EXPEDITION

Late June sun and shimmer time along the Ohio River far and farther east of Cincinnati as if they are racing the prevailing wind and the spirit of the place. Running away from Clermont County along U.S. 52 like idiot bandits, intercepting only pollen and birdsong. Aberdeen looms ahead like a satiated pigeon on this windy summer Sunday afternoon hotter than it's been in fifty years. Must be true -- Bob Allen said so, after all.

The heat shimmers on the asphalt ribbon ahead and his voice is the only spontaneous sound in the moving car, an old foreign well past her prime but not rusted much yet. Hums along like newer if not new. `I'm domestic, but otherwise pretty much the same,' she thinks, privately mocking herself with a small grin. Unlike most of the people in her life, he won't either patronize her by denying it or cater to her by agreeing. He knows self-mocking is, like many things, a necessary if absurd drive they share; he'd just laugh. Knowing this, she keeps it to herself.

There's no air conditioning; hasn't worked since she bought the car. Only soft people who think too much of themselves require it in the Ohio River Valley. After all, it only gets above ninety so many days a summer, your average summer, right?

And had it worked, no treat of a man's bronzed long forearm propped like a post in the open, blowing window, pelt of fine silver-bleached hairs rippling back sunlight like the surface of the Ohio visible beyond it, sometimes, through breaks in the growth.

Not a lover, not in the accepted sense. They love each other, they've said it before -- once, seven or eight years earlier, man to man. Yes, it's a lot like that. No frilly physical compliments answered by jaded winks from the gallery. The occasional sincere if offhand compliment. Man to man.

His left hand -- his bias hand -- rests on the edge of his seat, teeters a bit but never quite strays across the imaginary midline of the car. Her arm hovers inches away, fingertips precariously dangling from the shift lever. He dislikes driving and she likes it, so it's not unusual or unpleasant for her to chauffeur. She thinks she's one of the best drivers she knows, but doesn't think it conceit; thinks it's because she so loves to drive. Love always improves your performance at a given task. Experience, not homily, on that one.

She's unattaching now from someone who is almost entirely unlike this long, not-quite-graceful-but-almost man who sits, slouching, in the other bucket seat. He has those odd Germanic eyes, a mostly-blue the color of prewash Levi Strauss denim three or four trips through the washer. In all, attrition has worn through the bonds that held her with the other, where time has not brittled the strength with this one. Maybe the nature of fires is telling; banked low, no flashes, a fire can burn almost forever. It's the flares that wear out fuel like crazy.

The heat makes puddles in small dips ahead, little mirages they overtake that become not, once perspective smooths the fold out in the road. Suicide to admit her hands have wondered what mirages would evaporate folding thirty-four inches of warm denim between them just out of the dryer, brass tacks making hot spots against her forearms... what evil tricks would perspective play on this loner's lover if he'd ever the urge to dedicate?

She shakes it out of her head; he's said something and she hasn't heard him. Never not hear him. So little he says is extraneous. In most cases he's a quiet guy, determined and peaceable, not much for raising his voice except on the not-so-rare occasion he jokes and laughs that laugh that sounds like a big rock rolling downhill. For all that says about a laugh.

It's not as if he has many opportunities to find lovers, she supposes, the fact he works in a dusty basement workshop at home or at back-bending outdoor jobs doesn't expose him to prospects on a regular basis. She thinks perhaps he enjoys her company a little more than he would another man's for this reason, if for no other.

Like him, she's only tanned from the shoulders out; the brow down. Her reason, unlike his, she works inside from almost sunrise to sunset and only sees sun from the car. The sun's no enemy for either -- they're about equally fair if totally unlike otherwise. Burn once then turn the color of a piece of varnished oak in a few weeks. But only from their elbows down. She wonders what it would look like, pale skinny legs together, the only dark their arms and faces, her hair... starts to feel something well up that never quite leaves her when she's with him, the sense of impending...

Doom, actually, among other equally risky things; she lifts her hand from the shift lever to rummage through her purse in the back seat for a cigarette. He doesn't want to know she thinks these things. In half their lives they've barely touched except with words -- no small touches, granted. She's shared some of his big disasters. He's helping her wind up one of hers. If she hadn't lit the cigarette, the temptation to reach for his hand might have won out. She really knows that would be taboo, like the way she wants to stare at him, as opposed to the way she does stare at him sometimes, sneaking a look when he's looking the other way.

He's caught her, she supposes, because once or twice she's caught him -- as if he's asking a question with his eyes he can't quite bring himself to fit into his mouth. It could just as well be something about her ex-husband, when it's him, and she hopes he assumes there's something there when he catches her too, something other than we've been friends half my life, why don't we ever touch each other?

She would like to know, but senses the question could be a violation at this late date. They did, after all, have `The Talk' at some point, early on, when she still had the balls to ask such questions; before the friendship was what it is now and worth proportionately less to her. Even then it was worth much to him, or else -- and it's like him, and likely enough -- he simply didn't find her attractive, but managed to salvage her post-adolescent self-worth by suggesting he valued her friendship enough to refuse anything more.

For a very young man it would have been a magnificently graceful emotional transaction. She could appreciate the strength and agility it had demanded of him at the time, were it so. But to know it would be more painful than it needed to be even now, half her life later.

Even if it had been subterfuge all those years before, he's played his role remarkably well as her friend. Above and beyond the call of duty. Even if he didn't find her attractive half their lives ago, it isn't reason enough for him to be sitting here now, that he'd used the friendship as an excuse. It seems as if whatever the facts might have been, he believes it now.

Besides, things aren't much different now in any other way. Here they both are, he's been alone a long time, she's felt alone inside a marriage probably almost as long. The cigarette is almost gone and the urge to snatch his hand up off the seat still there. There's nothing to break it, that transient but terrible swell of curiosity -- what would happen if I did? What?

Is it worth these lazy, slow paced Sunday expeditions like bicycle spokes fanning out from Greater Cincinnati -- (my God where haven't we been in sixteen years that we could go now and learn something?) -- for philosophical enlightenment through well-meant babble, or for photogenic landscape? Is it worth everything she knows they have to take a chance on whim and trade it for something like she's just walked away from? He seems to believe the attrition and the burning down are inevitable. If that could happen, if she could end up feeling that way about him... the urge retreats.

Best to wonder why they aren't holding hands, the wind blowing a few strands of long hair up under her nose, almost making her sneeze. Best to leave it. She's learned much over the years about the science of cooking. There's a fine balance to white sauce between the butter, the flour and the milk -- it's easy enough to mess up when you know what you're doing. Too much butter, too little milk, heat too high and white sauce is glue. Better one than the other. She knows what glue tastes like, she's still washing ten years' worth of it out of her mouth.

She jumps as if he's kicked her when his fingers slip between hers.