Interstate 5

"I don't want to see you again," she said. "That’s the whole point of a one-night stand with a total stranger. It would be like using a disposable razor over and over."

"I just thought, I mean, it's a small word. You can never say never."

"NEVER."

The good thing about being a writer is that you can use experiences like this as a basis for a story. I'd have to lose the never, never, never bit, repetition doesn't work, but relationships are a storyline that every reader can relate to.

I get a lot of my ideas while driving. The problem being, of course, that you' can't write the ideas down when you're struggling with directions or navigating a tricky maze of roundabouts. I installed a recording device into the car, so that I can simply recite the ideas, which I can transfer to an app which translate my utterings into a Word file. The problem being, of course, that the recorder also transcribes six hours of songs and patter from a country and western station.   

Hazel, she said her name was. It was a lie, of course, I'd just complemented her on her hazel eyes.  

"Most people just say brown," she said.

"I'm a writer," I said, "Always use a specific instead of a general. It's more evocative."

"Makes it sound like I've got nuts for eyes," she said. She said the words with a twinkle in her eyes, just to make the analogy implausible.

"You should write a story," my agent had said. "About a writer driving across America who becomes obsessed with a one night stand he hooked up with."

"I hate that type of faked story," I said. "Such intimate and emotional storytelling, yet based on nothing, an abstract falsehood. You can't make that sort of thing up; it has to be based on an actual affair or it’s nothing."

"Well have a fling with someone, get a real-world experience to base it on. There’s bound to be opportunities, lots of American fans desperate to fling themselves at you."

I didn't intend to have a fling, though, whatever my agent wanted. I just went to a bar for a drink after a book signing and two readings in one day. I needed a drink.

The bar was near empty, a few regulars joshing the barman, a few couples in the booths, and one full table of office workers out for one last drink before their company moves to Iceland.

I got talking to a young woman on the stall next to me. Just being friendly, at first, until she was friendly back and I suddenly noticed how pretty she was.

“I’m not after a relationship,” I said. “I’m just passing through, I’m driving to Los Angeles tomorrow and I won’t be back.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’m not looking for someone who I’m likely to ever bump into again.”

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Let's not do names," she said.

"I have to call you something," I said.

"Call me Hazel."

"Makes you sound like a nut," I said.  She laughed, a two-large-glasses laugh.

We went back to hers.

“I could come back in a few weeks,” I said later that night. “My tour’s circular, I’ll be in San Jose just before I fly back. I could drive up, we could go for a drink again.”

"I don't want to see you again," she said. "That’s the whole point of a one-night stand with a total stranger. It would be like using a disposable razor over and over."

The next morning, I slunk out of her room in the early hours, checked out of my hotel and drove to my next gig. It was a seven-hour drive. A straightforward drive, without roundabouts, traffic lights, queues, all of he means used in the UK to make the country seem bigger than it is.

During my drive, my mind was focused on a story. Not just any story, but the story of Hazel. What would happen if I went back, in 18 days’ time, when I’ve gone full circle in my tour? What if I turn up at the same bar, same time, and sit on the same stool. What if she’s there. What if she went there every time she was lonely. What if she just needed someone. What if I was there, sitting in the place where that someone sat.

What would happen? How would it pan out? How would she react? How would I react?

Weeks later, when I went to write up the brilliant story idea I’d remembered, I went through seven hours of country and western music and a few incoherent utterances about the bar being the same but different.  In my post-seven-hour-drive my shrivelled mind had remembered coming up with a work of literary genius, but I’d just whittered tired nothingness.

I emailed my agent. “The Hazel idea’s a non-starter,” I said.

xxx

It was a seven-hour drive from Los Angeles to Sacramento. The reverse of the drive I’d made before, though identical, one long, straight road, no roundabouts, no traffic lights, no traffic, no attempt to artificially lengthen the route of the kind we use in the UK to make our country look bigger than it is.

The inane chatter and soulless country and western music was also different but identical.

I sat on a stall at the same bar. It was near empty.  There were a couple of locals joshing the barman, but nobody in the booths.

It was just as I’d remembered it, though doubtless different. It looked clean, not too many years since it had been decorated, so it must have been decorated.

I asked for a beer. It tasted the same as before. Beer doesn’t change much.

I looked around for Hazel or whatever her real name was. There was no sign of her of course.  Her life will have moved on, I'm nuts to think otherwise.

I spend a couple of hours there anyway, I had nowhere else to go. I ended up taking one of the booths and using the opportunity to catch up on my email, update my social media.

Hazel had sat on that stool there, possibly her regular perch when she was looking for a date, possibly she’d never been in the bar before or since. I never thought to ask.

She was wearing a blue top and, when she removed it later that night, a black bra. I think she was wearing jeans, though I forget. Her hair was dark and shoulder length, her age late twenties, which would make her mid-thirties now.

My agent would call me crazy. “There’s not even story in it,” he’d say. Nobody behaves like this; the readers will tear it apart.

My wife would call me crazy.  I’d never mentioned Hazel to her, of course. She was just a one-night stand. A one-night stand in the days before we’d met, my wife didn’t want to know these things. She wasn’t the jealous type.

I may be crazy, but what do I have to lose? I’ve already lost my wife; she died off cancer two years after we married. I was alone again, having thought I’d found my life-partner, the person I’d spend the rest of my life with. We were even talking about writing a book together.

Now I’m single again. Back thinking I’ll never settle down. The same empty house to come home to every night. The same lonely tour after lonely tour, just to push a few more books, get my name out there. With what end?

Before I left, I did one last tour of the bar, pretending to look for the toilet, but really checking every nook and corner for Hazel. But, or course, she wasn’t there. For all I know she hadn’t been back in the bar once in the last seven years, maybe she’d forgotten it existed. Forgotten I existed.

And as my agent had warned me, it wouldn’t even work as a story.