Driving without directions to an unnamed restaurant in a city I don’t know well, young Carlo leaves St. Louis in his usual vaguely planned stance of winging it, trusting in the power of the cell phone to lighthouse me into port. I hadn’t fully decided to go to Kansas City until I went, packing quickly and making dog arrangements on the fly.

I cleared the bridge over the Missouri on the way into St. Charles at 5pm. Clicking on the mental travel clock, I figured three and a half hours to traverse the state and arrive slightly late for an eight thirty game time. I lost some speed taking the dog to South City and then I stopped at my sister's to reclaim my black corduroy jacket, smokes and sunglasses left there the night before.

I don’t smoke, but occasionally I do, buying one pack of Camels or Camel Lights every three months or so. It’s something to do when you’re driving, and asking for a light, giving or getting, is still a ubiquitous Midwestern bar hello. As a Camel smoker among my friends I am odd man out, they are a mix of Marlboro and Marlboro Light smokers, or GPC on the cheap, with Vick and Mary Beth bringing up the menthol rear in something Virginian and slim-like, or koala cool on the eucalyptus tip. I’ve always thought smoking menthols was like drinking Tab cola. It’s functional fashion; no one else is going to ask for a sip.

I made it to Kingdom City when the rain started, and by the time I reached Columbia, roughly halfway there, I knew I was in for a shitty drive. I stopped for gas, a power steering fluid check, a double shot can of Starbuck’s espresso, and a power ball ticket. The lady who sold me the ticket told me I had nice hair and I was on a road trip in an off the map gas station so I figured I had a shot at it. Gotta put your nickel in the slot of “somebody wins it” from time to time.

Do you know about the lottery triangle in Wisconsin? There’s a Bermuda like zone of wealth generating convenience stores in-between Madison and Sun Prairie on 151. They’ve popped out a statistically unlikely number of millionaires in an already statistically unlikely multi-state government grift. Whenever I pass through there I try to breathe in a little luck, chow down on some of the local jerky and wonder what the magic is. Maybe it’s karmic runoff from all the life transformation and insight up at UWM. We should sick some MIT boys on it, they cracked Vegas after all.

Back on the divided highway, in the dark and mist, I was playing tag with trucker’s break lights, my wipers on high speed and every passing action a wind-sheer wet-out that would make you feel like you were in a car wash if the wheel weren’t suddenly pulling to the right. The water on the road erased the lane paint and after Columbia there are no more reflectors, no bumps to keep you coloring in the lines.

Not that you can see it, but you know that there is a large ditch to your left from which they are always extracting jack knifed rigs that have an aluminum can crunch quality to them or RVs missing a side so you can inspect the floor plan as you zoom past the wreckage. You spread your intuitive field out all over the vehicle you’re in and remember your father’s Zen instruction of knowing where all four tires are at all times. The right side of the road, also invisible, oscillates between threat of falling rock from the limestone hills this road was cut through, and river wash gorges carved out by former courses of the Missouri and Mississippi. They are of unlikely slope and end in formidable forest.

I wondered if the vibration coming from the right front tire was the result of an alignment issue, the quality of the pavement (only Mississippi’s is worse) or something more structural in the van. I chalked it up to a combo of factors, noting that it evened out after I hit a stride. Despite the conditions, and your driving instructors admonition that you drive to them, the speed of traffic hovered around my preferred eighty MPH. In the forced conformity of multi vehicle motion, slow is more dangerous than fast and avoiding the mergers is major.

I normally come into K.C. from the North so I had to rotate my mental map of the city for an easterly approach. Checking my messages I learned in two brief cell snippets that the destination was the local incarnation of the national Buca Di Beppo chain on The Plaza and that BJ had already gotten the hotel room within walking distance, stocking it with poker fixings and booze. Jason claims that the bottle of Gin didn’t give away my surprise participation – this was a surprise birthday party by the way – but you have to figure that pine scented bottle must have foot printed some part of his limbic with a clue, as he’s Crown n’ Coke and BJ is Rum n’ diet. The gin jug just screamed trifecta.

The drunken bartender giggled at me some directions involving 35 in the downtown, but the shouting local guy she passed the phone to talked me in off of 435 and along side streets into The Plaza like a pre Reagan air traffic controller – all skill and will. I do know The Plaza from the days of Kelly and Angela B, so once I had it in sight I was fine.

Kelly was a Kearney girl from up around the Jesse James farm, killing a year as a dental hygienist’s assistant so she could reapply to med school. I did the long distance driving from Kirksville to see her and we’d slip into town to go dancing. She had a camel hair coat that matched her golden brown hair that was light and long and would spread out like an oriental fan when I spun her fast or it would reach out and tickle the floor in a dip. Sometimes we would both travel and get a hotel in Columbia where she eventually went to med school. Last I heard she was an Air Force doctor, a Lieutenant by education when she walked in the door. Kelly was The Plaza by night, kissing in her car as the limos rolled by.

Angela B. grew up in the suburbs, her mom worked for Hallmark as an ink chemist. K.C. is greeting card H.Q. so if you’re seeking whom to blame for manufactured holidays, K.C. is ground zero on this Valentine’s Day weekend. Angela one-upped her mom by getting a Ph.D. in chemical laser sample analysis.

BJ still thinks of Angela B. as my “one who got away” but as I’m sure you’ve realized by now there are more than one of those, and they keep on getting, or I do. Life is a river and rafts are for sharing as long as you’ve got the next town in common: serial monogamist walking. Angela and I often coffee shopped the caffeine scene and wondered the water wonders in the city of fountains. Angela was The Plaza by day, holding hands in the grass and figuring on a future that faltered.

So once I runway-ed onto the main Plaza strip at the end (or the start) of this odyssey, I just had to park the boat. Handily Buca abuts the West 26th street terrace free parking garage and I got a rock star spot right by a door from the garage that leads directly into the restaurant through the kitchen. A kitchen entrance always feels very Swingers.

Four flights of stairs down and a maze wander past the prep chefs and I had Jason grinning out his Carlito Bandito greeting while BJ got me a double from the giggler. Halfway into my first drink the host called us to table, so for all my randomness I hit a five-minute window like a well-angled capsule reentry, not a heat shield out of place on this Gemini mission.

We had a theater major turned waitress as our flight attendant and we were winning friends and influencing people before the first pasta turned anti. Were there nine of us in that booth or eight? Do we count the couple from Springfield who were buying BJ drinks? Things rapidly get hazy from here, meshing together in a blur of cab doors and clubs, searches for pens and paper to heave anchors from the flow. “That girl you were dancing with was very married.” “I know, I asked permission.”

I’m going to stiff you on the payoff.

Eight a.m. and the hotel TV clicks on. Time to go save baby Triton Emily from the in-laws and secure a greasy breakfast. There was no point in packing for this trip. I arrive home to St. Louis in what I was wearing when I left it twenty-seven and a half hours earlier. Jason has a good life, with good work, good friends, and good fun. I hope he had a good birthday, I’m sure he did.

I have to admit when I hold that baby, as when I hold my sister’s kids, something in me has turned a corner. If God’s cookbook had a recipe for joy in it, it might be: start family, season with solid friendship, stir.
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There’s your Hallmark ending for you, couldn’t help it what with the K.C. Hallmaric radioactivity. I hope you’re happy. If you want some VD (Valentine’s Day?) cynicism I’ll remind you that Jason bought a ring at a store in The Plaza for a college girlfriend who we only refer to now as The Noxzema Girl, and when he got it back from her cheating ass the store wouldn’t refund the purchase, they claimed it was flawed. He sold it somewhere and got his head clear in a cash-in-hand European wander.

On a personal note, my Angela B. eventually got married on the plaza just this year to the guy she dated before me. I was invited, but saw little point in doing that to myself.

Romance is a trance and love a commodity measured in diamonds mined by DeBeers. Cheers!