The most beautiful strip in town extends between the Small Planet Bakery and El Charro Cafe, the longest operating restaurant in this half of the state. It's about a quarter mile in all and runs over the train tracks and the bridge that the city threatens to tear down every year since I've been here but never does. I live a block outside its boarders. Every day I pass through the most beautiful quarter mile in town and that's how I know that it is. I bike towards the sun on the eastern horizon in the morning and back into the sun on the western horizon at the day's end. When I cross the tracks headed west, the skinny fingered telephone poles slice into the orange setting sky, silhouetted like the sleek curve-less models on the covers of the magazines that carpet the bathroom floors of teenage girls. In either direction the train tracks extend over the arc of the world into an idealist's America that only the hobos know well.
I'm saying this all to Ginny as we lay on the grass in the park, some distance north of the most beautiful quarter mile in town while listening to The Kinks, "Sitting in the Midday Sun" on her cassette player. The song comes from a special
mix tape that she's made for this exact occasion. Ginny makes mix-tapes for every occasion; cleaning, sleeping, masturbating - no circumstance is too mundane to warrant a custom musical compilation in its honor. I pass a bottle of cheap red wine and she agrees that it is, indeed, the most beautiful quarter mile.
"I get it," she says. She's on her back like me, and trying to drink from the bottle without spilling it. She strains her neck to hold her head up but some dribbles down her cheek anyway. Wiping it with the back of her hand she sits up. " So, what you're going to tell me is the most beautiful strip in town, and why is because of the view or something,"
I just made up this game, just now while we were laying here - it's called, I'm Going to Tell You Something and I'm Going to Tell You Why.
"Yeah," I say. "That's basically it."
"I like that" she says.
She gets it.
Ginny is now propped up on one hand while she bites the nails on her other. She extends them to admire her handiwork; tiny chipped, black half moons for nails. She turns to me as I begin to sit up myself. I feel buzzed. Ginny chomps her gum and stares. I can tell that she's looking at her own reflection in my sunglasses and not at me. You can tell when that sort of thing is happening, the looker's gaze is always just a little off. She appears to look pleased at the far left corner of my eyebrow.
"I want to be Edie Sedgwick," she says.
"Don't worry," I tell her. "You are."
(Writers note: Epilogue: But Ginny, with her embellished quips and holy knuckles will never be Edie, she will never even be Ginny. She will only and always be Carolyn. Her given name. Carolyn Virgina - and now Max's mother. The title most majestic of them all. How paths change, how small those most beautiful quarter miles seem when thousands of whole miles separate me from them. Though small, just as beautiful. An intensely concentrated beauty - maybe the most potent of all is beauty in the smallest spaces. And oh, how they fit so nicely and remain so vivid and intact, those small beautiful spaces! Even when our heads fill up with futures.)
I'm saying this all to Ginny as we lay on the grass in the park, some distance north of the most beautiful quarter mile in town while listening to The Kinks, "Sitting in the Midday Sun" on her cassette player. The song comes from a special
mix tape that she's made for this exact occasion. Ginny makes mix-tapes for every occasion; cleaning, sleeping, masturbating - no circumstance is too mundane to warrant a custom musical compilation in its honor. I pass a bottle of cheap red wine and she agrees that it is, indeed, the most beautiful quarter mile.
"I get it," she says. She's on her back like me, and trying to drink from the bottle without spilling it. She strains her neck to hold her head up but some dribbles down her cheek anyway. Wiping it with the back of her hand she sits up. " So, what you're going to tell me is the most beautiful strip in town, and why is because of the view or something,"
I just made up this game, just now while we were laying here - it's called, I'm Going to Tell You Something and I'm Going to Tell You Why.
"Yeah," I say. "That's basically it."
"I like that" she says.
She gets it.
Ginny is now propped up on one hand while she bites the nails on her other. She extends them to admire her handiwork; tiny chipped, black half moons for nails. She turns to me as I begin to sit up myself. I feel buzzed. Ginny chomps her gum and stares. I can tell that she's looking at her own reflection in my sunglasses and not at me. You can tell when that sort of thing is happening, the looker's gaze is always just a little off. She appears to look pleased at the far left corner of my eyebrow.
"I want to be Edie Sedgwick," she says.
"Don't worry," I tell her. "You are."
(Writers note: Epilogue: But Ginny, with her embellished quips and holy knuckles will never be Edie, she will never even be Ginny. She will only and always be Carolyn. Her given name. Carolyn Virgina - and now Max's mother. The title most majestic of them all. How paths change, how small those most beautiful quarter miles seem when thousands of whole miles separate me from them. Though small, just as beautiful. An intensely concentrated beauty - maybe the most potent of all is beauty in the smallest spaces. And oh, how they fit so nicely and remain so vivid and intact, those small beautiful spaces! Even when our heads fill up with futures.)
