copper pots. The waiter is a boy. Not
an infant, but not exactly a man. Some-
where in that intermediate gravy. “Are
you all weathering the storm O.K.?”
he asks us, grinning.
Can one say no? I wonder. No, thank
you, we are not. We have failed to weather
it and now we are here, in your restaurant.
The food that comes out is not dis-
gusting. Sweet and hot and plentiful,
moist in all the right places. It goes
down pretty heavily, though, and I feel
the day starting to expire, begging to
end. James was right. The druggery of
road food. We eat in silence, listening
to the rain. Both of us look forlornly
at the bar, thinking that we shouldn’t,
we mustn’t. On the other hand, we
could simply pass out drunk here and
maybe they’d take us to jail. There are
beds in jail. Soap. New people to meet.
A television above the bar shows a
woman in a raincoat being blown of
her feet. The clip must be on a loop,
or else she keeps getting up, saying
something desperate into her micro-
phone, and then falling back down
again. I’d like to tell her to stay down,
just stay down and take it, while the
wind and the rain lash at her flapping
back, but she gets up again and the
wind seems to lift her. For a moment,
as she blows sideways of the screen
and surrenders herself to flight, her
posture is beautiful, absolutely grace-
ful. If you were falling from a clif, no
matter what awaited you, you might
want to think about earning some style
points along the way, turning your final
descent into something stunning to
watch. On the TV, there is nothing to
learn about the storm, nothing to know.
The number that scrolls across the
bottom of the screen is long, without
cease, maybe the longest single num-
ber I’ve ever seen. Does this number
describe the storm? What are we to
make of it?
In the car, we think it over. We are
too far from a hotel—plus, the hotels
aren’t answering their phones. The
driving is dangerous, if not impossi-
ble. It’s not really even driving any-
more; it’s like taking your car through
one of those car washes. We are ex-
hausted beyond belief. I suggest, as
tentatively as I can, that it is not un-
reasonable to think that we could sleep
in the car. Our seats recline, like easy
chairs, and if we found somewhere safe
and quiet to park we could ride this
out until the morning, maybe even
sleep well. Then we could drive all day
and maybe get to somewhere where
they have rooms. We’d be rested. The
sun might be up. The world might
have ended. But at least it would be
tomorrow. Tomorrow seems like theonly thing that will solve anything,
ever. Along comes tomorrow, with its
knives, as someone or other said. That’s
not the exact quote, I’m sure, but the
bones of it sound true.
It seems as though James may have
given up. “Is that what you want to
do? Sleep on the side of the road? In
the car?”
“What I want to do is to be alone
in a hole, covered in dirt. But sleeping
in the car is the next best thing right
now.”
“Yes, that is often the second choice
after live burial.”
It starts to sound nice to me, really
appealing. Like going to the drive-in,
but without the movie. Like going park-
ing, which we must have done once, in
another life, before our bodies took on
water and started to sink, before the
spoil grew like mold in the backs of
our mouths. “I don’t think there’s any-
thing wrong with sleeping in the car,”
I say. “It’s going to be more comfort-
able than a motel, that’s for sure, not
that there even is an available motel,
and plus we won’t have to worry about
the cascade of ejaculate that’s been lit-
erally sprayed from human appendages
around every single motel room in the
country. Purportedly.”
James seems to think about it.
“When I stay in a hotel,” he says, “I do
my best to ejaculate on the walls. It’s
a civic obligation. You have to pull your
weight.”
“That’s a lot of pressure for a man.”
“Sometimes I’m not in the mood.
I’m cranky and I’m tired.”
“That’s when you bring out the jar
from home?” I ask.
He laughs. “It’s good to have it with
me. Who’s going to know, you know,
if the product is older?”
“More mature, in some ways.”
“Must. Broadcast. Seed,” he says,
like a robot, and then he mimes the
flinging of the jar, splashing its imag-
inary contents out into space.
It’s not really a rest area that we find.
It’s a scenic turnout, and the view—of
the black, bottomless abyss—is pris-
tine. You can see all of it, every dark
acre, and if we don’t see our own ghostly
faces by the end of the night it’s be-
cause we’re not looking hard enough.
We park a bit out of the way, under the
branches of a mammoth tree, and when••