When (not if, not if..) I step off that plane safely next week, and take in a big breath of sea level air, my friend Jess will be there to meet me. She has agreed to play the role of airport limo driver for the day, and it thrills me, not just because I love Jess, but because I love riding in cars with Jess.

My parents used to fear for my life every time I got in a car with her; they saw Jess as suicidal (which she was) and reckless (which she wasn't). Jess has been tortured, almost to death, by her own demons. But when you ride with in a car with her, you are riding in the dead calm eye of that howling maelstrom of pain and anxiety. Jess loves to drive. Outside of a car, she whirls in anxiety, but behind the wheel, she is confident; you drive with her and you sense that she is doing something that comes naturally to her, something she is good at, and she knows it. Like many natural talents, her skill as a driver comes from lightning reflexes and an intuitive feel for the road, rather than from mundane traits, like obedience to the laws (of man or physics).

Jess channels all of her frenetic energy into driving. She has a nervous habit, in or out of a car, of rubbing her hands on her jeans before she touches anything. The palms of her hands and the soles of her feet are in a perpetual damp sweat, through some twist of genetics or from constant anxiety or some combination of both. She says that when she was a child, her mother always knew when she climbed up onto the kitchen counter to steal cookies from the cookie jar: she would leave moist little hand and footprints behind.

In a car, her hands are in constant motion. Music plays and she drums complicated rhythms on the steering wheel. She wipes her hands and shifts gears (she always, always drives stick), wipes again to continue her drum solo. She'll smoke and talk on the phone, pausing her conversations to take a drag on her cigarette or perform the complicated hand motions necessary to wipe her hand and shift gears, while still maintaining control of both phone and cigarette.

As a passenger, you are treated to an effortless flow of stand-up comedic conversation, while she weaves her way around curves and in and out of traffic, without hesitation, without pause. And through it all you feel strangely safe; the road could be crumbling below you, but you can trust her to navigate safely while telling you how she talked the sole night employee at 7-11 into leaving the store to help her chase a stray cat (now her pet) through the parking lot at 3 a.m. or how she traded her last car for a really big bag of pot. It's James Bond played by Ellen Degeneres: you can hardly breathe for laughing and you don't fear the hail of bullets around you, because for goodness sake, it's James Bond driving.

She tells me that everything is going her way this year: this is "The Year of Jess." She has a new job, a new house, a new girlfriend and a brand new car, and I get to see them all. She tells me she is in love with the car, so I can't wait to see it. She used to dream of owning a convertible, but always settled for cars with sun roofs. I picture her driving, top down, shifting gears, with her hair flying in the open wind.