It must be the song

Maybe it's just getting late. Or maybe the song did it. Maybe both. It doesn't really matter the vehicle, I'm back there now anyway, so I might as well just deal with it.

At four in the morning, the streets are always quiet. You can almost feel the people sleeping around you. Rolling through neighborhoods this late - or early I suppose - there aren't even many nightowls up. If they are, the light sneaking around their drawn blinds marks them as sure as neon signs.

Music on the radio at this hour always takes on extra depth, like it has a free pass to your soul. Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith fame, doesn't want to miss a thing and neither do I - not now, not then either. It's funny what a song will do to you once it's associated in your memory. When it becomes more than just a song you sort of like and becomes a time, a place, a person.

It had already been a long night when my last page was sent. An afternoon of trying to put a dent in the messages in my box and the emails on my computer and then a night of waiting for results of local high school games and quickly trying to cram it all together into a nice, tidy package of four sports pages - two color, two black and white - destined to end up being trucked off in a heap to a recycling center somewhere to begin the process of becoming a sports section again. It's a disposable world and I was doing my part to give people something to dispose of.

I tried to be nonchalant as I offered to stay and watch down the paper that night. I think there was some weary surprise but Tim who already had the odious task had other things to work on while he waited so he just said thanks anyway.

Trying to kill time, I started roughing out the next day's pages. Then I got up and bought a Mt. Dew and a Mr. Pibb from the soda machine in the break room.

I put them both in a drawer of my desk. The Dew I would drink anyway, but the only reason I would buy a Mr. Pibb was because I knew that's what she liked. I didn't want it staring at me while I waited though. If she didn't stop in, it would be taunting me - thus the drawer.

Every time I heard the door from the press room open, I had to will myself to not jump up to see if it was her. It never was. Finally, as I was beginning to doubt that she would show, the side door opened and she walked in. Even in sweats, she made my heart skip.

She slumped into the chair at the desk next to mine.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey. Just wake up?"

"Yeah, I went to sleep for a couple of hours."

"Aren't you the lucky girl."

"Yeah right," she said. "Tell me why we're doing this again?"

"I think you were trying to come up with sneaky way to spend some time alone with me..."

"Riiight...No I don't think that's it," she said laughing. I loved her laugh.

She was at least awake now. I opened my drawer and pulled out the Mr. Pibb and gave it to her.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

"No candy?" she asked with her bottom lip out.

"Didn't know what you would want," I said.

"Peanut M&Ms..."

"No, I'm not buying you Peanut M&Ms."

"Please..."

"Nope."

"You know you're going to buy them anyway..."

She was right. I would have bought the whole damn machine out at that moment. I was just glad Josh and Pat weren't there to watch me melt in her hand like this. Tim was there, but he was over talking to the Tommy at the press room window.

She had some stuff to do before we went out delivering, so we went over to the circulation office in the other building for a few minutes and then out to the loading area at the back of the building.

I heard the presses start picking up speed. That meant the run was nearly dialed in and readable copies would be rolling off the press and out to the packaging department. There was only a short window of opportunity to catch any glaring errors at this point and no one wanted to be the one to stop the presses, but the reading had to be done. Tim already had a copy and was checking it. I glanced through the headlines, starting with the Sports section of course. All was fine, so we had a paper sent to bed.

The end for the editorial department was the beginning for packaging and circulation though.

She was covering some downed routes - ones that had no carriers - and I had told her I would help out. That's why I was standing out back waiting for bundles of newspapers to come off the rollers from the strapper. The nice thing about doing routes with her was that she had no problem pulling rank and getting our bundles first. Since all the carriers were under her supervision, they didn't put up too much of a fuss - at least while we were there. They wouldn't have said much to me anyway, most were too intimidated to talk to me anyway since I worked 'upstairs.' Not many editors came down to the packaging department - even fewer came down to help out.

Since they were short, we rolled through the first two routes and were well into a third. It was nice. We were both tired, but I would have done almost anything to make it last even longer. We had been talking about traveling, and how much college she had left, and what she wanted to do after she was done.

It had been a long time since I had done routes with her like this and a lot had happened since the last time. We went through some up and down periods because of office politics and had made it past them back to where we were now. There was a lot said that night, and a lot left unsaid. I never did tell her how I felt about her - more then than ever - but I'm sure she already knew.

In the midst of our late night ramblings, Aerosmith came on the radio and from that moment it became something that takes me back.

The streets are quiet and I'm sitting next to her in her Suburban, a pile of rolled newspapers between us. I feel the same pang now that I felt then too. And I feel proud of her, proud of what she was trying to do with work and school then - and maybe even more proud now, since I know she's accomplished most of what she said she wanted to when we talked that night. But mostly I just miss her.