Marie Hathaway

“We should meet up somewhere epic,” I text Eric.

“Oh, yeah! The rose garden would be good for that.”

“Rose garden sounds epic. My train is scheduled to get into Union Station @ 3:35.”

“Ok, I’ll head to the gardens around then and wait for you. The weather is fantastic!”

“Actually, they’re putting me on a bus :/”

On the bus that was supposed to be a train, we’re all doing our best to make the most of it. A person sitting alone moves next to someone else to let a dad sit next to his kid. I tell the Mariners fan sitting next to me congrats on the win last night as we pass under the ball park. He says, “Thank you, it was awesome. Almost worth having to take a bus back to Portland.”

All the logging trucks up in BC seem to have gone through the mill and are now stacked with plywood and two by fours. We pass one huge mill where the trees are piled up in big fenced-in rectangles, each like a giant box of matches.

An older couple in the seat behind me is talking quietly about their travel plans and complaining about the price of flights and the forecast in Detroit.

The first broad stroke of the Columbia River catches the whole bus off guard. “At least it’s a beautiful day,” someone says. And a swell of gratitude comes over me.

We arrive at Union Station at 3:35 on the dot. I’m a little surprised to see palm trees out front, though there were a lot up in Victoria too. “Does this look like a war zone to you?” my Lyft driver asks. In the 12-minute ride to the International Rose Test Garden, he unloads a rapidfire orientation to the city. “This set of streets is alphabetical: Ankeney, Burnside, and capital C, o-u-c-h is not pronounced ‘couch’ but ‘cooch.’ Then Davis, Evererett, and so on. The streets that run perpendicular are numbered. The lower the number, the closer you are to the river. On both sides. And by the way it’s not the ‘Will-a-MET.’ The saying around here is, ‘It’s the Willamette, damnit.'”

I’m trying keep up with his list of the best places for a scenic vista Mt. Hood, but my head is starting to spin as we weave up into Washington Park. We pass the lower entrance to the rose garden, and I start to wonder where he’s going. He says there’s only one place they’re allowed to drop people off. “It’s up just above the rose garden, so you’ll just take those stairs down.”

I thank him and bail out, descending into the labrynth of late season rose bushes. The afternoon sun is warm but slanting, and shadows are spreading quickly. My eyes scan the rows for Eric, but I don’t see him. I make my way over toward the lower entance, but he’s not there either, so I double back and try a corner off to the right. I’m still not seeing him. I pull my phone from my pocket and start to text him. As I do, it occurs to me that the one place I haven’t looked is behind me. I pivot and there he is laughing in the distance. I start lauhging too and my eyes well up with tears as we head for each other and embrace.

He says, “You couldn’t see me from my secret hiding spot…inside your mind!”

The last time I saw Eric was four years ago, when he visited Philly. We walked something like 18 miles in a day and he wrecked his foot. He says it’s never been the same. A few years before that I visited him and his wife in Austin to meet their new baby, and the four of us took a road trip to Houston. This is all to say I figured Eric would be game for a Pacific Northwest adventure, and I figured right.

After taking our fill of the roses, we head down the hill and catch sight of Mt. Hood in the distance.

I tell Eric about my Lyft driver, who also said this street up ahead turns into one of the main drags, so we hang a left. This litte stretch reminds me of Austin, and we’re reminiscing and falling into the groove of our friendship where absurdity rules.

“I was just down here on Saturday,” Eric says. “Or was it yesterday? Or was yesterday Saturday? I feel like I’ve been living in Portland for 6 years.” He got to town when I was still up in Canada.

“I’m starting to lose track of time myself.”

“This reminds me,” he says, already starting to laugh, “I went to Powells and saw this book, and I thought of you, it was called something like Saturday Begins on Wednesday.”

I bend over with laughter. “That’s just how time works out here. Today is Monday, but Monday is actually still last week.”

But on Tuesday it feels like I’ve used up all my luck.

Against my better judgement I scheduled two job interviews this morning.

The first one is an outright disaster. They tell me they have my resume in front of them but then ask me to talk through my work history anyway. I manage to ramble my way through this, and do ok when they ask what I know about the organization and why I want to work there. Then they ask me to tell them about a time when I solved a problem. “It could be any problem.”

My mind goes completely blank. After what feels like a solid minute of silence, and I say quite bluntly, “I’m sorry, I realize I should have a stock answer prepared for this, but it’s quite early here and my mind is struggling.”

They say we can come back to it. The next question is about a time I worked with someone who I didn’t agree with. I think for a moment, and start to answer, but it feels like I’m climbing up a sheer rock face in the dark. I stop myself and apologize again. “I don’t know if this is the best time for this call.”

They offer to reschedule it a few hours later, but I know I have the second interview coming up. I tell them I’m just not up for it.

The second interview turns out not to be an interview at all. They think I would be a great fit, but since it’s in-person, and I would be relying on public transportation to get there, they don’t think they can risk it. “Unless you can convince me otherwise,” one of them says. But I can’t.

Somehow this stings worse than falling flat on my face earlier. Eric comes back to the Air BnB from a coffee shop where he’d spent the morning and finds me crying in the living room. I give him the recap, and he says, “You should have told them, ‘Actually, I’m solving a problem right now… the problem of how to answer this stupid question.'”

This gives me a good laugh, and I try to shake it off as we head out to pick up the rental car so we can hit the Columbia River Gorge.

The weather helps. Low 70s, sunny and a light breeze. Our Lyft driver remarks on it, “This is how you know the winter is going to be terrible.” Just after he says this, the drawbridge over the Willamette goes up, and we sit for 10 minutes waiting for a barge to pass.

When we get to the rental car office there’s a sign in the window that says they’ll be back in 15 minutes. We can tell this doesn’t bode well. The guy actually comes back pretty quickly, but then doesn’t have a reservation under my name. I explain that we switched the pick up location and show him my confirmation email. “Normally that would be fine,” he says. “But I’m short on vehicles right now.”

We step out of the way so another customer can return a vehicle. He hands the guy the keys and shows him a picture of the mileage.

“Did you fill up the tank?”

“Yes, we filled it, but actually it was only a quarter full when we picked it up. We had to stop early and refuel.”

“You should have taken a photo, then you could have been reimbursed.”

“Oh, ok,” the customer says as he slinks away.

Eric asks the rental car guy, “Shouldn’t the company have checked that with you before they let us switch it?”

“They never check,” he says. He suggests we switch again to the airport, where they always have a ton of vehicles on hand. We relent, but since we have 24 hours to pick it up, we decide to put off the Gorge until tomorrow. The drive to Eugene is short, so we’ll have plenty of time.

“Saturday, begins on Wednesday.”

We step out into the street, and I instantly feel lighter.

“Let’s dérive.”

A mode of exploration that marks so many of my memories with Eric, we set off drifting through the city without aim, following intuition and reading the landscape rather than the map.

Along the way, I’m reminded of the time when I first visited Eric in Austin. We had tied one on the night before and were trying to rally for brunch. His wife, Steph, and I were already out in the car waiting for him to get it together, when she got the idea to pull the car out of the driveway and down the block to make him think we left without him. But when he finally emerged from the house, he made a bee-line directly for us. Steph expressed her disappointment at not being able to prank him. I asked if he had seen us backing out from one of the upstairs windows. “No,” he said. “My brain is just in, like, a state where I had zero expectation of where the car would be, so I was incapable of being surprised.”

This feels like the way to move from here on in. Without expectation. With trust. Lightening up, and being grateful for a beautiful day.