“We could just leave, you know.”
“We keep saying that. And then we don’t go.”
“I could sell this shitmobile and buy a van.”
“Sell everything.”
“Sell all our CDs.”
“Sell everything.”
All our books.”
“Everything but the instruments.”
“We could do it.”
“Hit the road,” says Samantha.
“We could do it.”
“If you decided you were going to go,” Samantha says, “I’d go with you.”
He looks up.
“You mean that,” he says.
She swallows. She knows he has not asked a question, but she answers him. The answer is something that he needs to hear. “Yes. Yes, I mean that.”
“You and me,” he says. “Playing guitar for spare change.”
“Huddled together in the van for warmth.”
“Sneaking into dormitories across America to sneak quick showers.”
“Trading songs for sandwiches.”
He eyes her. He’s trying to figure something.
“How come it can’t be,” he asks, “that you decide to go and I decide to come with you?”
“I’ve got no van,” she says. “No van, no car, no savings. Wysiwyg.”
She spreads her hands open to show him.
“Why?” she asks. “If I decided to go—if I could go—would you come?”
“Yes,” he says.
They look at each other. Something is happening. This is definitely something happening.
“So are we going to go?” she says, and then she laughs. She’s not sure where this laugh comes from. She is watching the possibility of their going take steps towards realness, and it seems almost funny to her, no, not almost, it does seem funny to her: that sometimes you can get what you want just simply by imagining it into existence like this.