The Meet Cute
by (Hidden)
“K-J-R Seattle, Channel 95,” Bluebug’s radio speaker sang out cheerfully, cutting through the hum of the VW’s engine whine. Then came The Doors—that opening guitar, Morrison’s voice dropping low and prophetic: “This is the end, my only friend, the end...”
My hands tightened white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
Thinking about Hawkeye. Crazy motherfucker. The LT would get pissed at him because he would play that fucking song over and over on his portable tape deck he’d bought in Bangkok on his R and R. The song would echo night after night until we were all sick of it. Smitty finally stole the cassette one night during Charlie’s nightly mortaring—just grabbed it and chucked it into the darkness. The LT thought the song hurt morale. Maybe it did. But that fucking mortar interrupting our precious sleep hurt more.
The DJ’s voice came back, morning chipper. “Hello, all you lovers out there! It’s Friday, February 14th, 1969—Valentine’s Day. Your special day. Let’s get your morning started with a little something from the Beatles. Here’s ‘Lady Madonna.’”
“Lady Madonna. Children at your feet.” Paul McCartney’s voice filled the car.
Valentine’s Day. Fuck me. A year ago, I’d been outside Kon Tum, Viet Nam, sitting tired and dull in the red dirt of the airfield, listening to Armed Forces Radio playing from the mechanics’ shop, waiting for a chopper to take me to Saigon and then back to the world. Utterly thankful to still be in one piece after my stupid decision to extend my tour for thirty days to get an early out. Turned out that while being short and out in the field was a bad trip, deciding to extend a week before Tet kicked off was brutal.
I shook my head and repeated what the doctor at the VA told me. “Sergeant, you just got a case of nerves from the transition. It’s a big jump from the Central Highlands back to civilian life. Give it time, get back to a routine, and it’ll pass.”
So stop it. Forget it. Get your shit together.
At Snoqualmie Summit, I decided I needed a piss break and coffee. Bluebug’s heater, always a hit-or-miss thing, was barely working. My feet had gone numb fifteen minutes out of North Bend.
I saw the girl as I walked out with my to-go coffee.
She was pacing around, muttering to herself while the February wind whipped her long dark hair across her face in tangled streamers. She wore a field jacket and a bright red scarf. The jacket was way too big for her. She had her arms wrapped tight around herself, hands disappearing into the sleeves.
It was starting to snow. Not the fat, lazy flakes of a Christmas card, but hard, windblown blizzard snow that stung when they hit exposed skin.
The girl was a small, forlorn figure, and something in my chest tightened. Not attraction, though she was pretty in an unpolished way—no makeup, freckles visible across her nose and cheeks. Maybe it was because she looked young. Maybe it was just that I had a thing about people left behind.
Fuck.
“Hey,” I called out, “You okay?”
She turned, and I could see her eyes were red-rimmed, her nose pink from crying or cold or both. “No,” she said flatly. “I got in a fight with my boyfriend. The asshole left me here.” Her voice cracked on the word “asshole,” revealing that she’d been crying not long ago and might start again.
I glanced around the parking lot. It was packed with cars with ski racks on top, a semi idling near the gas pumps. All white and gray and the sound of wind.
“Left you? As in drove away?”
“As in drove away, yeah.” She wiped at her nose with her sleeve. “We were supposed to be going to Spokane together for the weekend. Happy Valentine’s Day to me.”
I took a sip of my coffee, considering. The smart thing would be to tell her to call someone from inside, wish her luck, and keep driving. I had my own shit to deal with. But the wind gusted again, she hunched deeper into the field jacket, and I heard myself saying, “Well, if you’re headed east, I can give you a ride.”
She looked at me warily. “Yeah?”
“Sure,” I said, gesturing toward my Bug with the coffee cup. “Bluebug’s not much, but she runs.”
The girl walked closer, leaning down to peer through the passenger window at the cluttered interior. A duffle bag lay across the back seat, a balled-up sweater, a green blanket, and empty Styrofoam coffee cups rolling on the floor.
She smiled. “Miss Bluebug, huh? Okay. Sure. Thank you.”
“My little sister named her. I’m Joe,” I said.
“Sarah.” She pulled the door open and climbed in, bringing cold air and snow with her. She had a small backpack that she held on her lap.
I got in and set my coffee between my legs. Bluebug’s engine turned over after a moment of protest. I pulled back onto Highway 90, heading east into the blizzard.
For a while, neither of us spoke. On the radio, the Beatles gave way to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary,” then to some news about Nixon’s inauguration last month, then to an ad for McKay Ford.
The girl, Sarah, stared out the window at the white-covered pines sliding past.
“So,” she finally said, “Spokane, huh? You from Seattle?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Heading to Montana. Thinking about going to school in Missoula.”
She nodded like that made perfect sense. Maybe it did. “Why Montana?”
“No idea, just wanted to get out of Seattle.”
Sarah smiled a little at that—the first real expression I’d seen from her. “Yeah. I get that.”
The blizzard was getting heavier. I leaned forward, peering through the windshield as the wipers struggled to keep up. It was going to be a long drive if it kept snowing like this.
I noticed her shivering. “You warm enough? I got a blanket in the back.” I reached around without looking and grabbed a tattered blue blanket, handing it to her.
“Thanks.” She tucked it around her legs.
The road curved ahead, white and uncertain, disappearing into the falling snow. I gripped the wheel and drove on, two strangers heading east into a blizzard.
For the first few miles, Sarah was quiet, just holding the blanket around her legs and staring out at the snow. The wipers made their rhythmic squeak across the windshield. Then, like a dam breaking, she started talking.
“I’m an idiot,” she blurted out.
I glanced over at her. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She laughed bitterly. “I always do that. Pick the wrong guy. Every single time. You’d think I’d learn, right? But no, not me. I’ve got a gift for finding assholes.”
“What kind of assholes?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the road.
“Oh, you know. Losers. Musicians, mostly. Guys with guitars and big dreams and no money.” She pulled the blanket tighter. “First one, Derek, he was a bass player in a band called The Electric Prophets. But I thought he was deep, you know? Sensitive. Turns out he was just a jerk and a thief.”
“He take your money?”
“Three hundred dollars.” She said it flatly, like she’d come to terms with the loss. “I was saving up. Had it in a coffee can in my sister’s and my apartment. He knew about it. One day I came home and he was gone. The can was empty. Left me a note that said, ‘I’ll pay you back, babe.’ Sure, Derek. I’m holding my breath.”
I shook my head. “That’s shitty.”
“I know, right?” She laughed again, and this time there was a little more humor in it. “My mom says I have a radar for losers. My sister Julie says I’m a masochist. I think I’m just dumb.”
“I doubt you’re dumb,” I said. “Maybe ... just optimistic.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.” She turned to look at me. “What about you? You got anybody?”
“Nope.”
“Smart man.”
We drove in silence for a moment. The snow was letting up a little, and I could see the road better. I relaxed a bit. A green highway sign flashed past: Cle Elum 15 miles.
“What are you gonna major in at Missoula?”
I hesitated. I hadn’t really thought about it much. “No clue. Maybe forestry. Something that keeps me outside.”
“Forestry.” She seemed to consider this. “That’s good. Better than sitting in an office.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“I’m going to be a writer,” Sarah said suddenly, like she’d been waiting to tell someone. “Fiction. Novels, maybe. Or short stories. I don’t know yet.”
“Yeah? You any good?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I was going to Gonzaga. Was there for two years. English lit. But then I met Derek. He convinced me to drop out and move to Seattle. Said we were going to be artists together. He had a place in the Fremont.” She rolled her eyes.
“You thinking about going back? To Gonzaga?”
“Maybe. I could live with my sister. Maybe I’ll go back in the fall.”
“I bet you’ll make it okay,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. You just seem like the kind of person who lands on her feet.”
Sarah was quiet for a moment. “I don’t feel like it most of the time.”
The highway stretched ahead of us, straighter now as we came down the eastern side of the pass. The snow had mostly stopped, and patches of blue were starting to show through the clouds.
“What do you want to write about?” I asked.
“People, mostly. Regular people in weird situations. I like figuring out why people do what they do, you know? What makes them tick.” She turned to me. “Like right now. Why’d you stop for me? You don’t know me. I could be crazy.”
“Are you?”
“Yes, absolutely,” she grinned. It transformed her face. “But that’s not the point. Most people wouldn’t have stopped. You could’ve just kept driving.”
I shrugged. “You looked cold.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t elaborate, and after a moment, she let it go.
“You’re quiet,” she observed.
“Yeah.”
“I like that. Most guys I know never shut up. They’re always performing, you know? Always on. It’s exhausting.” She settled deeper into the seat. “You’re restful.”
I almost laughed at that. Restful. If she only knew what was going on in my head most of the time.
“You hungry?” I asked. “We could stop in Ellensburg and get some lunch.”
“Starving, actually. Jeff and I were supposed to have breakfast, but we had the fight instead.”
“What was the fight about?”
“He wanted me to lend him money. Again. I said no. He called me selfish. I called him a parasite. It escalated from there.” She sighed. “Honestly, I should thank him. If he’d taken me all the way to Spokane, I probably would’ve forgiven him by the time we got there. I always do. This way, I’m done. Really done.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” She nodded to herself. “Yeah, it is.”
We stopped for lunch at the Cottage Cafe. Inside, it was nice and warm. We slid into a booth by the window. A waitress with a beehive hairdo and a name tag that said “Debbie” brought us menus and coffee without asking.
“You kids know what you want?” Debbie asked, pencil poised over her order pad.
“Burger and fries,” I said.
“Same,” Sarah added. “And can I get a chocolate shake?”
“You bet, hon.”
When she walked away, Sarah wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and smiled at me. “This is nice. Weird, but nice.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, this morning I woke up thinking I was going to have a romantic trip with my boyfriend. Now I’m having lunch with a stranger who’s driving me to Spokane.” She took a sip of coffee. “Trippy kismet.”
“Yeah,” I agreed although I had no idea where she was going with this.
“Tell me something about you,” Sarah said. “Something real. Not just ‘I’m going to school in Montana.’ Something that matters.”
I thought about it. I could tell her about the mud and the heat. How the monsoon felt like it could drown you, about Peterson and Smitty and Curtis, about how I couldn’t seem to sleep, how I couldn’t relate to normal people anymore.
But I didn’t.
“I like mornings,” I said. “Early mornings, just before the sun rises. When everything’s quiet and the world feels ... new. Like you could be anyone. Do anything.”
Sarah studied me for a moment, her head tilted. “That’s nice. Poetic, even.”
I laughed. “I’m full of surprises.”
“I’m starting to see that.”
The food came, and we ate and talked. Sarah told me about her cousin Linda, who married her high school sweetheart and seemed perfectly happy in a way she couldn’t quite understand. She talked about the stories she wanted to write—about people trying to figure out where they fit. She told me about her dad, who died when she was twelve, and how her mom had lost her joy.
I mostly listened, but I found myself offering little pieces of myself in return, about growing up in Ballard. About my dad and mom and my little sister.
I didn’t mention the other shit.
And somehow, as we talked, the conversation shifted. She started joking about her terrible taste in men, turning the stories into comedy routines. She did an impression of a guy named Jeff, who was an artist trying to explain his “artistic vision,” that had me laughing.
“And then,” she said, barely able to get the words out through her own laughter, “he told me that true artists don’t believe in capitalism. Meanwhile, I’m working double shifts at Andy’s Diner to keep us from getting evicted.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him that true artists also don’t believe in mooching off their girlfriends, and maybe he should try getting a job.” She grinned. “That’s when he left me.”
“Good riddance.”
“Exactly.” She stabbed a french fry into ketchup. “You know what? I feel better. How weird is that?”
“Not weird at all.”
We finished our food. I paid, insisting on it when Sarah tried to split the bill. Back in Bluebug, with to-go coffee in Styrofoam cups, cigarettes lit and the day stretching ahead of us, the mood had shifted completely.
The road unwound, the snow-covered landscape giving way to brown hills and scattered pines. The radio played on—Janis Joplin now, her voice raw and lonely about Bobby McGee.
Sarah sang along quietly, sweet sounding.
I drove and realized that I felt good. Light. Just two people heading east, leaving the past behind, mile by mile.
Companionable.
Sarah was quiet for a moment, looking out at the landscape rolling past, and then she turned to me with a mischievous smile that made her look the same age as my little sister.
“You know,” she said, “you picking me up like that—that’s a perfect meet-cute.”
I glanced over at her. “A what?”
“A meet-cute. You know, like in the movies. When two people meet in a charming, unexpected way. One of the keys to a good romance novel. Boy meets girl in an adorable, quirky situation that they’ll tell people about later.”
“Adorable?” I raised an eyebrow. “You were stranded in a snowstorm after your boyfriend ditched you.”
“Exactly! It’s dramatic. Romantic, even.” She turned sideways in her seat, tucking one leg under her. “Think about it. Handsome stranger in a blue VW Bug stops to rescue a damsel who was freezing to death in a blizzard on a mountain pass on Valentine’s Day. You can’t write it better than that.”
“Handsome, huh?”
She blushed a little. “Don’t let it go to your head. I’m just saying, objectively speaking, if this were a movie, this is exactly how the two lovers would meet.”
I felt something warm spread through my chest, something I hadn’t felt in so long I’d almost forgotten what it was. More lightness.
Odd.
“You mean like a ‘How I Met Your Mother’ story? My dad will talk your leg off on how he and my mom met.”
“Yes!” Sarah clapped her hands together. “Exactly! Like you’re telling a story to our kids: ‘Okay, kids. Settle down and I’ll tell you about how I met your mom. She was standing outside Smitty’s Pancake House in a blizzard because some jackass left her there on Valentine’s Day.’”
I laughed, and it felt strange. I had the sudden thought that I hadn’t laughed in a long time.
She grinned. “The story would get better every time you’d tell it. By the time our grandkids come along, you’d have to fight off a band of timber wolves to save me.”
“Timber wolves?”
“Ravening beasts they were.” She was really getting into it now, gesturing with her hands. “And then you say, ‘I took one look at your grandmother standing there in that red scarf, and I knew. I just knew she was the one.’”
“Wow, I was such an impulsive fool.”
“You were always a hopeless romantic. We were together for three hours. Plenty of time. Love at first sight is a thing, you know.”
“You’re definitely going to be a great writer.”
She settled back in her seat, thinking. “The point is, this is a great meet-cute. The kind of thing people remember.”
I was quiet for a moment, feeling an expanding warmth in my chest. Things had been so heavy for so long. Now here was this girl making me feel ... something. I shied away from defining it.
“So in the story,” I said, “what happens next? After the meet-cute?”
Sarah looked over at me, and something shifted in her expression. The playfulness was still there, but underneath it was something more serious.
“Well,” she said, “they fall in love, obviously. There’s certain to be some misunderstanding in the middle—she thinks he’s just being nice, he thinks she’s not interested. Classic romantic comedy stuff. But then they figure it out, and they live happily ever after. I’m an optimist. Also a writer. I like a good story arc.” She paused. “What about you? What do you think happens next?”
“No idea.”
“Okay, let’s brainstorm,” she said, turning to face me. “What are their names? Our kids, I mean.”
My mind went blank. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
She looked out at the rolling hills, thinking. I could see her reflection in the window, the way she bit her lower lip when she concentrated. “Jude,” she said finally. “The boy is Jude. After the Beatles song.”
“‘Hey Jude,’” I sang softly, getting into it. My voice cracked a little on the high notes. “Don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.” I nodded. “Yeah. Jude. I like that. And our little girl?”
“Penny.” She said it with certainty, like the name had been waiting for her all along. “Penny Lane, because of the other Beatles song. Because she’s going to be bright and shiny.”
“Jude and Penny,” I repeated, testing the names out. They felt real, like I was already calling them to come down for dinner. “Okay. We’re married, we have two kids. Back up for a minute, when did we get married?”
“Today, of course,” she said. “That’s the story. You picked me up on Valentine’s Day 1969, and we decided right there to just go ahead and do it. Drive to the courthouse in Spokane and get married.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. By the time we got to Spokane, we knew we would be spending our whole lives together.”
I felt something electric run through me. Something dangerous and wonderful. I forced my mind away from thinking about what it meant.
We continued to drive along, the snowstorm left behind. The sky had turned deep, endless blue.
“Okay,” I said. “So, we get married in Spokane. What was the wedding like”
Sarah looked down at her oversized field jacket and laughed. “I was wearing a yellow sundress decorated with butterflies. I had a dress like that when I was a little girl.” She was smiling like it was already a memory. “I was scared but happy.”
“We’re broke?”
“Oh yes. But we don’t care. We’re young and in love. You get a job with your friend Jeff, who is a drywall guy. I work part-time and go to finish my degree, Maybe Elementary Ed. I write part time”
After a bit of thoughtful silence, she started again.
“We get a crappy apartment. One bedroom, a bathroom with weird yellow tile, a shower that barely works, and hot water that only lasts about five minutes. But there’s this window in the kitchen that gets morning light, and you—” she pointed at me, “—you try to grow tomatoes on the fire escape even though everyone tells you it’s too cold.”
“Do they live?”
“Two survive. We eat them in August with salt and pepper, and they’re the best tomatoes we’ve ever tasted. You take a picture of me with juice running down my face. You keep it in your wallet.”
“What about friends?”
“Of course we have friends. There’s...” She paused, thinking. “There’s Bill and his girlfriend Cheryl. Bill works with you. He’s got this ridiculous beard, and he plays the banjo. Badly. And there’s my friend from English Lit class, Rebecca. She smokes pot and writes bad poetry about butterflies and meadows. She hates the war and Lyndon Johnson.”
I flinched at Lyndon Johnson and hating the war, but forced myself to keep smiling. “Rebecca sounds a little intense.”
“She is. You don’t like her much at first. You think she’s pretentious. But then one night we’re all drinking cheap wine, and she recites this poem about her father dying, and you realize she might be pretentious; but she’s mostly sad. After that, you warm up to her.”
“What about Bill? What’s he like?”
“I love Bill. He’s like a big teddy bear. And Cheryl’s sweet. We become best friends. She’s the one I call when I find out I’m pregnant with Jude.”
“Are you happy about the baby coming?”
“I’m really scared to tell you at first,” Sarah said, her voice softer now. “Because we’re barely making rent, and we’re so young, and what do we know about raising a kid? But I make spaghetti for dinner—it’s the only thing I can cook. And we sit down; I just say it. ‘I’m pregnant.’”
“What do I do?”
She was quiet for a moment, looking out the window. I realized we’d crossed some line. We weren’t just making up a story anymore. We were asking each other real questions, using the fantasy as a safe space for truth.
“You don’t say anything at first,” she said finally. “You just sit there with your fork halfway to your mouth. I’m sure you’re going to leave me like everybody else always does. But then you put the fork down, and you come around the table, and you hug me. What do you think you are feeling about it?”
I felt my throat tighten. I could see it so clearly. The yellow tile bathroom. Sarah on the floor. The weight of that moment. I would have been willing and ready to move mountains for our little family.
“I’m scared. But I don’t show it. I know I have to man up and be strong for our little family. The next day, I come home from work with a baby mobile—one of those macramé ones with little wooden birds. I hang it above where the crib would go, even though we don’t have a crib yet, even though the baby won’t be born for five or six more months.”
We were quiet after that.
I pulled into Moses Lake for gas.
When we were back onto the highway, she popped open the window, lit one of my Marlboros, passed it to me, and lit one for herself.
“Jude cried all the time,” she said. “Colic, right? Three months of hell. We taake turns walking him around the apartment at 3 AM. I’d pass out on the couch and wake up to find you pacing the living room with him on your shoulder, singing.”
“What was I singing?”
“‘House of the Rising Sun.’ The only song you know all the words to.”
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