Shayla and I took a road trip together about five years ago, three weeks traveling around the Southwest. She had just been laid off from Apple and I'd gotten a small windfall - an aunt I hadn't seen in 20 years died - so we decided to go see the desert. She's from Indiana and I'm from Virginia so we'd never really been in the desert much, it always seemed too hot and barren after what we were used to growing up. This trip was her idea - she said something like, Cam, I don't know what I'm going to do next. Let's go out to the desert and wander for forty days and forty nights like those crazy Biblical prophets and maybe I'll have a vision or something. I said, let's stay home and eat a lot of mushrooms, you'll have plenty of visions and you won't get sunburned, but she said no, I want to go to the desert, I'll clean out my mind a lot better that way, there's just too much noise in my head here in the city.

So we took off for a while. It was a great trip, all three weeks of it. Starting out we took 395 down to Death Valley, then went over to Pahrump, up to Winnemucca, back down to Carson City and drove Route 50 for two days all the way across Nevada, to Delta in Utah. 50 is one beautiful road to drive with the roof and all the windows open. I fell in love with the desert on that road and Shay did too. We stopped before we'd gotten even 30 miles east of Fallon and took off all our clothes and drove naked across Nevada. Man, I loved that. We sang stupid songs - who'd have thought she knew all the words to "I Think I Love You"? - and waved at trucks going the other way and made up stories about the families in minivans we passed or the cowboys driving solo in their pickup trucks. Shay drove most of the way on that part of the trip, her sunglasses perched on the end of that little snub nose, her hair - it was down past her shoulders then - flying out the window and into the back seat behind us, every strand just as golden as the sun. Every now and then she'd shake her head - I mean really shake it, like a dog getting out of the pond - and run her fingers through her hair and tilt the rearview to look at herself and resettle her sunglasses and turn to me and say, Cam, I love you and I love us and I love the earth and I love this life and why the hell don't we just do this forever?, and just laugh. We didn't need any music or any pot, just each other and the hum of the Volvo's engine and the sun and the mountains in the distance and the road ahead of us, a black line with white dashes for as far as we could see. And a nice big bottle of water and some sunscreen, of course - we always needed those. Those two days were beautiful ones, maybe the best we ever had.

We were between Austin and Eureka and we hadn't seen anybody for about half an hour and I was dozing a little when she slowed down and turned off on a side road that just didn't seem to go anywhere, or at least didn't have a signpost. I opened my eyes, looked up through the roof to see what time it was: mid-afternoon, too soon to think about finding a place to camp. I asked her, What are you doing? She looked straight ahead and said, You'll see, in her low preoccupied voice. We kept on going down the side road for a few miles and then it turned to dirt. She was looking carefully at the sides of the road ahead and she looked kinda flushed. Not sunburned, but flushed like she'd danced for a few songs but not really gotten going yet. I asked her what she was looking for and she said, The spot. What spot? I'll know it when I see it, she said. I looked at her, she looked back at me and grinned but I couldn't see her eyes behind her sunglasses so I just decided to wait and see what was gonna happen. About a mile later she slowed and pulled over on the shoulder next to a big dune that rose up and dropped off sheer about twenty feet from the road. At its base the sand was rippled gently and looked so soft and warm that I wanted a nap just looking at it. She took a big gulp from the water bottle, unhitched her seat belt, shut off the Volvo's engine and opened her door. She started to climb out, then twisted around, took off her sunglasses and put them on the dash. She looked right into my eyes and said, Are you coming? Shayla has the most beautiful light brown eyes and right then they were the color of the earth and mountains around us and I just about dislocated my shoulder, I was in such a hurry to get out of my seat belt and out the door.

We weren't really all that far from the main road and on one side of the dune I could see the thick white side of a truck as it crawled, or seemed to, along the surface of the desert. I met Shay around the front of the car and she stepped right into me. I mean, right into me, not like bumping into each other, just like in one moment we were one soft body, joined every place our skin touched. She reached up and put one hand on the back of my head and kissed me and my god time stopped. All there was was her breath and her lips and her warmth against me all up and down my body and she was pouring herself into me through my mouth. I could hear the engine ticking but there was no other noise, maybe just my own blood pounding in my head.

She broke away and stepped back, then took hold of my arm and turned towards the dune. I said, Here? And waved my hand at the road next to us and the road behind us. All she did was look back at me and say, This is the place, and tug on my arm. I said, Wait, and turned back to the car to get a condom out of my pack - usually Shay's the one who remembers these things - but she said No, not this time. I didn't argue it with her. Not this time. We went over to the base of the dune and she sat on the soft sand and then lay completely back and pulled me over on top of her and put one hand on my cheek and guided me in with the other. She was soaking wet - I had a quick image of little black dots of wet sand right under her, like when you spill a couple of drops of soda at the beach - and I slipped in just like that and started moving inside her. She came really quickly, not with her usual fireworks but silently, gripping my shoulders so hard I thought they'd break and lifting our lower bodies about a foot off the sand with the force of it. Her eyes were wet and I didn't know if she was gasping soundlessly or crying. We kept on, the sun washing strong on my back and in my hair, her eyes shut and her hands dancing over my spine, and some time later, I don't know how long, she had another one and a little while after that I came too. Trying to describe my own - I dunno, it sounds like cheap porno, molten torrents of passion flowing inside her, but that's just how it was. I lay on top of her panting, weightless, all of me was in her and around her and with her. I've never loved a woman more than I loved Shayla right then. I felt her tears wet against my shoulder and I looked down at her and she was laughing and crying at the same time. She started to speak and her throat caught but she got out, Just don't say anything right now, honey. So I didn't. We lay there, as close together as two people can be, and a little wind blew up and scattered sand grains on my back and against the side of our faces. I put my head down next to hers and we breathed gently into each other's ears for a long time while the sun sank just a little bit and then a little bit more. I think we might have slept, I don't know. No one came down that dirt road the whole time we were there - God bless the desert and the people who live there, or don't, I guess.

We got up and went back to the car and I got out the Handi-wipes and gave her one and used one myself to wipe the sand and sweat off me and we still weren't talking. It was so quiet that I felt like one loud noise would have cracked the picture around us open like a crystal vase. I looked at Shay wiping herself down and noticed the inside of her thigh glistening and before I thought about it I just popped the words out, What if you get pregnant? She came over to me and, with her half-serious smile, reached down with her Handi-wipe and wiped off my cock - oh man, that felt good, perfectly cool in just the right place, lemme tell you - and then balled up the wipe and - just like this - using an exaggerated basketball-shot movement lobbed it into the car through the sunroof. She said, Cam, it's all right. It won't happen. She took a step towards the car, turned around and stood with her hands on her hips, surveying me and the dune behind me like she was just so immensely pleased with her work and said, And if it does, we'll have the most beautiful perfect child in the world - can you think of a better place to make one?