Last Drive to Huntley

         Melanie expects me for dinner in fifteen minutes. Traffic on the interstate hasn’t budged in thirty-five. This is routine for us, this abstract reality of other people’s agendas interfering constantly with our own—she lives in Huntley, I in Weston, cities divided by seventy-one miles of interstate. Spontaneity is a rarity for us, contingent on the cooperation of the weather and the fancy of every other motorist on the continent. We’ve been holding scheduled dinner dates for three years, alternating cities weekly.
         Melanie has never minded the commute. A two-hour round trip in her bright red Accent is worth it to fall asleep in my arms every other weekend. A telephonic “I love you” can’t compare to the way my eyes say it in person. Et cetera. Surviving the long car rides, she says, is easy—she stocks the six-CD changer with Ravel and Debussy, Celine Dion, mixes I’ve given her on birthdays and anniversaries. She calls her sister or her work friends, chats with them about, I guess, me. (For an hour?) She brings a novel or a magazine in case traffic flares up.
         I’ve never gotten used to the commute. I hate spending the night in Huntley, where filling my gas tank costs eight dollars more than in Weston. The traffic at night is invariably worse in the Weston-to-Huntley direction. There’s ALWAYS an accident at the halfway point, and traffic always stalls here.
         A woman has all the patience of a traffic jam, and like a traffic jam, she will slow you down. Break you down. Start you mumbling to yourself, fiddling with the power windows in a futile dance of up-and-down, trying to get comfortable, too warm this minute, too cool the next. Above all, tonight is a surrender. Melanie won’t move so far from work for a boyfriend, but she would for a fiancé. If Melanie is The One, and she insists that she is, then I want her to move to Weston, and then our commute will be her problem.
         I’ve been neck-and-neck with the same silver Camry for a while. The driver is waving a hand to get my attention. I roll down my window. “Yeah?”
         He nods his head toward the dense chain of cars before us. “Jesus,” he says. “Can you see anything?”
         I stretch out the driver’s side window. Several car lengths ahead, I see, I think, an array of lights, red and blue. “Maybe some cops,” I tell the guy. “It’s probably rubbernecking slowing us down.”
          “Jesus,” he says again. He slaps his palm, hard, against his dashboard. ”Damn,” he elaborates. “This is the wrong day for this, you know?”
         I nod sympathetically. “It’s the wrong day for me, too.”
         The guy reaches where I can’t see, comes up with a twenty-dollar bill and the beginning of a smile. “Twenty dollars says this is a worse day for me to be late than it is for you, yeah?”
          “Yeah, okay.” Fun guy. I reach into my jacket pocket for twenty dollars and the ring box. “I was going to propose to my girl tonight,” I tell him, showing him the solitaire. “She’s probably waiting for me with dinner. I’m not brave enough to call just yet.”
         He nods appreciatively. “Nice. But”—here he holds up his cell phone to display an image I can’t really see at this distance—“meet my kid. Two hours old. I was supposed to be the birthing coach.”
         I stretch out an arm to hand over the twenty dollars. “Congratulations.”
          “You, too. Nice girl? Pretty understanding about this kind of stuff?”
         I shrug. “She’s used to it. I always get stuck in a knot like this, driving to Huntley. She’ll keep it warm for me.” I glance down at my sleeping cell phone and decide to turn it on in five minutes. She won’t stay mad. The ring will be a better apology than the real apology.
          “Is she pretty?” the guy wants to know.
         In my wallet I’ve got a picture, which I hand over. It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen of Melanie: her olive skin is clear, her dark eyes sparkle. Her vivid red hair, a genetic gift from some Scottish ancestor, and which she usually wears straightened to elbow length, is picked out into a soft Afro burnished blond at the ends.
         He examines her and whistles. “Wow,” he says. “That hair.”
          “It’s my favorite thing about her,” I agree. I’m not sure that it’s true, but I sense that it should be. I prefer the parts the headshot doesn’t show, and I always like them better at the start of a weekend than by the end. Everyone comments on her hair, though, so unusual, such a bold accent to her standard, pretty face.
         He passes the picture back over. “So are you ready for this?”
         I don’t have to answer; my lane starts moving. I manage a quick salute before pulling forward, away from my temporary friend. My annoyance toward the rubberneckers dissolves as I drive past the problem—an accident, yes, right there at that most treacherous of spots, and a bad one from the looks of it—and give in to my own temptation, slowing down for one good look. I see a crew of paramedics, two mangled cars, female bodies on stretchers, a flash of vivid color. I accelerate and merge into one of the newly opened lanes, grateful for this freedom of movement.
         Crossing over into Huntley, I remember to turn on my cell phone. It registers two voicemails and a text message. I press the button and read the text, from Melanie.

I know it’s your weekend, but I’ll spare you the drive. I’ll come to Weston after work. See you tonight!

         I want to be annoyed, but I’m too uneasy to sustain the feeling. I start looking for an exit, any exit, bracing myself to pass it again in the opposite direction, the accident, that red car, that second motionless body with its bright hair.