Austin, TX (music; jeff buckley)

He has black hair. It’s combed back to front, standing vertically to attention once it reaches his forehead. It’s the sort of hair style I haven’t seen much of outside of high school, but his tie clip means business. His shoes are missing tassels but the polished supple leather glistens a bit as the firm heels pace towards me. He looks thirty. I’m trying to picture him in Carharts and Smartwool; trying to figure out how the transformation takes place from sweatpants to suits. I’m hoping I never get there.

“You’re Amy?” His face looks earnest. There is no furred brow, no questionable glance between me and the van. As quickly as he has assured I am, he turns and walks away. I follow. He gets into the driver’s seat of a black sedan and reaches to pop the trunk as he shuts the door. I stand frozen behind the car. He rolls down the window.

“You got enough room to get in on that side?”
I lean to survey the right side of the vehicle while tucking my bag into the trunk. There is approximately four feet of space, and I find myself looking down to my jeans, wondering if the slogan Everything’s Bigger in Texas is due to some sort of fun-house mirror imbedded in contacts.

He stares straight ahead as we make obligatory small talk that doesn’t veer far from taxi banter. I find out far more than I ask. While he is describing his month in Japan during college, I am wondering how I ended up finding out this much about someone without knowing where we’re headed.

Silence falls thick in the car. I am picturing the way my mom airbrakes from the passenger seat, bringing her right hand up to the highest point of the shoulder strap on the seatbelt and folding it between her fingers. I’m thinking of the arm she would instinctively stretch across the passenger seat whenever she hit the brakes too quickly. These are all warning signs. I should have experienced something of the sort before reaching this moment, but an invisible byline of my job contract was doing away with the idea of stranger-danger.

I don’t know this gentleman’s name. I don’t know where we’re going or how long it will take to get there or if I’ll need to pay him when we do. What I do know, is this is Enterprise.

They pick you up.