After returning from Roswell, Rid and I went over to see my Dad. He had moved into a really run-down apartment since the separation from my Mom. The whole place was a mess. I dare say even messier than mine. He told me he got the landlord to knock $100 off every month from the rent if he did at least $100 worth of repairs.
He asked us if we wanted to go to a bar. This was something I'd never gotten to do with Dad before. But I told him Rid wasn't 21, so that meant we couldn't go out for a drink. Dad drove the two of us around Artesia. We went back to his apartment and he showed us the car he was working on. He seemed to get along rather well with Rid. Interestingly, this would be the only time Rid got to see my father. He got to see my Mom at least one other time after this road trip, but he never got to hang out with me and my Dad again.
We left Artesia the next morning. We stopped by Grandma Bend's house in Ft. Sumner on the way back and visited with her a little bit. We didn't have anything else very eventful take place as we drove back to Denver. However, when we got back to his parents' house in Golden, his mother was very relieved to see us. She had found out that there was a really bad snowstorm at the New Mexico/Colorado border and they had to close Raton Pass. She called my Mom in a panic and they were afraid we were stuck freezing to death in the car. We weren't aware of any snow when we were driving through. I guess we just barely missed the snowstorm. It was a good thing Rid didn't do anything that required him to go to the emergency room, or we would have been caught up in that.
Rid had to be at work at midnight. I was going to drive him over. Before that, he had to call his new girlfriend. His mother told him he had five minutes to get off the phone. But during that five minutes, she would keep coming in to get him off the phone. He got mad and yelled at her for interrupting him during the five minutes she said he could be on the phone. He didn't have a mute button, so that meant the girlfriend heard him yelling at his mom.
We left and I took him to his job at Circle K. No one seemed to be upset that he got out of two days' worth of work. I went straight home and crashed.
All I had to do now was wait for Chez to call. A couple of days later, I was reading the newspaper at my apartment when the phone rang. I knew it was her calling. It was a collect call.
Chez told me she had gone to her parents and everyone was all excited about my sudden appearance. They gave her the letter and she cried when she read it. She said she had just moved out that day to live with her best friend and her boyfriend. (Okay, so she wasn't living with some guy she had hooked up with.) She told me that around the time that Rid and I were causing a commotion at Roswell High School, she was hanging out with her friends at Sonic. If anyone had given me any indication that she was over there, I would have gone.
I said I was sorry for what I put her through. I told her that I had gotten involved with someone else after I had moved to Denver and that we had been thinking about getting married at one point, but I didn't have sex with her. I mentioned that because the relationship ended on such a horrible note, I would have been better off just waiting for her.
We talked a while longer. She wasn't sure if she was going to stay in school. She really didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. However, she knew she didn't want to just up and move to Denver with me. She was rather hurt by what I did, but said she still loved me and we would try to work things out.
We continued to talk every once in a while after that. At one point, I tried calling and the person at the house said she had gone on a road trip with her friend. They were riding with a truck driver and going across the country. I figured that they might be driving through Denver at some point. Every time I left my apartment, I left a note in the lobby for her telling her where I was. Every night, I came home and found that no one had picked up the note. It turned out they never came through Denver, even though she said she wanted to.
Before the end of the year, I would see Chez again. But that will be the topic of an upcoming post.
I do have an interesting side note to all of this. The person I refer to as "Rid" has been reading this blog and he says he only remembers bits and pieces of this road trip. He says this is mainly due to a mini-stroke he suffered six years ago. (He had a heart attack last year.) The strange thing is that he remembers the details that I did not include in the last two posts. He says he recalls seeing my grandmother. (I didn't initially remember that, but it makes sense that we would have seen her. However, he thought that was in Lincoln County because he remembers the town having something to do with Billy the Kid. Ft. Sumner is where Billy the Kid was buried.) He also remembers that my Mom drove a 280Z and that we ate at some burger joint in Roswell. (I don't even remember that one.) He also recalled us missing the snowstorm on the way up.
Many of the people I have written about in these posts who have read them have all made remarks on my memory. I like to pride myself on how intact my memory appears to be and that's why I've been writing this blog. I have to admit I am afraid that the day will come sooner than later that I won't be able to recall so much of what made me the person I am today.
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