The two had split up long ago…right after high school…she went off to college and he traveled the country going from one town to the next…they’d talk every once in awhile…old stories and remember when…then they lost touch…he became more distant with her…with everybody…no one heard from him…it was like he just vanished…became a ghost…

She carried on in life…married twice…couple of kids from the first one…some insurance salesman…a real practical guy…never was one for adventure…she longed for it…swore as soon as the kids were grown she’d go out and look for a mess to get into…some man who lived on the edge…maybe a biker or somethin’ like that…a trucker who hauled freight down to Mexico…now she wanted out of this town…

He kept on travelin’…never settled down…his whole family had given up on him…they didn’t reach out to him and he never contacted them…just kept doin’ odd jobs…livin’ in homeless shelters…spendin’ days at the library readin’ Beckett…Joyce…Miller…Spinoza…he had a curious mind…

And she found her biker…some mechanic who loved to travel in packs…she thought she’d become a member of a new family…bunch of motorcycle riders hell bent on drinkin’ and ridin’ through West Texas…into New Mexico…lookin’ at red clay walls of mountains and blue skies…she loved wrappin’ her arms ’round his big gut and holdin’ on for dear life…she got her adventure…

One day the traveler realized he was growin’ tired of the whole movin’ from town to town…realized from readin’ Meister Eckhart that there was nothin’ in this life…nothin’ after as well…the true existence of man was nothin’…God was nothin’…and if he was somethin’ he’d just as soon not have nothin’ to do with him…so…he kept hearin’ these voices tellin’ him to go back to his hometown…see what he gave up…years had passed…

Life kept on goin’ for her…thought she was happy…pleased in her ways…but…there was always somethin’ in the back of her mind that left her unfulfilled…she was never gonna be happy…so…she left the biker and got a job at the Piggly Wiggly store as a check out girl…comin’ to the conclusion that life was nothin’…just nothin’ but a series of misadventures…

First thing he did when he got back into town was go down to the neighborhood tap…no one knew him…wasn’t recognized…didn’t talk to anybody…just sat there drinkin’ a cold Bud…two stools down in the corner she sat drinkin’ a tall one herself…they didn’t notice one another…didn’t talk…there was nothin’…nothin’ at all…just two worn out souls drinkin’ in a bar…lookin’ for nothin’….and nothin’ is what they found…