Totally Untitled


When I was a child, I believed in magic.  That things like dragons and fairies existed and that they were attainable if you knew where to find them.  Typical little kid stuff.  But there was one belief I held onto after reality ruined magic for me.  One belief that I wanted more than anything to be real.  Above all else, I believed in love.


The phone was ringing before she knew she had dialed and pressed it to her ear.  
"Hey, what's up?" a groggy voice answered the call, "Everything ok?"
"Galina, I'm having a personal crisis," Mikal began, "I'm wasting my life.  It's my last summer before starting my senior year of college and I don't even have a job."
"Whoa, whoa," Galina sat up in bed, blinking her eyes awake, "Where is all this coming from?"
"I can't focus on anything.  I haven't painted in weeks, and I'm still awake at almost four o'clock in the morning.  Doing nothing.  There's something wrong with that."
"Mikal, we always stay up late doing nothing.  What's with the sudden urgency?" Galina waited a few silent seconds for her friend to respond.
"I don't believe in love anymore," Mikal said flatly.
"Hey, I love you," her friend offered.
"I know you do, but that's not what I mean.  I mean, I don't have any faith in true love anymore.  It used to be my whole life.  It was like, my muse," Mikal paused again, pressing her free hand to her forehead and running her fingers through her bangs, "I can't paint without it."
"There's nothing wrong with being single--"
"It's not even  that.  I have no inspiration.  I can't paint without love and I can't live without painting… I can't lose that.  I need to believe again."
"So how can we get you back?" Galina voiced her willingness to help her best friend in peril, and on the other end of the phone, Mikal smiled.  
"Peter Gianelli."

I lived my life for love, until reality ruined that for me, too.  Life can't be like it is in the storybooks or the movies.  I've lost my luster for romance.  That sparkle in my eyes, that whimper in my voice, that tingle in my hands.  It's all gone numb.

It was early the next morning.  The sky was a pale blue, barely touched by the light of the rising sun.  The girls assembled in the quiet street in front of Mikal's building, silhouetted by streetlamps.  They hugged and twirled in excited circles.  
Mikal unlocked and opened the trunk of her car, a 1993 Subaru Loyale wagon, painted a red that had been weathered down to something resembling the dirt that speckled it.  Mikal had lovingly dubbed it "Josephine" the very day she purchased the tired thing from a neighbor's driveway.  The girls each tossed a backpack inside, along with pillows, a patchwork quilt, and a duffle bag of snacks that took a place in the backseat.  
Mikal shook her short, reddish brown curls awake.  She stood a little bit taller than Josephine, only slightly above average height.  Her loose jeans were fitted to her tiny waist with a hand-me-down belt and the jeans themselves were appropriately paint-splattered and torn.
"Are you ready to go?" Mikal asked, curling her fingers under the handle of the front door.
"We're about to travel over 2,000 miles to locate your high school sweetheart.  At this point, I'm ready for anything," Galina responded, shaking her head of green-colored hair and laughing.  "You know where we're going?" she circled around to the passenger's side.  Mikal tossed a rolled up poster-sized sheet of paper her friend's way.
"There.  It's a map with a highlighted route from Chicago to Vancouver."
"A map?" Galina raised her eyebrows, climbing into the front of the car, "I didn't know people still used these things."
"I think the presence of a GPS would offend Josephine," Mikal answered, slamming the door shut as she too sat down, "She's got too much class for that."
The two laughed, pulling away from the curb in Mikal's dated vehicle.  The sky was brightening and their path was becoming illuminated by what promised to be another cloudless day.  The streetlamps began to shut themselves off as morning crept upon them and the car puttered its way to the edge of Chicago city.

Somewhere along the line, I lost myself.  

"Wisconsin's not bad looking," Galina observed, glasses nearly touching the window she was staring out of.  Her bottom lip was pressed to the mouth of a coffee cup and she followed the statement with a swig of the caffeinated beverage.  
Mikal too took a drink from her cup, one slightly larger than Galina's.  She kept her eyes forward and a hand gripped to the steering wheel as they sped along the I-94.  "It's still ugly compared to Chicago."
"Well yeah, most places are," Galina agreed, giggling.  She bobbed her head to the songs on the radio as they played.  They went through songs nearly as quickly as the trees blurred past the window.  
Your thoughts are dense like a wood
I'd like to get in there and lose myself good
And so I give you this song, my new insidious plot
To launch myself at you like a little astronaut
A male voice sang the words in a faltering voice, his purpose came through the car speakers with a breath of static from a less-than-perfect radio station signal.  Mikal stared dreamily out the windshield as the song played and her expression retreated to one lacking readable emotion.  Galina picked up on her sudden change.
"What's up?" she asked, still sipping her coffee.  
Mikal blinked back to reality, half-smiling and said to the windshield, "I lost my virginity to this song."

I knew his name before we ever really met.  In the hallway showcases at school, I'd stand and admire his photography between classes, wondering how different but similar it was to painting.  When he told me his name, I thought of that paper nametag stuck under his photos.  I sort of fell in love with him before I knew him.

"Oh man, I had to pee so bad," Galina exclaimed from the stall neighboring Mikal's, "It was definitely the coffee.  We totally drank too much."
"The coffee's just adding weight to my head," Mikal groaned, "But I'd have fallen asleep like four hours ago if we hadn't had any," They met each other at the sinks where Galina was removing the band from her hair.  She let the bright green strands fall to their full length, just exceeding her shoulders.  "That color suits you," Mikal commented, admiring the bluish tint her friend's hair reflected from the fluorescent lighting above.  She imagined the colors she would mix on a palette to achieve that hue.  "It reminds me of Peter's eyes."
"Peter had green eyes?  I thought they were brown."
"His eyes were brown.  A warm brown, kind of like my hair," Mikal was now examining her short, brown curls in the mirror, "but in certain lighting I could sometimes see flecks of green in them."
"Do you want me to drive?" Galina offered as they reached Josephine, "You've been behind the wheel for eight hours."
"I can drive for awhile longer."
"It's crazy that we've already driven so far.  It sort of seems unreal," they both climbed back into the car.  "You couldn't have just called him, huh?"
Mikal smiled coyly with her head tilted in mock innocence and chimed, "Now, that wouldn't be nearly as romantic."

He would have his camera with him wherever we went, taking pictures of the things we saw together.  Sometimes I would paint and he would photograph me with my cadmium red-smeared cheeks.  We were artists and we drew inspiration from each other.  I think that's what I loved most about us.  

The sky was dark and trees rose up in ominous walls on both sides of the road.  Galina slept silently with her forehead pressed to the cool glass of the window, while Mikal's eyes were wide and focused dead ahead.  She had both hands clutched to opposite sides of the steering wheel as she kept a steady speed along a mostly empty interstate highway.  The radio volume had been lowered and the sound that came from it was mostly static now anyway.  She blinked.
"Peter…?"
The boy appeared in the forefront of her mind, though she hadn't noticed that she had been thinking about him in the moment.  Or was he only in her mind?  No, he was there, standing in the middle of the road.  He looked small to her because he was so far away.  
Maybe it wasn't him at all.  Maybe it was something else that she couldn't make out because it was in the dark and in the distance.  She leaned forward, trying to get a better look.  She turned her brights on and pressed her foot harder on the gas pedal.  The old car begrudgingly lurched forward.
Her mind was racing as fast as the car was now driving.  She thought of the last time she painted or she felt like she was any good at something, and what Peter would say when he saw her, she thought of when they were dating and how young they were but how old they said they'd felt, she thought of Galina dying that blond hair of hers green, and all the half-covered canvases in her bedroom at home, she thought of Peter at graduation and all the promises he'd made to her then, and she thought of the words he fed to her over the phone when he finally broke them up--
He was directly in front of her car and Mikal shifted her foot to the brake to avoid colliding with him.  The car came to a sudden stop, skidding for several feet into the bareness of the road at night.  Galina slid forward, but was caught by her seatbelt as she abruptly woke.  
"What happened?" she asked urgently, seeing nothing either in front of or behind them.  She turned to Mikal, "Are you okay?  What happened?"
"Um, I think you should drive now."

He told me once that we were like two drops in the ocean.  Two parts of the same whole.  
It's almost hard to remember how loving he had been in those carefree, bittersweet, long-ago, wonderful days.  But it was over for him, and I guess that means it's over for me.

It was nearly midnight by the time the girls and Josephine came to the nearest motel.  They were somewhere mostly through North Dakota.  There was a bug lamp hanging near the office door, making the white wood seem as electric blue as the light itself.
"Hello?" Mikal called into the room as they entered to find it uninhabited.    There was a desk with a thick guestbook sitting open to the middle.  Above them was a circular light with an assortment of insects gathered at it.  The lamp outside didn't seem to be doing its job well.
"If a man appears at that desk and says anything about his mother who we never  meet, I am leaving," Galina whimpered, standing mostly behind her friend.
Mikal chuckled, approaching the desk, "I think I hear someone coming, so it's too late."
"Why hello there," a short woman came from the back room to meet them at the front desk.  She stood up on a small stool in order to see her customers' faces.  Her face was round and chubby, decorated with thin wrinkles whose intensity were only defined by her wide, but irrefutably sweet smile, "How can I help you girls tonight?"
"Sorry to trouble you so late at night.  We'd like a room, please.  Just one for the two of us.  Your sign said you had vacancy," Mikal informed the woman.
"Oh, it's no trouble at all dear.  I thought Charlie would be up to take care of our late-night guests -- Charlie's my husband, -- but he's been asleep for a long time now.  And your name, dear?" the woman's voice was as small as her stature, and so saturated with sweetness that even Mikal couldn't help but smile when she heard her speak.
"Mikal Lubov," Mikal answered.  She felt comfortable enough to extend a hand
over the countertop, which the woman accepted and shook delicately.
"What a lovely name, dear.  I'm Lydia, of course.  The sign says 'Charlie and Lydia's' so it isn't hard to guess that we're the owners.  Here you are, dear," she handed Mikal two keys with tags that had a room number printed on them.  "Enjoy your night."
"It feels so good to be lying down!" Galina was stretching herself out on one of the beds.  The comforter, like the carpeting, was a clay pot-orange, and the curtains that Mikal was pulling shut were a dark forest green.
"I can hardly believe we're so far from home," she said, laying her patchwork quilt out on top of her bed, "But you know, it's good to be out of the place.  Being stuck there day after day was really starting to get to me."  Mikal smoothed some loose threads coming up in the quilt.  The patchwork was mediocre since Mikal had made it herself.  She gained custody of this handmade blanket after the break-up left it in her care.
"Yeah, I could tell by the frantic phone call I got from you a couple days ago," Galina teased, "To be honest though," her tone hardened,  "I'm glad to be getting away, too," she seemed serious when she said this, taking a glance at her cell phone.  
Mikal caught Galina's melancholy from behind her glasses and thought about how silent that cell phone had been this whole trip.  It hadn't rung once yet.  "Is something the matter between you and Aleks?"
"Well, no, not really.  I mean, he's perfect," she shrugged and smiled here, "and you know, I'm just not good enough," her eyes welled with tears, but she averted them from her friend and tried not to cry.
"I can't imagine he would say something like that to you," Mikal came to sit next to her friend who couldn't hold her tears in any longer.
"No, he would never say that to me.  It's just the truth.  I don't deserve to be with
someone as amazing as him," her voice cracked as the tears rolled down her red cheeks.
"Hey, hey, don't say that," she wrapped an arm around Galina's shoulders and brought her close, "You're an amazing person, Galina.  You're beyond amazing, and that's why he's with you.  He wants to be with you.  He loves you," she let her friend cry and soil her shirt with tears and sobs as she held her and kept her close, "I mean it, Gal, I honestly don't know any other person who would have willingly accompanied me to Vancouver for some totally untitled road trip," she laughed, and Galina laughed a little too.  She lifted her friend's chin and looked straight through her glasses and into her wet, blue eyes, "There's no one else I'd rather have come with me."
"Thanks Mik," Galina wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, "I get scared sometimes, you know?  Like, I thought that you and Peter were so good together at first.  Then out of nowhere he started acting like a jerk," she sat up and turned to face Mikal, "I still can't believe he just broke up with you like that."
Mikal took a deep breath that became a long sigh, "There were a number of reasons he did what he did.  We knew staying together through college would be tough, and eventually we just sort of," her eyebrows pulled together and she stared down at the floor, "fell out of touch."  She thought about crying, but the tears did not come, "In the end, it didn't matter if I wanted to be with him or not.  He made the decision for me.  He walked out when I should have."
"I remember how broken up you were.  You didn't deserve to have your heart broken like that."
"I don't regret it.  We had a few really great years together," she smiled, still staring somewhere near the floor, somewhere away.
"You'll always have the memories," Galina said softly, staring intently at her friend who did not look at her.  
Mikal took herself back to the motel room on the orange bed with her best friend.  She stood up and returned to her quilt on her bed, "It's hard to find love in this cold fucking world," and they went to sleep.

It started with a message that read, "I need to talk to you.  Let me know when you're free.  It's important."  An illness rippled through me and sat in the pit of my stomach.  I knew what was coming.  He said at the time that he would always be my friend.
I never believed him.

"Let's hit the road!" Galina exclaimed as she emerged from the bathroom, wearing a pair of narrow jeans and a brown sweatshirt that Mikal knew she'd seen on Aleks before.  She smiled to see them together even when he wasn't with her.
They tossed their backpacks and quilt back into the trunk of the station wagon.  There was a breeze today, not a harsh one, but a chill one that carried a few clouds across the sky and occasionally in front of the sun.  
"I hope Josephine will be able to make it the whole way," Mikal said as they closed the trunk of the car.  She patted the hood of the car like the head of a family dog.
The girls found Lydia at the flowerbed by the edge of the road.  As they reached the spot where the old woman was standing, they understood what it was that was holding her attention.  A stone in the center of the flowers was inscribed:
CHARLIE
In memory of a loving husband
And a wonderful partner
Mikal gripped a hand to Galina's shoulder and the three of them stood in silence for several minutes.  "Thank you for everything," Mikal finally said.  She and Galina walked solemnly to the car and this time, Galina slipped into the driver's seat.

They rolled past the forests of North Dakota and through the mountains of Montana.  The tops of the furthest mountains were grazed by clouds and lost in their misty conglomeration.  They saw birds fly by that were foreign to their observant eyes and would occasionally lower the radio to hear their song.  They were wide-eyed and awestruck by the scenery that expanded itself outside their little car's window.  They drove past rivers that ran along the road and accompanied the sound of the singing birds.  They climbed what seemed like hundreds of mountains with their eager eyes.  They tasted the wind and let it smooth their faces and caress their hair.  It blew in through Josephine's open windows and filled their lungs because they were breathless.
The images they drove past were unlike anything they had ever been exposed to back home in Chicago.  Mikal absorbed every shape and every color.  She painted the images in her mind so she would have them forever.
Josephine pulled off to the side of the road near a stream.  Mikal got out to stretch her legs while Galina traipsed off to find the privacy of a bush.  There was a pair of black eyes and a set of hesitant hooves standing across the stream.  A female elk had been taking a drink before the car pulled up.  She was now caught staring at Mikal who hadn't spotted the elk at first.  Mikal paused and returned the gaze of the elk, taken aback by its presence and closeness.  She was halfway hidden by the forest behind her and was clearly toying with the idea of disappearing into it completely.  Before she fully knew what she was doing, Mikal reached a hand into the stream and removed a twig, wet and covered in clay from under the water.  Crouching in front of the flattest stone nearby, Mikal began fervently tracing the twig in lines and shapes.  She tossed the stick aside and made smears and smudge marks with her hands, glancing up at the elk as it curiously watched her.  She was consumed by the air and the trees and the birds and the things she'd never witnessed in her life until this point.
"That's pretty good," Galina commented, standing behind Mikal.
Mikal turned around when Galina spoke, her hands were brown and stained with her medium.  "I didn't really notice I was doing it," the face of an elk stared up at her from the surface of the rock.
"You must have been inspired."

They next drove under the dark canopy of clouds that hung above Washington state.  The rain started mild at first, but increased in volume as they drove further.  The windows were rolled back up and the radio's ever-changing sound swam again through the car's interior.
"It's really dark," Galina said absently, "And it's late."
"You're still driving.  Do you want me to take over?" Mikal had her face leaned into her palm and she was gazing into the night and the rain, following the windshield wipers in their back-and-forth dance.  
"I'm not sure it's a good idea for you to be driving at night again," Galina smirked, "Besides, don't you think we should quit for the night?"
"Quit?" Mikal repeated, "But we're so close."
"It's midnight in Seattle.  We're still 140 miles from Vancouver," Galina tilted her eyebrows, sympathizing, "That's sorta far for this late at night."
Mikal did not speak as she stared ahead, past the window, through the rain and the night and down the roads they'd take.  She could almost see his face, vaguely looking back at her.  She couldn't tell for sure, but she wanted him to be smiling.  He was out
there somewhere, listening to hear his name.  "Let me drive.  We're going to make it."

When he ended it, I wanted to tear my heart from its place so I wouldn't have to feel love or sadness ever again.  But to lose love would be a fate worse than death.

The night stretched out for miles before her, but the rain was finally starting to let up as she brought the little car closer to the limits of Washington.  She drove with a purpose and kept the boy's face at the center of her thoughts and the road was her focus.  She could almost smell his clothes and feel his skin.  It was like he was with her now, sitting, perhaps, in the back seat of Josephine, reminiscing with the two girls in front.  Galina had already drifted into a satisfied sleep, clutching that brown sweatshirt that was once her boyfriend's so tightly to her body.
Josephine sputtered and struggled to go on.  She whined and cried for rest.
"Come on girl, you can do it," Mikal encouraged, going easy on the gas.  "I haven't lost hope."

Hope?

The word brought reality crumbling to her in the form of relentless rain drops.  Josephine, nothing more than a Subaru station wagon, was pulled over to the side of the road, door swung open, and Mikal on her knees outside of it.  Though she was soaked and splattered with mud, there somehow still happened to be a smile painted across her face.  Galina had climbed from the car into the rain and now stood beside Mikal, her boyfriend's hood covering her green head.  
"We haven't spoken to each other in years," Mikal said over the sound of the rain colliding with them and the ground.  Mikal nearly laughed, but only smiled, "I loved him."
"I know you did."
"I loved him.  And I don't need anything more than that," she closed her somber
brown eyes and let them cry into the rain, "You have Aleks, and Lydia has Charlie, and I will always have the memories of Peter Gianelli.  I don't need him to tell me about love to know that it's out there," she looked up at Galina who had removed the hood and let her glasses fog up with raindrops.  "I have seen things on this trip that I have never seen before.  Colors and images that make me want to paint."  Galina helped Mikal to her feet.  "I'm sorry, Galina."
Galina laughed.  She laughed louder than the rain could slap the pavement or her face.  She laughed uproariously and Mikal laughed with her.  "This totally untitled road trip has been so much fun.  I've never driven so far from home before!" she took both of Mikal's hands in hers and held them up between them, "Let's get the hell out of the rain."
They surrendered to the car and pulled Mikal's patchwork quilt out from the trunk.  They draped it across the front seat, over their knees and let Josephine rest on the side of the road, staring the Canadian border in its face.  The girls fell asleep here, dreaming of boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, friends, dead husbands, and elk.  They didn't think of the drive back home, but they knew that it would be a drive well worth the trip.

Peter, I think of you again, and it hurts a little less, but it still hurts.  But I'm okay with that.  I've been thinking about the way I am and I've been thinking about how it all turned out.  I am a painter, an artist, I'm a lover, and I am inspired.