While online last week, and while craving sweets, I read
about Edelweiss Chocolates, a California confectioner that had assorted
handmade truffles for sale.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed my keys, wallet, phone and a few books
on tape and embarked upon a 2,839-mile trip from Fairfield, Connecticut, to
Brentwood, California. I needed no GPS; I’d simply head toward the setting sun.
It, like Al Cowlings’ white Ford Bronco on June 17, 1994, led to Brentwood.
Thirty-six seconds into the drive, I had to pee. I refused
to be bested by my bladder, however, and I soldiered on. I made good time, too,
hitting every light green in Pennsylvania. Somewhere in Ohio, I popped in the
first book on tape,
Green Eggs and Ham.
The tape lasted 2 minutes, 47 seconds.
An hour or so later, I
really had to pee. I had foolishly held it too long, like a scrambling
Michael Vick, ball in left hand, waiting … and waiting … to make a big play. I
stopped at a roadside diner in Howe, Indiana, and made a beeline for the
restroom.
My bladder, once emptied, matched my stomach, so I moseyed
over to the counter and the waitress toiling behind it, Tegan. I remember her
name because my attention to detail and my memory are as sharp as the picture on
a Sony 4K OLED TV. I ordered the tuna melt. Or was it the pulled pork sandwich?
Perhaps it was the chicken fried steak. Anyway, while fueling my body for the
remainder of the trip, I overheard a Jennifer Love Hewitt doppelganger speaking
with Tegan. Sighs peppered the young woman’s every sentence as she told Tegan about
discovering Edelweiss online and desperately wanting to get to Brentwood.
Today, it turned out, was her lucky day. And mine.
I introduced myself to Love’s look-alike, Riley. She was 19,
maybe 34. (Guessing ages isn’t my strong suit.) We hit it off, and when I told
her where I was headed and offered to give her a ride, her reaction was no
Rorschach test, open to interpretation. She was more positive than a proprietor
reviewing his own restaurant on Yelp.
Our first few hours together were as warm and comfortable as
a pair of sheepskin slippers. We listened to my second book on tape,
Merriam-Webster’s
Collegiate Thesaurus. It passed the time,
and we learned a great deal, though we both felt it was drab, dull,
matter-of-fact, prosaic. Riley regaled me with story after story. The one about
the time she was a freshman in college and hung up on a crank caller, after
cussing him out, only to find out it was her roommate’s grandfather, who had a
tracheotomy, had me in stitches. The one about the time she made out with
another woman while trapped in an elevator had me in stitches, too — 14, to be
exact. As she shared the Dear Penthouse Forum climax of her story, I lost control of the steering
wheel and we swerved. I grabbed the wheel and overcompensated in an effort to
stay on the road. In doing so, I slammed the left side of my face against the
driver’s-side window, which was rolled down a few inches. The blood started somewhere near my auburn hairline and flowed like
lava down my cheeks, still flush from Riley’s racy tale. Riley, a bit shaken
but not the least bit angry, saw red.
I don’t remember much about the visit to the walk-in medical
center. Riley said I held her hand as the doctor sutured my wound. I kept my
left eye closed and kept my right eye on her, muttering something about wanting
to listen to Aerosmith’s
Pump album when
we got back in the car.
In less than an hour we were on the road again, Willie
Nelson style. I had a headache, so Riley drove and told more stories — nearly a
dozen in all — as I slumped in the front seat. She told the elevator story
again, fulfilling an audience request.
As our manifest destiny inched closer and closer, the state
welcome signs popped up at a brisk pace, the duration between them growing
shorter and shorter, much like the generations of the iPhone.
IOWA: COME FOR THE
CORN, STAY FOR THE ADDITIONAL CORN
NEBRASKA: BETTER
THAN SOUTH DAKOTA
COLORADO: GET HIGH
ON OUR MOUNTAINS
UTAH: IF YOU’RE
LOOKING FOR T&A, IT’S IN ‘UTAH’
ARIZONA: WELCOME TO THE GRAND CANYON STATE — NOT
YOU, ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
CALIFORNIA: WE
HAVE BETTY WHITE. SUCK ON THAT
Crossing into the Golden State, home of America’s favorite Golden
Girl, I could almost taste the small, round
pieces of chocolaty heaven. Riley, like Los Angeles’ Millennium Biltmore Hotel,
had only 11 stories, so I inserted the final book on tape, a little something
called Risk Management and Analysis,
and pressed ‘play.’
Chapter one. In order
to manage risk, we must first understand risk.
How do you spot
risk? How do you avoid risk, and what makes it so risky?
To understand
risk, we must first define risk. Risk is—
We found the subject matter captivating, but the guy reading
it sounded just like me, and I hate my own voice. To avoid the risk of driving
off the road again, I managed to turn off the tape, and after a few games of
20 Questions, we drove the homestretch in silence, marveling at California’s
natural beauty. As we neared the Cloverfield Boulevard exit off Interstate 10, I
embodied Clark Griswold approaching Walley World. (In my mind, I was running,
in slow motion, to the instrumental strains of Chariots of Fire.) At the bottom of the exit we turned right onto
Cloverfield and then made a quick right onto 26th Street. Two miles
later we reached Brentwood Country Mart, a charming marketplace popular with
Hollywood celebrities.
We parked in the lot and headed to the upper courtyard. With
Edelweiss in sight, Riley grabbed my arm, pointing wildly and shouting, “I
think that’s Jennifer Lawrence! Is that Jennifer Lawrence?” She said she was
going after her, and that’d we’d meet later. How, I asked. Riley pulled a slip
of paper from her purse, jotted down her phone number, folded the note and
slowly placed it in my shirt pocket, gently running the side of her hand along
my chest as she did, lingering for a moment in my space. She smelled like
jasmine. Or honeysuckle. I don’t know. All I know is, she smelled nice. She
looked nice. She was nice. Those Amaretto
truffles wouldn’t be the best things I picked up on this spur-of-the-moment
trip. Not even close.
Riley smiled, cooed “see ya later” and was off in a flash. I
heard her say something, to no one in particular, about arriving in Hollywood
and becoming the next Carole Lombard. The name didn’t ring a bell. My attention
turned toward Edelweiss, just a few doors away.
Once inside the store, time, like a Hershey’s bar on a hot
day, melted away. I grabbed two boxes of the assorted truffles. After traveling
2,839 miles, however, I wasn’t leaving without choc-a-lot of chocolate. A pound
of marshmallows coated in dark and light chocolate? Yes, please. A
dark-chocolate sampler? That’s a must. A basket of assorted solid chocolate?
Sign me up. Chocolate-covered raisins? Uh-huh.
A chocolate bar shaped like a computer? OK, I’ll “byte.” By the time I grabbed a few foil-wrapped chocolate
hearts at the register, for Riley, 45 minutes had passed. Time flies when
you’re having chocolate.
I finally made my way to the parking lot and … my car was
missing! Was it stolen? Who’d want a beat-up ’93 Accord? Was it towed? I was a
paying Brentwood Country Mart customer. I
panicked. Then I noticed the sign in front of the now-empty spot and did what anyone in my situation would do: I dialed
310. After a few seconds of silence: beep-beep-beep-beep. Busy
signal. I tried again and got the same results. Strange. My options were
limited. I decided to give Riley a call, to let her know what had happened and
ask if she had any ideas. I pulled out the note, which had a hint of
honeysuckle … or jasmine, and unfolded it. It read: Riley (260).
By the end of the day, all the chocolate was gone.
Special thanks to my sweet-as-chocolate
friend Lindsay for supplying today’s main photo. You can reach Lindsay via her blog,
IAMNOTASTALKER, or by
calling her at (626).
