CHAPTER NINE: LET THE GAMES BEGIN

Before I could even repair my damaged mascara, Suzanna arrived. After driving four monotonous hours from Roanoke, she entered my house with a huge smile on her face and a swagger in her walk. “Hey girlfriend! Are we ready?” As a greeting, we bear hugged while bouncing up and down, doing that happy-dance thing that you’re totally embarrassed by when you see someone else doing it! Our enthusiasm was at the boiling point.“I hope your suitcases aren’t too numerous or too large,” she stated, “ Cuz I brought the Toyota and my three monsters are monopolizing the trunk.

I went into my room, and wheeled out my one small case. The other, I had slung over my shoulder.“That’s it?” she said, shock plastered on her face. “Where’s the rest? You’re spending two whole months in France and you packed for a one-night-stand?”

I smiled back. “This will be just fine. I’m sure I have everything I need. Besides…” I added while batting my eyelashes like butterfly wings,”if I don’t have it, I’ll simply buy it!”

A drink, we decided. An adult beverage, that like the shot from starter’s gun, would signal the true beginning of this race. With stars in our eyes and mystifying visions in our heads, we clinked glasses and cried “Cheers!” And then, before sharing even one sip, spontaneously chorused… “Let The Games Begin!”

With the last drops drained, we loaded my gear (which fit quite nicely in the back seat) and headed to Jean’s. Jean was a friend who had been included in the ‘few’ whom I had invited on this journey, but she, like many others, had opted out. She did however want to be involved, if only on a small scale, and did so by offering us a bon voyage lunch and a lift to the airport. If she couldn’t provide companionship she surmised, she could most assuredly provide nourishment and taxi service. As we sat on her beautiful deck at the end of our meal, I felt a little sad that Jean would not be joining us and as if reading my mind, she raised her glass and said, “I can’t believe you are really going! I can’t believe that I’m not! And I really can’t believe that tomorrow at this time you two will be in France… I’m soooo jealous!”

Like the Three Musketeers raising their swords, we toasted and although I could see that on some level she was envious, it was obvious that she was quite content with her decision. When we hugged goodbye at the airport, it was with bubbles in our bellies. (and not just from the wine) The fact was, I had Suzanna, Suzanna had me, and Jean had the knowledge that because of her, we were safely on the runway of our amazing odyssey.

Once on board the aircraft, we collapsed in our seats and pinched each other to make sure this wasn’t a dream. We chatted like magpies before, during and after dinner and only with the aid of more wine, did we finally succumb to sleep. A few hours later, we awoke  in London England. As if guided by an angel, we eased through the airport rat-race like a hot knife through butter. Every stairway  was located with ease. Every elevator was identified and sat half empty. The gate agent waved us forward like the usher in a church.The second leg of our sojourn was right on course as we took our seats, ordered breakfast and beamed as though all of this was an everyday occurrence.

“We’re here!” I proclaimed two hours after take off. “Look Suz, it’s Barcelona!”

Suzanna hunkered over my shoulder and peered out the window as the plane wheels rumbled their descent and then began skating down the landing strip. The first words she uttered were, “Hhmmmm,.. looks like Texas” (which it did). It was brown, dry and flat with a few scrub bushes thrown in for contrast. There was no resemblance whatsoever to the bounty of exotica we had conjured in our heads.

“Oh, who the hell cares?” we declared, “we’re in Spain, and less than three hours from Collioure!”

The guardian angel that had hitch-hiked a ride in England, rejoined us and stood sentinel on my shoulder as she once again guided our progress through the airport…well,  except for the ten minutes that she didn’t. She must have decided on a short siesta when I was separated from the exiting crowd to have my carry-on bag searched. For some unknown reason, this always happens to me! I have no remarkable traits whatsoever, but I am consistently the one who is pulled from the crowd, marked as a possible terrorist and instructed to empty my pockets, pull off my shoes and remove all existing tattoos! (ok, I made that up) So, annoyed but not surprised by this detour, I stood passively as my manicure scissors got confiscated and my undies rummaged. I took this all in stride until  I saw my hand-held, battery-operated, personal pleasure-seeker being raised high in the air like an olympic torch.

“Oh My God” I gasped to the agent, “Who put that there? There must be some mistake!”   She scrutinized me up and down with dull, sullen eyes, crammed my buddy back in my bag and blandly said, “Don’t worry about it Señora, I’ve seen far worse.” Then completely dismissing my humiliation, hollered, “Next!”

Relieved to regain my  veil of anonymity (with Suzanna laughing her ass off) we recovered our checked baggage and followed the well appointed signage that was in both English and Spanish, directly to the car rental kiosk.“Are you having a good time yet?” whispered the angel who had regained her roost on my shoulder.

“Yes” I softly responded, “except for that burp at customs. But I’ll forgive you if you’ll sprinkle some magic dust on the car acquisition.”

We found the rental people both pleasant and systematic. All the documents were in order and as we were being directed to the car’s location, one agent turned to another and spewed forth a hurricane of communication that had my head spinning. This untranslatable broadcast smacked me in the way Oz must have smacked Dorothy. I eye-balled Suzanna… “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore Toto!” And for the first time, I understood that I was also no longer in America, and English was now the second language, not the first.

As we schlepped all our gear to the garage, I began to anxiously ponder this car that was about to become my trusty sidekick for the next two months. What would it look like? What color would it be? We checked and rechecked the paper work against the numbered parking spaces. Bingo! There it was: a shiny little black, four-door Peugeot. It was wedged tightly between a concrete beam and another car, but was unmistakably a Peugeot. I stared with mouth agape as my mind drew on a memory.

Back when I was a young mother of two, I was, even then, intensely quality conscious. When my family found itself in need of a new car, we searched out many makes, models and price ranges. During this search, my heart had been stolen by a little French car… a Peugeot. The apple of my eye was a gold sedan with black leather seats. It was racy, sporty, youthful and drove like creamery butter. I was smitten. “Mommy wants a Peugeot!” the kids taunted, delighting in my discomfort. “Mommy wants a Peugeot, Mommy wants a Peugeot!”But the budget was tight and the responsible, conscientious adult, (me) stepped in.

“No,” I said, to the dealer who thought this was a sure sale. “I have two children. This is not a child-friendly car. The timing isn’t right.”So we bought a Chevrolet Malibu instead. It was silver with cranberry cloth upholstery. It was a family car. I hated it the moment I drove it off the lot.

But now I guess the timing was right. Because although I never thought to request a Peugeot, here it was, presented to me as a gift on a silver platter. My angel gently tapped my shoulder. “Like it?” she asked. I was too shocked to do more than bob my head up and down. Whoah….. I never saw this coming!

I held the score card in my hand as Suzanna and I scrutinized the car for every possible blemish. The rental folks had acknowledged three dings, we, however, declared twelve. Okay, perhaps we were nit-picking, but no Spanish rent-a-ride was going to charge me additional, unwarranted fees at the end of my trip. So we added our dozen or so x’s to the appropriate places on the sketch, leaving the diagram to resemble a car with measles.

With luggage loaded, I inched open the driver’s door and squeezed myself behind the steering wheel. Suze followed suit and sat shot-gun. We were nearly bursting at the seams as I surveyed my cockpit. Lights, mirrors, turning signals. Brakes, clutch, gas pedal.……all present and in working order.  “Suze,” I neurotically asked, “you have the directions right?”

“Yep” was her only response as she waved the internet print-out in her hand. We fastened our seat belts, winked at each other and prepared for lift-off. ”Start your engines!” I heard from nowhere and as I turned the key, the engine purred. With foot on the clutch, hands on the wheel and mirrors adjusted, I strained a backward glance over my shoulder to commence my egress.…”Ahhhh,” I mumbled, as I  resurveyed my situation … ” Ahh..it appears as though we may have a little situation.”

“What?” she cried, “You SAID you could drive a stick shift!”

“I can,” I explained just a wee bit perturbed, “that’s not the problem. I don’t think I can maneuver the car out of this space!” She reassessed our location and acquiesced.  We had barely been able to open the doors and slither inside, thus making jockeying around parked vehicles and concrete beams a challenge for Mario Andretti, let alone a woman who had not driven a standard transmission in over two decades.

“Well don’t look at me!” she wailed. “I can’t drive a stick!”

And that’s when the angel and the adolescent parking attendant materialized out of nowhere. “Theeze way Señora,” he directed with the dancing hands of a white gloved traffic cop …. “now thaata way… ah ah ah…” he waggled his fingers to the left… “ a leeetle more theeze way. Stop!” he waggled his fingers to the right…. “Come a leetle more, just a leetle.” He waggled all of his fingers while shimmying  side to side, looking exactly like a child doing the hokey-pokey. “Mover un poco hasia adelante (he was really into this now). I assumed by the hand gyrations that he wanted me to go forward, so I slowly eased on the gas. “Ok, Ok, Ok!” He grinned, exposing a Bucky Beaver smile, … YOU’VE GOT IT!”

Within minutes we were out of the garage and entering congested suburban traffic. Through the internet we had learned that El Prat Airport is located 14 kilometers outside of Barcelona city center and approximately two hours from the French border. Our goal at the moment was not Collioure, it was simply to get the hell out of Spain by heading in the right direction.

There were multiple route signs pointing in multiple directions and as one might expect, they were all in Spanish. I clenched the steering wheel and pinned my eyes on the road, edgy about which street we were on or which direction to turn. Suzanna and her paper co-conductor orchestrated this symphony as I wormed my way from urban streets and stop lights to a local highway headed towards Girona. My confidence increased with every mile. We soon found ourselves on a Spanish toll road leading directly to France. Toll road? Nobody told us there would be toll roads, (or how many there would be.) Clueless to the charges: we simply paid. The gatekeeper greedily collected our colorful paper currency and returned a handful of silver and gold coins. For all we knew, we had handed over a hundred dollar bill and received two quarters in change.

So even though there had been a few miscues, I was sure it would be smooth sailing from this point on, with no further distractions to impede our progress. Cars and trucks whisked by on my left but that bothered me not. I was a woman on a mission. “You may want to move into the left lane,” Suzanna suggested after we had been traveling for over an hour.

“Nuh huh,” I threw back. “I’m comfortable here. Let the others fly by, I don’t care.”

“No,” she said as she lifted her head from the google instructions.“I really think you might want to move over.”

With that, I immediately comprehended that it wasn’t a choice. I had us hemmed into an exit lane. With no interest in exiting, I tried to backup and approach a new lane. Horns tooted their annoyance and the clutch reminded me that it was not yet classified as a friend, forcing our compliance with the highway that unceremoniously spit us out.

“I feel like a taco don’t you?” I said to Suzanna, avoiding ownership of my wrongdoing.

“Sure,” she agreed gingerly. “As long as we’re touring the scenic Spanish countryside, we might as well partake of the local cuisine.”

We zen-guided ourselves for perhaps ten minutes on rolling, back-country roads in search of food. Other than a few four way stop signs and an occasional grouping of cows, we spied nothing! No restaurant, no gas station, no cars, no people. “So how hungry are you?” I asked, downright perplexed as to where we were and not wanting to be here at all.

“Screw this!” was her reply.

With no further conversation, I made an immediate u-turn, sped through several empty intersections and weaved my way around until dumb luck landed me in the path of a big green road sign that read… AP-7 FRANCE 40. We high-fived to our travel savvy and magnanimous decision to skip lunch. Although we had no idea if the ’40’ was inches, yards or miles; we knew that the nose of the car was once again pointed in the right direction and that we were hell bent for France..