There’s a tone in the woman’s voice, where everything she says is not a definitive statement, but an invitation to participate. How badly the driver wants to participate. He doesn’t know what’s stopping him.

Rather he does, but he can’t feel it. He knows it’s there –his heart palpitates the letters, P-A-U…- but it might as well not. That’s how alone he feels with this woman. Not even his insides feel like companions, just electrical conductors. Here stands the driver, helpless, but also blissfully given over to this, his inadequacy before pure, distilled beauty. The driver stands alone with a Name, but she hasn’t said -or at least he didn’t catch- which Name.

“I’m Heather.”

She produces a delicate bird of a hand and it flutters between three or four of the driver’s fingers before flying off. He is so afraid of breaking it, of shattering its neat, symmetrical bones, that he hardly dares to grasp; just a little bit of pressure to say…he can’t think of what to say.

She throws off a first name, like he’s being introduced to the wife of a guy from the ranch. “Oh hiya, Heth. Jim sure has told me lots bout ya.” Not likely. Even the driver has heard of Heather Sinclair, though he wouldn’t have been able to pick her out from a lineup among other svelte brunette starlets. The driver hates Hollywood; and he’s only ever gotten as close as that descent from the starlit hills over Los Angeles, however many months ago.

Now he stands face to face with it, or at least one of its most defining faces of the past twenty years. Heather is looking at him expectantly. A slight breath escapes from her lips. The driver searches for words. A noncommittal “Yeahr,” is all he can come up with. It’s not even an interested, tell-me-more-about-it ‘yeah?’; just a plain old ya-got-that-right kind of ‘yeah’. It makes Heather smile all the same and a delicate talon of tanned fingers lands on his arm.