Lava!

Day 6—Part 2

There’s another lava alert, and we’re forced get off the ground and as high as possible as quickly as possible.

Wait. Lemme back up. Like, a day or so.

You and I were at a party, right? I don’t remember whose. Maybe you do. Anyway, I got kind of drunk, which isn’t like me, but that’s what happened, and then I said shit, I have to pick up the rental tomorrow. You barely knew what I was talking about and kind of vaguely said okay, but stayed at the party.

I wandered off and passed out, maybe under a tree? I’m not sure. But I woke up in time to get to the rental and not drive drunk.

It’s one of those compact mover truck dealies.

Once inside, I find a hash cigarette that a cute girl gave me at the party. I fire it up, even though I don’t normally smoke weed or hash anything these days. The truck starts up, and I’m like, Fuck! I forgot to plug in the battery-key verifier thingy. So I slither through underpart—I don’t know what you call it but it’s like a little dip or space next to the driver’s seat that goes to the control panel behind the bench seat. I have to squat to get in there, which isn’t super easy in heels, so I kick those off and then kind of duck walk in there, still puffin’ the hash joint.

“All right,” I said. “Lemme see. Where does this fuckin’ thing go …”

I find the spot. It looks something like a ground fault circuit interrupter, but the hole shapes are a little bit different. I plug the verifier into that—the verifier itself looking something like a Glade PlugIn. It lights up three green lights in sequence, and then they all stay steady on.

I give it a double thumbs-up, smoke flapping in my lips, then get back up to the front.

As I was climbing back into the cab, the truck started to move.

“Wait, wait, wait, god dammit,” I say.

The truck stopped moving.

I get situated and my safety harness on and all that.

Then I say, “Okay. Now we can go,” and it started moving again.

It did most of the driving, and I let it, but I do have my hands on the big ass steering wheel, you know, just in case.

We get into some tight pedestrian traffic and the autoavoid feature keeps making us stop, like, every five seconds or less—literally.

So I say, “Manual control,” and then drive this beast through the tight side street.

I know, I know. I’m getting to the lava. Just wait a minute. This all goes together.

I get to this one street that’s real congested, so I turn into the park, you know, to cut across. No, it isn’t legal, but I was just going to be in there for a sec, you know?

It is faster at first, but then when I try to turn where I knew to turn to catch the next side street, there is literally a stage with a podium and a crowd of people forming.

“Whoa, bessie,” I said, then backed on up.

My hash was almost gone, but I still had a bit left, so I hit that a few more times before putting it out.

Trouble was, the other way was blocked off, too—this side by a construction crew.

“Fuck,” I said. “Stop. Park.”

The vehicle did.

“Turn off.”

It did.

I got my slingbacks back on, and then kicked the door open, grabbed my bag, slung it on. I fumbled around in my bag looking for my sunglasses as I approached the foreman.

“Hey my man,” I said. “Is there a way I can get this beast of a rental out of here?”

“Ma’am is that hash?”

“Huh?” I look and see the cig is still burning between my fingers. “Oh. Yeah.”

“You can’t have that here. Please put it out.”

“Yeah, whatever, sorry. I thought I had.” I drop it in the grass and crush it wit the toe of my shoe.

He’s obviously displeased by this, but doesn’t say anything else about it. “No, this whole area is closed. In fact, I’m going to need you to clear on out of here.”

I finally find my sunglasses, put them on, but then feel rude talking to dude with sunglasses on, so I immediately take them back off. “Yeah, okay, I would love to, you know ‘clear out’ or whatever. But how am I going to do that when I’m literally being fenced in here?”

“Not my problem, ma’am. I’m sorry. But I’ve got to get all these trees cleared and all this assembled in the next hour. So if you could please go ahead and clear out of here …”

I put my sunglasses on then, thanked him for his help—even though he didn’t really help with shit—and then stomped on back the way I’d come in.

“Aw, fuck,” I said.

The passageway that I’d driven in on was now hopelessly full of people. And the construction crew was already erecting some sort of building. It was staggering how quickly they were standing up walls and bolting them down.

“Jesus fuck,” I said, then wandered into one of the newly built buildings. It had that nice smell that a lot of new places have, that very pleasant wood smell.

It’s much cooler and less bright in here, so I took off my sunglasses again and pulled out my phone. I called you, but you didn’t answer. So I text you a wall—sorry about that, btw—explaining everything that had just happened. Which is how we are where we are now.

Or wait … shit, I smoked too much hash, I think. I can’t seem to keep the timeline straight.

So wait, were you already there, then? Were you already with me in the utility closet there in that new building where I found the access hatch that went into the large empty space back there where all those delinquents were hanging out? Do you remember that? Or did you get there later? I can’t remember.

But that’s when the lava eruption happened, right? Or was it after the speech? That fucking speech, man, I tell you, I fucking hate politicians, man.

And we all had to get up high—I said ‘high’—on the counter so the lava wouldn’t burn us. It got that one dude’s foot, you know the lawyer that had come in there to get out of the sun. What was his name again? I can’t remember his name, either. Text me if you think of it.

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Play procedures:

• Answer some of the questions I asked you in this section. Write the answers in your journal.

• Think about some other details like: Whose party were we at? Why was I in need of the rental and where was I taking it?

• If you have a skill or a story that you think could help with this situation, you may equip it now by writing it down along with how it might be useful.

Part 2 of Day 6 of National Novel Writing Month 2022 and The Teresa Van Santāna Literary-Somatic Experience