Gillian Anderson falls silent, squeezing the steering wheel with angry, white knuckles. The radio squawks futilely –Bob Seger murmuring about the sound of thunder. I turn the music off; in this close, brooding quiet, the song seems out of place.
“Listen,” I say, “you asked if . . .”
“Why the hell would you say that?” Gillian demands, cutting me off, “You thought I was gay? What are you, a giant walking mouth with no fucking brain? I was trying to reminisce.”
“Hey, I was being honest. I saw all this stuff in the tabloids . . . and then there was GLAAD magazine.”
“This is not helping.”
I throw up my hands, exasperated. Gillian bites her lower lip.
“How would you like it,” Gillian hisses, “if I told you I thought, when we first met, I thought you were a neo-Nazi?”
“That’s a tad melodramatic. You’re blowing this way out of proportion!”
Gillian says nothing. The tires hum beneath us; the rebuilt transmission wheezes and whines, straining as the incline of the road becomes steeper.
I give up. Something has set Gillian off –something other than my foot-in-mouth comment. Whatever it is, there’ll be no coaxing it out of her. The truth will bloom in time.
As we drive, I look out my window at the brown, dirt wall. It seems to flow by us –as if we were standing still. The wall is featureless. Few sprigs of foliage manage to push their way out of that pebbly, close-packed soil. The ones that are visible are flowering beautifully, albeit on a small scale. Turning to look out the driver’s side window, the vista opens. The world races by in stages. Trees which line the road dissolve into green blurs; the guardrail is a line of dull silver. Beyond the trees, I can just see the beach stretching vast and the surging sea clawing lazily at the white sand and the tourists. Further away, at the head of that long coastline, the volcano looms. Its crest is wreathed in cirrus clouds, and its feet are lost in dense jungle. Gulls wheel over a mile-long sandbar reaching from the horn of the cape into the azure ocean. Behind the rushing trees, this fantastic view creeps by us like a cooling lava wave. The big volcano is so far away, it seems utterly stationary.
“So, how was rehearsal?” I ask. Gillian purses her red-stained lips. Her eyes are still blazing angrily.
“It was all right,” she replies, “I really wanted a smoke once it was over.”
“You want one now?”
Gillian looks at me. Is there humor in that glance?”
“No, thank you.”
We ride the rest of the way in silence. When we reach the lookout point, day is waning in the west. Gillian parks the car near the cliff edge and we get out, the wind tousling our hair. I carry the blankets to our usual spot and sit down, looking out over the ocean. Gillian stands removed, over-hung by the arching bough of a wild papaya tree. She is beautiful there in the half-shadow. Her cherry-red hair is pulled back in a short ponytail. A too-taut black and white baseball shirt hangs just above her bellybutton. Her arms are crossed; her breasts are heaved up into prominence. In her hip-hugging sweat pants with the black stripe down the sides of the legs, Gillian’s amazing ass is cradled tightly and well shaped. She must have driven the men at rehearsal crazy in that outfit.
