Free Dear Mr. You by Mary -Louise Parker Page B

we were fighting until we forgot our points. I don’t remember having a single reasonable point, and you did, you had sound ones. I didn’t know how to have an adult discussion, which I know was frustrating. I was frustrating, no denying it, but what was your point that weekend we argued all day and forgot to eat? We kept at it until we grew weak and unfocused, when finally you said, this is insanity, you’re killing me, I want Mexican, let’s go. I said yes, down with insanity, I just need shoes, and you said okay, but hear me when I say there is now a hole inside me that only salsa can fill. We made it outside into daylight, which was an adjustment, got onto your Harley and you yelled, Let’s go to that place in Malibu, and I shouted back sounds great, but I think I just burned my leg on your exhaust pipe? You said oh, I’m sure they’ll have Neosporin at the bar. We drove up the coast and pulled in,jumping off your bike and heading for the entrance, but the door was locked and the place was closed. You walked back to the bike and put your head in your hands, taking a deep breath and trying to fathom the unfairness of life, kind of how I imagine Moses looked when Pharaoh’s magicians kept coldly one-upping him every time he thought he’d nailed it by, like, turning an umbrella into a boa constrictor, or how disappointed Mel Gibson looked on that poster for Braveheart . I put my hand on your back and said sorry, babe, I know you’re starving. You said, voice cracking from the memory, that you’d only had half a Pop Tart and an Amstel Light twenty-three hours ago and now you felt like an outlaw. I said wow. I said don’t cry. You said I’m not crying, goddammit. You gunned out of the parking lot grunting something that sounded like “strip mall.” We rode another twenty minutes before pulling up to another restaurant as it was closing and when you realized the gruesome reality that they wouldn’t stay open, you threw your helmet into the gravel and raised a fist to the gods. I’m starving, you bellowed, I could eat my bike! I need chips like I need oxygen! My kingdom for a chimichanga! I started to space out to avoid agitating you further and we got back on your bike and you roared, On to that dive downtown! I raced to put my helmet back on, but in my rush it ended up backward on my face like Ichabod Crane, and I was suddenly blind and could not breathe except for one eyehole that had landed near an open nasal passage. I didn’t realign it for fear of being thrown from your Harley and I tried squeezing you and yelling over the wail of your bike that I needed air, but you thought I was being comforting and called out not to worry, the next place wouldhave your combo plate or you would decapitate someone. As you slowed, pulling into the parking lot, I reached up to shift the helmet so I would not lose consciousness and gave a thumbs-up in victory when you cried out that God was on your side, they were open! I let out a muffled “hurlgraah!” from inside the helmet as you lurched forward into a parking spot, jerking me so violently that I stabbed myself in the shoulder with my thumb, but I was so happy to take off my helmet and see dimension in front of me, and shapes, that I did a kind of crippled sideways skip toward the restaurant. As we entered, the host looked at me with concern and said buenas noches , is señorita in fine shape tonight? He was staring at my hair, which had gone stiff from the wind and nearly horizontal from my body. I said sí , as you pulled me toward a table, and the waiter appeared and we ordered. I began to wonder what was sticking to my calf so I held a candle from the table to my leg and saw that my leg was stuck to my leg, the exhaust burn had grown to the size of a Kinder Egg. I said one sec babe and dragged my leg behind me to the bar, but couldn’t remember the word for blister in Spanish. I managed to hit on something like Mister, this old leg is hot and inside is the queso