Malfunction

6/13/2001

Malfunction:
Something Brake Ridge

         One time in Arizona I drank with friends in the local bar and dance club. Our party was mixed with another party at a large table, and we made the best of it. One particular brunette attracted me - she had hispanic blood in her past somewhere. She made a great show of being tough and nonchalant, yet I imagined the occasional glance of insecurity.

         I don't normally drink beer but Renee's choice was Killian's Irish Red, which isn't bad if you can't get hold of some peach schnapps or amaretto and sour mash. So Renee and I sat next to each other, drinking like fishes until we got some conversation going. Pretty soon it was obvious we were diametric opposites. I seemed sheltered, clean-cut, and forthright; she seemed worldly, naughty, and mysterious.

         Even after most of the rest of our groups had called it a night, Renee and I continued our exploration of the mind. One lovely side effect of spending my attention on her, was that a certain female 'just a' friend for the first time found cause to be jealous. That's just an afterthought, since I didn't know it at the time. Regardless, I had to leave temporarily to escort (carry) my fall-down-drunk roommate home.

         On the way back to our place, my roomie swore to me undying oaths and rewards which to this day I have not collected. Add this to your reason not to get drunk: you make promises you can't remember, much less keep. Invariably 'never to do this again' is the first promise made and last remembered. In my room I took the opportunity to break out my favorite music CD. I brought it back to the club with me.

         A half hour later, I didn't know if Renee would still be there. We seemed to click despite our vast differences in personality, but she could have been just looking for the opportunity to ditch me. She was not at our table, though I did find another mutual friend who complained about how Renee would not shut up about me while I was gone. That swelled my tipsy ego, as you can guess. And here she came - right at that moment, Renee emerged from the ladies' room.

         I flashed the CD before her eyes and gave her a bright smile. Her response was the typical outburst of Renee emotion: with a blank stare she merely raised an eyebrow. I yelled into the ear of the deejay for three minutes. It took one minute to yell which track number over the pop dance crap music. It took two minutes to convince him to bump my request to the top of his priority list.

         I returned to stand with Renee in silence. She waited with an expression neutral to me, though it turned hostile whenever anyone else tried to start a conversation with her. I watched her stoic demeanor as the dance mix ended. I don't know if Renee had listened to Concrete Blonde before, but from the very first notes of Probably Will her ears perked up. She closed her eyes and started to sway at the first sound of lead singer Johnette Napolitano's voice. Soon she was dancing as if she were alone in the world (as does Natalie Merchant from the 10,000 Maniacs, if you've ever seen her dance). I considered dancing with her but it just wasn't that type of song - plus she probably would have kicked my ass for interrupting.

         When Probably Will wound down, her eyes opened and her expression lit up. She seemed finally to act like she had drunk her half of the dozen beers we had between us. Renee visibly melted in the good way that cheese does on a hamburger. She hung all over my shoulder with a suddenly-strained tank top, and she suggested that we go up to the ridge. Our two remaining friends were all for it, and they invited themselves. (I now know that they had never seen me or her act as we had all night - you know, that interested in someone else's opinion.)

         My car has comfortable room for four, but we ditched the other two before they could ride with us. I knew where the ridge was, but not how to get to it. As my keys found Renee's palm, I realized two things. First, in the last five months I had not let my 'just a' friend drive my car. Second, apparently I trusted Renee enough despite her mysteriousness and my need for control (assuming I was more sober than she).

         The ridge overlooking Sierra Vista is a cool place. Unfortunately, to get there, you must drive for an hour up an extremely steeply graded goat trail, the twists and turns of which were only outnumbered by the potholes and large rocks sticking out of the trail dirt. To this day I wonder how my puny 4-cylinder car made it up that ridge. I know how I made it up there - I spent the whole time watching Renee, her dark eyes narrowed in concentration and purple glittered lips pursed in excitement. It was pitch black out, with no moon to help indicate the next 120-degree turn ahead. One missed twist would have meant a lovely 1000-foot roll down a mountainside. Her black hair bounced all around her shoulders in response to every bump and dip.

         Finally we were atop the ridge and parking next to our friends' jeep. Jeeps have no trouble with climbing ridges. They like it; my car did not. "Took you long enough," one of them teased with an insolent smirk, as if we'd been bumping uglies instead of clawing our way up the trail in a weak sedan.

         We sat in a group around a little boy scout fire and talked. However, despite the flames flickering and shadows dancing over Renee's golden skin, things fell quickly apart. Our conversation was directed by our friends, and we assumed roles of defending our beliefs. Every controversial point of our worldviews brought themselves to the fore. Renee grew exasperated that I could cleanse myself of social responsibility, among other things. I grew tired of her insistent references to suicide and psilocybin-induced hallucinations as effective ways to deal with reality. Soon we both abandoned the little group, leaving the two snoops to chat with each other. I went to snooze in my car until dawn; she wandered off down the ridge trail (turns out she walked a hundred yards in the dark and found flower bushes to pick).

         I roused from my light nap an hour or two later. I crept up on the extinguished fire, where our two friends still chatted softly, facing where the sun would rise soon. I didn't manage to startle them - I'm not stealthy enough. The sky had brightened quite a bit by the time Renee meandered back to our location. She was kicking rocks and swaying carelessly. I remember having to decide between observing the sunrise or watching her until she came up to us. Not once did she look up to see if I was there. When she kicked hard at another rock - angrily or what, I don't know - I decided harshly that she wasn't worth the bother. Something new between us had broken up here.

         The sunrise was spectacular indeed. Not only was the morning sky beautiful, but watching from the ridge, we were able to see the shadow of morning twilight retreat from Sierra Vista as the sunlight advanced down into the valley. Once the sun was fully up, Renee stopped her fooling around and commandeered the jeep. One of the friends got in the jeep just in time to leave with her. I was left with a tall acquaintance who fell asleep in the back of my car before I even started the engine.

         I thought about Renee's walk in the dark and her abrupt flight from the scene. As I cautiously drove down the trail, I concluded that she had felt something break, too - whatever it was we had begun to build. I was somewhat sad about that, but soon my attention was forced away from that pouty, mysterious brunette.

         This ridiculous excuse for a trail was even worse going downhill. It was stupefying, looking at all the big gouges and sharp rocks in the road, to wonder how we even made it up this abusive dirt path. I was forced to ride my brakes or risk gravity dragging the car to dangerous speeds. Ignoring gravity and the road condition, I had three more problems.

         First, there were hairpin turns every 200 feet. You know, a 160-degree turn. Second, the width of this trail was not forgiving: on one side was sheer rock jutting out, ready to smash windows, and on the other side was a thousand-foot drop-off. It was so steep that I couldn't see the side of the ridge - looking out my window, the shoulder appeared to vanish. The last and worst problem, unknown to my obliviously snoring passenger, was that my brakes were failing.

         I could feel it as I mashed the pedal around each turn. The pedal became softer and softer, requiring more pressure each time before the car would start to brake. I downshifted to second, but the road was still too steep. I downshifted to first gear and heard my engine roaring (well, 4-cylinders don't roar, they kind of meow loudly), but still the high compression was over-ruled by the steep grade. Without riding the brakes I would be going too fast to take any turn more than 90 degrees.

         Soon the pedal had to be all the way to the floor before the car would even start to slow down. If another hairpin turn came along, my choices would be simple: roll down the mountainside to my death, or ram the car into the rock wall and hope it would stop me.

         The only thing in my favor was that I had been forced to renew my vehicle inspection sticker when I got to Arizona. The maintenance guy charged me $20 to tell me everything was fine except my emergency break needed tightening. I had never needed to use my emergency break, and that was good since I knew that it never actually worked except to hold a car still that was already in parking gear. Now that I needed to use it for real, miraculously it was in perfect working order. I didn't want to blow it, though.

         On a short, straight section of road I cautiously engaged the parking brake. I could feel the resistance as the brake started to slow the car from 15mph down to 10. There was a little 60 degree turn coming up, so I waited till the last second and spiked the wheel into the turn, killing a quick 5mph as some forward momentum died in translation to centrifugal force. There was finally an almost flat stretch where the emergency brake slowed me to zero.

         I let out a big sigh. I knew that I had been riding the brakes too long, and their heating up too quickly had nearly cost me. Now that I didn't have to worry about crashing, I reconsidered Renee's upset behavior. Perhaps we had started getting into too many pressure points all at once, instead of taking it slowly. There had been no time to adjust once the heated parts of us came out. No wonder we had boiled over. I wondered if we'd ever get back to where we had been. I turned the car off and waited twenty minutes for the brakes to cool. In the back seat, groggy David moaned, "Are we there yet?"

         I have now completed purchase of a newer car. The above cranky car lasted me four more years after this foolish incident. Maybe because Renee never drove it again.