In 1964, I had a girl friend in NYC, and a job and radio show in Cambridge Massachusetts. Although the distance between them, two hundred ten miles, presented a challenge, I was young, motivated, and I commuted; for a week or ten days every day, by car, with the help of friends who lent me cars and drove with me and then often, but not daily. I was inured to the trip. One night, I drove a woman who wanted someone to dive her Porsche Super 90, and her, to NYC. She got there in under three hours, including a stop for coffee. I did not get stopped because every police car in Connecticut was sitting on the other side of the freeway on the border, waiting for something.
One winter’s night in 1964, I was leaving Manhattan, rolling up the parkways, tired and paying attention only to that which mattered to safe motoring; I knew the way by heart. It was dark, with a moderate wind, and wisps of blowing snow. The road was clear enough. I found myself following a black limousine, and vaguely remember, perhaps the result of post event suggestion, some movement in the rear window in any case I was thinking of my girl friend, my job, and whom to book for the show: I ignored it, in one sense or the other.
All at once I became aware of agitation ahead. It was a young woman, who had opened the window on the limousine, and extruded her head, shoulders and one arm which she was waving vigorously as the rest of her bounced up and down, as much as possible. It was Mimi, waving to attract my attention. I recognized her, flashed my lights, and waved at her. She smiled contentedly and slipped back inside, looking at me through the rear widow. She smiled and waived again. Her sister, sitting beside her turned her head for a glance, and did not look again for the rest of the night. I could see them talking together as I drove on.
When Mimi moved to Cambridge, although she was a couple of years younger than I, she was married to a successful author, and I always thought of her an adult, whereas I was a college student, at least socially. She quickly became one of the house bands, with her husband, at the Club 47, where I worked, and where I met most of the talent for my radio show. When other acts canceled, the house bands would graciously fill in, and Mimi and Richard, were very generous, filling in on very little notice more than a few times. I dealt almost exclusively with Mimi, and we saw each other a the club, where we both spent a lot of time, and we worked on projects, together mostly for the club.
For rest of the trip that night, she would turn around every fifteen minutes or so, smile and wave. Unable to converse, we traveled together through the night, a strange community based on sympathy and propinquity. At one point, I was running out of gas, but “pay at the pump” was new, and I managed to get in and out of a gas station on the Berlin Strip in Connecticut, in a time that would have pleased an Indy 500 pit crew. I got back on the highway, and found Mimi’s limousine, pulled in behind it, flashed my lights, and with a wave and a dazzling smile from Mimi, resumed our trip together.
When we got to Cambridge, our ways parted; I flashed my head lights, one last time, waved, and pulled out to find my way home. We never talked about it; I never forgot it.
More than a year later, I was at the Club, as Mimi waited, on her twenty-first birthday, for news from her husband, who was in California to sign a new contract. before she would head out to her birthday party. News came, but it was devastating: Richard had signed the contract, and left word he would call her from the signing party. Ecstatic, he left on his motorcycle, ran off the road, into a tree and was dead.
Too few years later, Mimi too was gone, and the world is emptier because she is no longer in it.