Except you’ve never had sex in the backseat of a car before, and it isn’t as easy or as romantic as you’d imagined. The one time it almost happened, you were a junior in high school, and you and your high school boyfriend were “heavy petting” in the backseat of his Ford Escort, when a harsh rap on the window interrupted your teenage groping, and there, viewing you in just a bra, was Friar Thomas. Lesson learned that night: Never climb into the backseat of a car with a guy—especially within sight of the monastery connected to the local Catholic boys’ school. So, you’ve never learned the delicate skill of maneuvering with someone in such close quarters.

Your current boyfriend has known you since you were nineteen years old.  He also knows that you have never had sex in a car before, so he gently lifts your skirt up and whispers, “Turn and face the mountain,” so you do, and as he enters you slowly, you notice through the window the crescent moon thin and high in the night sky is giving off a light so delicate you can see almost nothing but that moon. You feel acutely his breath on your shoulders, his body joining with yours in the false security of the little Mexican car.

His delicate fingers trace the outline of your collarbone, and you are a tangle of amorous whispers and passion heightened by the delicate balance of life and death you are feeling. Later, your boyfriend holds you close. The light from the crescent moon fades and blurs beneath your slowly closing eyelids, and you drift into sleep in the backseat. Your boyfriend quietly returns to the driver’s seat, ever on alert for dangers, but they never do come that night. 

And when the morning light streaming through the rear window coaxes you awake, you and your boyfriend step out of the car. You take the last bottle of water from the trunk and use it to rinse your mouths and refresh your faces. The mountain air feels cool against your bare skin as you change into a clean dress.  Before you take your seats again in Speedy, the two of you embrace for a moment on the side of the road.  “What’s next?” you wonder, as he caresses the hair at the nape of your neck and kisses your shoulder with considerably less passion than the night before. But neither one of you says anything because the only thing you both know, the only truth in the morning light, is that you are still alive. He breaks your embrace and walks slowly around the car, checking the tires as you buckle yourself into the passenger seat.

Then, you and your boyfriend are driving back down the mountain—the road clear in the light of day. Carlos, Chuey, and Juan pass you and give a friendly beep as their pickup truck barrels down the dirt road, which suddenly turns to pavement again and then highway, and you are once again back on the interstate, heading back through the desert toward El Paso, back to the place from which you have come. The CD player no longer works, so you are spared having to endure the maddening “Madreselva.”  You listen to Mexican pop music on the radio for a while, and then, when the music grows tedious, you click off the radio and the two of you drive in silence. You are reading the map, navigating on back roads and routes that pass along the outskirts of towns you drove through on the way to Creel. You purposefully avoid the potential danger you now know exists in the desert towns. The landscape outside changes from high desert and mountains to sagebrush and rock, and then finally to just tawny sand on either side of the highway for as far as you can see in any direction.

Your boyfriend breaks the silence: “I’ll never marry you, you know. I’m not the marrying type.  I just want you to be aware of that.” His words linger in the cloying air of the tiny car. They are words for which you have no response. Years later, these words will bear more weight than you can imagine now, in the heat of the afternoon, while you can still feel his warm presence from the night before; his hand is still touching yours lightly except for the abrupt moments when he pulls away to shift Speedy into gear. Now, you are still vital and in love with growing confidence, as the distance from those dark mountain roads increases, about having cheated death in this land where death is ever-present.  You have not yet learned that death is the only certain destination, and you cross the border just as the stars begin to appear in the evening sky.

 

T Nicole Cirone is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University and of Rosemont College. Her publication credits include essays and poems published in Servinghouse Journal; and poems published in Perigee Journal of the Arts, Red River Review, Philadelphia Stories, the Philadelphia Stories “Best Of” anthology, Bucks County Writer and Schyulkill Valley Journal. She is also an English teacher and lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband, daughter and cat.