Stephen and I talked late last night, after he got off work from the haunted house. “Quite the résumé,” I joked, “Easter bunny, Santa Claus, now…” The truth is, I’m a little jealous, I’d love to do all of it.

He had sent me some videos of Sigur Ròs, promising it would make me cry. I hadn’t thought it would, and it didn’t, until that one shot of the overarching sea. Dearly wanting Iceland flared the old fire of dearly wanting anywhere, and as we talked, out came the truth like we were fessing up to secrets: a shared relentless restlessness to take on the world. “Every time I travel is the best time of my life,” he said. “Every time I travel defines the rest of my life,” I said.

“Let’s go, then.” He ran down the list: no rings on our fingers, no zealous career paths, no kids, little rent, nothing in the way of an excuse. A summer, maybe, a handful of weeks, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, New York? Michigan? Montana? Vermont? Odd jobs, bicycles, I can waitress, he can bartend, or bullfight, or drive some old lady to church every Sunday in her dusty old Chevelle. Jeans, tees, and toothbrush in a suitcase, a wrinkled old map with a few red circles.

“Have you ever been outside Reno, Ms. Taber?”
“Once I walked to the edge of town; doesn’t look like there’s much out there.”
“Everything’s there!”
“Like what?”
“The country!”
“Well, what do you do with yourself?”
“Just live.”
“How does anyone ‘just live’?”
“Well, you start by going to sleep. You get up when you feel like it. You scratch yourself. You fry yourself some eggs. You see what kind of a day it is; throw stones at a can, whistle.”
—Gay and Roslyn, The Misfits

“Will we really do it?” he asked. “Otherwise we’ll regret it forever,” I answered, and couldn’t help but dream all night of odd jobs and bicycles, fights and fevers and those roads that cut the country under a million acres of stars.