Rosarita

Up, up, up into the mountains they climbed, away from the smog, away from the concret jungle gym they called home. At one time she had been fire engine red, but she had turned dusty rose in the relentless California sun. He had aptly named her Rosarita, after a little Mexican town on the Baja where they had once spent the summer together. His parents told him that 64 VW bugs were relics. They knew a collector who would buy her for three times what he'd paid for her in '91, the summer after high school graduation . He wouldn't hear of it. It was like an old cowboy and his horse, he told them. They would ride the trails and superhighways together until one of them died.

Linda rondstadt hummed faintly on the tapedeck he'd installed in college. He sang along to the choruses of her Spanish songs. With all the windows rolled down he let the mountain air blow through his hair and dry the sweat from his back that had completely soaked through his t-shirt to the cracking white vinyl upholstry. Rosarita was most at home in the narrow, busy streets of Mexico, but next to that she was most at home up there, on the open road, in the mountains. In the city she always looked out of place parked next to the BMW's, Porshes and SUV's that crowded around the posh restaurant where he worked in downtown Santa Monica.

Miraculously, she hadn't needed any major repairs since he'd bought her. He was most afraid of her being stolen. He'd been especially paranoid when he'd worked as an editor in a bad part of town, so he'd found a club at a junkyard and used it to deter thieves. It had never actually locked, but he still faithfully placed it on the wheel whenever he left her alone.

The side pockets were stuffed full of maps of places they'd been together. The great basin, Idaho, various national parks in the Southwest and the Las Vegas strip. He had half a pack of marlboro lights in the glove compartment, along with rolling papers and a flask 3/4 full of Wild Turkey Bourbon. His red daypack, nearly as faded as the car, bounced around in the backseat, along with his camping gear and a few gallons of drinking water in plastic jugs, a safety precation after a particularly hazardous adventure into the Mojave desert with the Mexican dishwashers and several bottles of tequila.

Into his daypack he'd stuffed A Brief History of Rome, a dozen sesame seed bagels, cream cheeze, and three litres of cherry koolaid flavored water. Into his book he'd carefully folded a half finished letter to a girl he'd once known, who now went to a liberal arts school on the East coast.

The mountain air blew, Linda Rondstadt sang, he carefully planned how to finish the letter to the girl, and up, up, up the mountain they went.