The desk is clear of work to do and Amon Tobin is playing. It should be Garbage, the album with the pink feathers all over it, because that’s what I couldn’t stop driving around listening to last night. (It’s Andrew’s but one I used to own. All of the CDs in the book are Andrew’s now and each one I like so well I should own them myself.) It reminds me of nothing and nowhere even though I know I used to listen to it. Can’t remember when.

I forgot to bring the CD in from the car. But Andrew left most of his CD collection with me until he is completely moved into his new apartment; I get to choose among all kinds of known and unknown music. This Amon Tobin I like. It is not unfamilar. It reminds me of couches and stiff drinks and strobing lights and the stupor that makes it all comfortable.

I've been away this weekend and last.

The first trip was eighteen hours there and back to Montana. Hangin’ out on the ranch with Angela and her friends and their parents.

Yes, you CAN get ticketed for speeding in Montana.

The officer was good-looking and good-humored. I caught sight of him too late coming at me the other way and watched in the rearview mirror as he pulled a yooee in the median. He followed for a bit then hit the lights. He approached the car apprehensively, bunched up like a defensive cat, until he concluded we were harmless, white middle-class women. Then he said, "I clocked you going 92 past that truck on the hill back there. The speed limit is 75. That’s quite a bit over... I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to give you a ticket."

Back there in the ellipses I muttered something to him about how we were chatting. I’ve never been ticketed speeding alone. I always get nailed when I’m distracted by conversation.

He went on to say that Montana requires out-of-state drivers to pay a $40 bond on the spot. Did I have $40 on me? No. "OK," he said with hesitation, "you can mail it in." While he was back at the prowler doing the paperwork Angela forked over some cash for the cause and when he returned I had the $40 for him.

It’s better this way, right? I mean, one of the suckiest things about getting a ticket on vacation is having to pay it when you get back. I like the idea of handling it on the spot. Then I can forget about it and enjoy the trip.

So I paid the man and said $40 was a lot to require of drivers on the side of the road. He interrupted me: "If this was Washington this’d be a $175 ticket!"

"No, I mean on the side of road. You guys need to have those credit card things hanging from your belt, with detachable keypads for PIN numbers—‘Enter your PIN here.’"

Angela and I started giggling and it caught the man too. We smiled our goodbyes. In all, it was a pleasant ticketing experience.

Otherwise, Angela and I gabbed the whole way like we hadn’t spent much time together, which we haven’t.

Driving to Portland with Maureen this weekend was no different. All the music selected and packed for listening and the stereo was never turned on.

But I miss the music as much as I needed the conversation with good friends. So last night when I was supposed to head home, and with the low-gas warning light on, I drove south on Airport Way with Garbage cranked. No associations with the past crowded out the scenery and gothic-looking industrial structures loomed beside the sparsely-travelled road. Many of the buildings have been left to rot, even through the boom years; of the ones that weren’t, rust, smoke and sweating metal are still a part of the deal. It’s dark down there too—few streetlights. No walking after dark, they expect. But in Georgetown the coffeeshops were still open and empty, ripe for trying.

It’s comforting to drive like that, which you know if you spend any time here or near me. It does feel like a kind of therapy, the safest place. And because all I’ve been seeing in the periphery is blood, such that the shapes of things remind me of the flow or the falling, it was good to focus straight ahead into the dark, linear world, without physical or social concern. It made me long for another solo road trip. I thought about the next birthday, now on the horizon, and where I could go maybe.