A winter breeze slips clandestinely under the front door of Clinton, Struck and Moss, causing Daniel to shiver. His desk is not far from the door, in a common area, which was the living room when the firm’s offices were a home.
Daniel is not a winter person, and he is annoyed when friends from the Midwest and the East Coast give him a hard time for complaining about California winters. Daniel prefers hot, dry places. As if in an effort to warm himself, he thinks back to Memorial Day weekend two years ago, when he and Daphne had taken a road trip to Trona, California, a small desert town which has as its nearest landmark a dry lake bed.
They had driven out Friday night, arriving late at a 1950s motel, with a cowboy theme and an aging neon sign identifying it as a “Motor Court.” A small figure of a cowboy with a six-shooter adorned the dashboard of Daphne’s car authenticating her affinity for things western.
The temperature, tolerable when they had checked in, began to rise immediately and quickly with the arrival of the morning sun. By 9:30, it was just hot. They sat in bed, drinking beer, and watching TV. Daphne rolled out of bed, lit a few sticks of incense, and set up her iPod, which played Holst’s “The Planets” too loudly for the small space.
She returned to the bed where Daniel was watching one of the many reruns of Law and Order that seemed to be available 24 hours a day. Daphne climbed on top of Daniel, facing away from the TV, playfully preventing him from watching. He wrapped his arms around her, and they rolled around in the bed, holding each other tightly.
Carmina Burana was playing on the iPod. The ironic juxtaposition of the old motel, the overloud music, the smokiness and smell of the incense, the stifling heat, and the tinny sound of the TV competing with it all, combined to create an intensely disorienting and erotic atmosphere in which they had amazing sex, again and again, finally collapsing in a tangle of sheets and sweat in time to see, through half closed eyes, the beginning of the day’s sunset.
Daniel’s last recollection, before passing out, was of lying next to her, exhausted, happy, smelling the incense, and listening to the comforting sound of one of the room’s venetian blinds, gently banging the window sill, as a slight breeze lifted it and dropped it down again, then lifted it again…
In a classic rude awakening, Daniel’s thoughts return to the chilly offices of Clinton, Struck and Moss. As he contemplates the drive home, he cannot reconcile the elation and happiness he felt that day in Trona, or any of several hundred days with Daphne, and the desolation he now felt without her. How can two people who are so happy together, so meant for each other, not be together? It has been almost a year since he and Daphne broke up, and he is no closer today to understanding the why of it than he was the afternoon she left him.
It’s 4:29. A perfect time for Daniel to leave. And so he does.