeness of being among so many nude people at once, and the oddness of the drive down with a near stranger whom my girlfriend wanted to seduce (and whom I wish she would have to relieve me of some burden of being in an unhealthy relationship; if they started dating, I could have been guiltlessly single). I cannot say Amber particularly cares for the topic, and acknowledge the role of a stimulant in saying it, but it fills fifteen minutes that would otherwise be silent but for the playlist getting on my nerves by repeating songs--often songs I did not wish to hear the first time.

Hundreds of miles later, I do a quick search on my phone and find a hotel that advertises a $60 rate with a continental breakfast, which sounds divine at midnight. When I arrive, the woman quotes me almost twice that, though she is willing to knock off $20 because I have AAA.

"But--and understand I am exhausted--why are you advertising this rate?"

She barely glances at the phone. "That's not us. That is another hotel with the same name, appearance, and town."

I narrow my eyes at this ruse, but she seems sincere. And, again, it is midnight, and we have been on the road since eleven, stopping only to drop Rebecca at the airport, pee once, eat at 7-11, and deign to try Hardee's. She knows she had won this battle before my first volley.

It is bitterly cold when we wake, the cold digging into my fingers as I move luggage into the car. The final drive in the morning should be harder, but Amber is in a groove, knowing their labors near their end. We are no longer phased by a mere five hours past religious billboards and ones for shearling coats--and I want sheepskin more than the Lamb of God's blood--to say nothing of the eagerness of cannabis and fireworks.

The arrival home is no revelation. It is just home. Our elderly neighbor asks if we have returned or are leaving for good, citing the Florida plates on the rental. He thanks us for being his friends, which breaks my heart a little, as we are going to move soon--though not to Miami.

I unpack while Amber takes an overdue nap. It feels normal, as though we have not just returned from the longest trip I have endured in over two decades (Nova Scotia--as detailed in Holidays with Bigfoot--might have been longer, but there were more stops, and it took two weeks).

By the end, we have gone through nine states (New York, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Proper Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). We put 2065 miles on this poor rental car--and it was worth it to me to know it was not on my car--though most of it was highway driving. I choose to ignore how much money it cost us, though Amber says, "It was cheaper than the $1000 it would have cost just me to fly there," which may be true but not by much.

It is challenging to say whether this was worth the effort, the expenditure of time, money, and sense.

Directly for me, absolutely not. Indirectly, it was another improbable adventure with Amber, and I do like collecting these. They suggest this could be a chapter in a sequel to Holidays with Bigfoot. That we made it out the other side not only talking but happy and fond is a testament to our relationship, as I can imagine glaring at anyone who made me sit in a vehicle for more than an accumulated day and a half in the course of four. Most couples I know would have turned feral with recriminations into the fifth hour, especially as Amber insisted on soldiering on as the hours ticked closer to midnight.

If denied my work for occupation, I might have aggressively turned to I-Spy for entertainment until Amber begged me to shut up. We rehashed no relationship drama, and, aside from using data in a gulf of bars to send a form to our lawyer we had already signed, there were no real issues. It was a drive without too many expectations. I have traveled with a few people, but none without friction--which two thousand miles could ably give. I did not much resent the week after I resigned myself to the knowledge there was no way of getting out of this without wounding Amber. What would the sense be of bringing that energy on the trip?

The turkey was good, though.

last watched: Archer
reading: The Witching Hour