I decided it was your typical chemical imbalance, practiced my backhand with the creature, and got up early on saturday to see Angel for breakfast. It was 9:50 by my reckoning when I sat down at Nico's. 9:55 when my iced tea came, courteousy of our family friend/long-time waiter, Fernando. Time rolled on and I figured traffic had been a bitch. 30 minutes later, I just ordered my usual barbecue chicken sandwich--cut in half, sauce on the side, two strips of bacon cooked with it, no veggies. That dreading part of me was relieved, but I was disappointed.

I was being a silly fool, though, since I'd assumed it was the 13th for no good reason...and then it dawned on me post-food: it was the 12th. Well then. I could do my barbecue chicken sandwich--cut in half, sauce on the side, two strips of bacon cooked with it, no veggies--again.

And as Sunday perked its head up, sure enough, Angel came right on time and I had my sandwich (etc.) again. All was good and well, with the occasional talk about jobs, the area, usual but interesting stuff. I felt slightly nervous at first since I'd never talked to her outside of a group of friends, but it took no time at all to feel comfortable.

With breakfast behind we fired up The Plan rockets. Our destination: north, way north, for an hour and thirty minute temptation with mildly excessive speeding. I was jazzed for it. For some reason I kept saying the north 101 was the south 101 to Angel, but we got going in the right direction all the same. It was a clear sky out, hills of yellowed grass and oak trees basking in the sunday calm, passively looking down and to the side while we did 80 mph most of the way.

Now, the original The Plan was to stop by a Trader Joe's near both our locations, since she was bound for a baby shower and I was going off to the painted caves with her directions. Extremely greatly thankfully, though, I trailed right behind her most of the way to Santa Barbara, so she instead decided to show me the painted caves herself. She'd mentioned they were hard to find the first time, after all, being that they were through a pass, up a windingly treacherous road, along a less treacherous but easily out-and-out more gnarly road, then tucked away sorta in nature's cluttered cupboard. The fact she was running late to show me them added to the extremely greatly thankfully feeling I'd soon have.

For you see, something horrible happened. As I was chugging through the pass with her, then up the narrow mountain road, I noticed my "low coolant" light was on in non-defensive red letters. Here's a rough transcript of my reaction as I slid up the mountain, watching the temperature gauge gradually rise:

"...What in the fuck? Why in the hell is my coolant light on? I put antifreeze in you two weeks ago! Oh God, something just had to go wrong. Oh God don't let this be happening, not now, not on a mountain in the middle of nowhere while Angel is late. Oh shit, baby, come on, you can do it..you can do it..fuck..."

But the coolant light kept turning on, then off. I didn't know what this meant at first, but somewhere around being nearly in the red, I figured it was an SOS effect. Angel was driving forward, I didn't know what to do, and I'd never had the temperature gauge near the red. Well now it was NEAR the red--then in the red. We'd just turned up a curvy section, past some mailboxes and private drives, and acrid brown smoke was coming from under the hood. I knew I had to stop, so I honked the horn as Angel gained some distance, and parked the car along this row of mailboxes along the road shoulder of nowhere. I kept calm, telling myself it'd only been smoking for an 1/8th of a mile and the damage couldn't be that bad and all I needed was some antifreeze and oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck...

Angel reversed back to my location in a few minutes and knew what was up. I explained the situation anyway. We decided to leave the car parked there, have me go down with her to the baby shower, then get some anti-freeze, come back up, and see if there was a problem. At this point I had no idea if I'd screwed my car, or if a cop might bust me for parking there (which seems silly now, but hey, I was scared). Angel didn't mind taking me, though, and we talked more on the short way to her friend's baby shower.

I'd never been to a baby shower, and arriving there in the off-pink spanish hacienda nestled in the quasi-countryside, I saw why: I was the only guy out of 25 girls and women. I felt like I was gate-crashing a wedding, frankly, and my face showed it. Angel's friend didn't mind, though, since Angel explained the situation. I smiled, nodded, said hi. Angel and I sat at the end of this procession of fold-out tables, with her eating a variety of different quiches and me looking around at the countryside. She confessed she only knew her friend and her friend's sister, mentioning that she felt out of place.

"That makes two of us," I said with a shaky smile. It made me feel better, that and the New Age woman by us thought it was cool for a guy to show up. I didn't seem to be disrupting the mood too much, though, with only the occasional "well that's curious, I wonder why he's here" look. After a round of everyone looking at Goddess and animal cards and relating how they related to Angel's friend, there was a "guess my stomach's width" shindig. It wasn't so bad, really, since Angel got to tell me more about her friend the concert musician, the house, old times and good stories.

But then it was Marlon Brando sequence time...

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