Mike, with his beard, he saw in me a friend and sat next to me. Be careful, think about it, he said. He was addicted to crack and was divorced because of it. Two years in rehab, mostly it was because of Bennington and the emptiness that is here. I bought him a prairie fire. Two, actually.
And then at Allegro, the snowboarding waitress, 25, thinking about kids, her boyfriend’s older, 31 or something, so maybe they are ready. She is a wanderer, sort of tired of Bennington after 6 months; her lease is for a year. She was interested in me, surprised by my 4 martini’s and 3 glasses of wine. She offered to drive me home, but I told her I was walking. Instead, I went up and met Mike and the rest of the kids for another round, drinking red bull vodka’s and playing with pitbulls. I stumbled home at midnight. Got to the room and barfed alone. When I woke up I was broken and the room smelled sad and I wanted to leave as fast as I could. I missed my friends from the last night and regretted that last shot.
I recovered, I guess, eventually. Around 2 in the afternoon. Burlington, so much happier. You can feel the difference.
That day, I89, eastbound outside of Barre, a milk tanker crashed and exploded. The silver steel was black and twisted, shredded and against the embankment as I drove past it, going the other way. A crane was already there, and trucks waited to patch the melted highway. Al was quick to speculate driver error. Al drove a pickup and knew about these things. They usually happened for understandable reasons, like black ice. But this morning? It was too warm for black ice and two people were dead.
