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mechanized, penchant breathed man pulls from his allotted visitor’s spot
in smooth slow semicircled curve. The handgear joint slides from reverse
to neutral as the encapsulated interior air shudders under a great exhale.
Hand and stick shift into first as he feels his first sense of reprieve,
an option of escape from the unnerving scene which he has just exited.
With a smooth feeding of gas and a loosening of the clutch, the engine
warms to a nice ready steady hum as he completes his checkmark start.
Following is the tedious navigation of speed bump arrays and channel routed
delays through the orderly rowed cars and square blocked apartments of
the vast carpark encampment while his thoughts simmer down, settle out
and the feeling of motion and stifled revs soak his bones. His name is
Nunzi. His car is a Saab. And he has just discovered how deep the shit
he is in is.
At the security gate, the last obstacle
to the road, the spikes lay back submissively yet offer quickly sharp
teeth of no retreat. The barrier arm falling behind. The signal of a starting
gun. And the man, the car and his anxiety-fueled thoughts are off! Off
with the Wherethehelltonow taking the start and wherethehelltastaytonight
coming up quick on the straightaway while howthefuckamigonnaget2k falling
behind here a little bit here on the curve and it looks like ijustneedtafuckindrive
is coming up around the corner and closing the gap and yes… yes… its taking
the lead grabbing up the distance in short gasped spasms hoofing sporadically
around and about in the intermittent play of horsepower between spaced
lights and switched gears, jumping back and forth… up and down… through
certainty and doubt.
Otherwise it is a dark stretch of low trafficked
road along a heavily stoplit and stopsigned grid of farmland and allocated
storefronts that unreels his escape from the isolated apartment blocks
with the slow slug of a vein toward the freeway proper and there the mainline,
an existential leap, an uninhibited flow to the heart of the city.
Finally… connecting… pausing at a red before
he injects himself into the artery with a rush that exhales the frightful
dreams in one great burst of exhaust and all the blurs come into focus
as his senses adjust to the smog scented blacktop and its standard ten
past post 75 mph. Here the darkness takes on the shape of light and the
sky takes on content under the high arched florescent sentinels hung high
up on the right. And Nunzi hurtles into freeway consciousness and his
anxieties fall away one by one as he, belted in, joins the flow of his
fellow strapped down passengers. Passengers of the road, each knotted
to their own, yet so often unaware of the communal river they share. Unaware
of this viaduct of modern conduct. Where with their maneuvers apportioned
to lights, signs, the physics of kinetics; their manners respecting distance,
speed and appropriate signal-ings, the passing motorist becomes our most
casual pedestrian, silent and sentient upon these broad ribbons of scapeways.
Rolling down the window, a little more
at ease now, the last of Buddy’s breath whips off, out and away under
the warm heavy vent. Leaving only the wind in his hair and the last of
the tension, the voice, ringing through his ear “You’re fucking loosing
it nunzi, you are sooo fucking loosing it.” Nunzi shrugged those words
off when they were said not more than half an hour ago, but they still
hung on like the reverberation of a misbalanced wheel or some haunting
suspicion of an insecure frame. Sure. Coke ain’t free. He knew that. Shit,
everyone knows that, but they had had a deal, a reduced familiar rate,
an unspoken understanding. Something no longer existent when his shrug
was not reacted upon well, not reacted upon well at all and the .45 barrel
shoved into his mouth signaled clearly that all the previous arrangements
were now canceled. “None of your shit talk now nunzi. Not now not ever.
Just two grand as that’s what I see you owe me. And whatever delusions
you had of you being buddy’s buddy, are now and forever permanently deceased.
Understand?” To this he could only nod. His teeth clinking on the metal
as he decides, if he ever gets out of this one, never to mix business
with pleasure again.
Faster now in hot air under hot breath,
floating taut above the speed limit in a steady run, its warm life-giving
hum. The voice, the tension “Not now, not ever” tapering off… finally…
as the lane lines fly by. He finds the speed calming coming on not too
fast, not too slow, though well above that of the sparse flow. Motoring
in the middle he feels safe on this asphalt river and its concrete bordered
roar of engines, not ready for the edges, still not sure which one will
coax his mood, not sure at which point he will exit. Not sure of anything
quite yet. He simply lets the vibrations of air and rubber rise up through
the metal floor and touch him.
He finds an optimum velocity in doing so…
in letting himself go… his mind perfectly balanced with motion.
His sense of self now fully integrated with the patterns and movements
of the herd. The sensorium itself spanning back… reaching forward… feeling
out to the sides… encompassing an entire stretch of road… entering the
imaginative dimensions of propulsion where acceleration delays the involvement
of time proportioned to the intake of space and the consequential creation
of lag. Where the instant is perceived as a line of headlights captured
in slow shuttered photography stills and the motorist may speed off ahead
and away from his very soul.
Suddenly he hears the belated sound of
horns, a dying animal’s lament as taillights flare and all shifts toward
a slow-motion ontology as Nunzi enters the gnarled-up traffic ahead. Where
the steady lights brighten to a glare. Where his vehicular neighbors and
he are vised slowly into the far lane. Where he catches a glimpse
up beyond, between the shifting spaces, of a flipped and twisted leaf
like wreckage and recognizes instantly the corpse of his own car. The
same model, the same year, the same aqua black blue color. His own dreams
wrinkled, crushed before him. It hurts. A sight that stings as the similar
make signals a lifetime of decision and identification—almost a life at
least—of meditative leafing through Auto-traders, newspapers and weeklies.
So much obsessive searching, he reflected rolling slowly; if he’d spent
as much time on getting dressed, he’d be free from all social interaction.
But that’s how it was in his formative years, until he found that frame
whose shape spoke unto him, mirrored in reconcilable likeness his very
idea of motion. He had found it in the showy eurosleek Saab 96 of 1980,
the last of the bullnose run, had chosen it to be his psychic carriage.
Sure there were others, many others and the Saab 99 had been a close runner-up,
but in the end, after all the deliberation it was only the 96 that danced
before him, around him and with his own integrity.
His fondness for it grew, as positive reinforcement
goes, over time, as it was eventually acquired and further decked with
3-dual spoke 7.5 x 17 chromed wheels, still freshly polished and augmented
from full wheel locking system to valve stem covers. The interior accented
with the burled walnut dash treatment, sporty, subtle, sophisticated even
down to the matching shift handle. Leather seats reupholstered with just
the right complementary color of smoke gray that took months of shopping
to find and the steering wheel he’d surfed days for and had to have shipped
from Missouri to complete the composition. The exterior glamourously wore
a black pearl grill broken by blue halogen headlights and a rear bridge
spoiler sided with smoke colored turn signals. And undersuited with a
sports exhaust system 9-5 with its low frequency resonance high polished
anglecut (rolled end) double walled exhaust tip which he had to have modified
for his older model. And the hand painted decor panel, and the all season
floor mats, the Japanese style cup holder, the electronically heated seat
with its cooled secret dope stash, and, of course, the alpine quadraphonic
CD system which at the moment was silent, as he jockeyed for position
through the stalled competitive traffic.
He’d savored this process of selection
and outfitting. His enchantment with his sole auto product defined his
eccentricity, battled his sense of alienation. And the result would be
his own extension, his own private space. Something he’d come to value
all the more these last few weeks as Wendy, Buddy’s sister, cold-shouldered
him from her bed. Though having taken to his car instead of the couch
may not have helped, he considered. Running from one dependency to the
other, but it was on account of the first, this intrasibling reliance
that had landed him in so much shit. Having for over a year been cut a
substantial discount on Brother Buddy’s consistent but cut coke supply.
That all ended today, though. And the temperamental
ex in-law wanted payback. Much of which Nunzi feels to be undeserved as
he inches toward the airless innocence of the car crash. There is something
optimistic in it, in the manner he is removed from it. A feeling that
grows stronger the closer he approaches. Feeling no more than an observer,
a witness to the violent play of metallic smash. His fear of anticipation,
expectation, the responsibility of participation, eased as he reconstructed
in his mind a veer, a brake, a sounding of horns, an underlying sense
of betrayal, a thoughtless gesture, an incalculable error… something,
anything gone terribly wrong.
He is right on it now, squeezing by between
red lights ahead and bright eyed bumpers behind, spinning blues and reds
coming in celebration from somewhere still far off. The headlights of
his overturned double Saab cutting across the one lane of passing traffic,
right through his window, right through him, onto the chain linked lip
of the concrete parapet, illuminating the rapid movement of the opposite
bound traffic. The light itself some strange purgatory passage. Beyond
its source he feels the crushed skull of the rollover, the cold blood
pooling. Past that he can just make out the other car up on the embankment
among the bushes; nothing more then a shadow in which ghosts wander about,
broken, holding their heads and limbs between others who have stopped
in the performance of civic and curious duties.
He is deliberate in his movements when
finally clear of the tangled metal and splashed glass. The headlights
in his mirrors frame his departure zone as rocket ignition flames. The
cars ahead thin out, their taillights as red eyed demons inviting him
to follow. And he is off, straight to the middle. First gear, a hesitated
revving up to optimal warmth. Second breaking the rules, cutting off a
suburban with a dashing angular cut. Third letting loose as the engine
starts to scream rpms, his lips pull back baring teeth. And at four, he
is free, he has nothing but his propelled self and they have nothing on
him.
He is coming into familiar stretches now,
coming up fast to where the steetnames resonate with lifelong memories:
Baseline, Miracle Mile, Dreamy Draw, Aspiration Blvd. That first one there
deserving more then a mere regard, for Baseline leads to Nacido, his first
street, the address of his childhood; still home to the folks in its last
in-branched cul de sac. The dead end that had held him captive until he
was sixteen. There was no life before sixteen. Only waiting in a large
house with a garage and a spare car. The car he’d crash years later, one
of the many ingredients that precipitated up to his disownment. The one
whose absence and subsequent dependence on lead to his coke dealing in
order to fix his inbred desire for automated individuality.
No Turning Here! A No Exit that leads down
childish memory lanes and family chat drives and no thru ways. Past patronizing
father son talks, along disappointed motherly frowns, circling and circling
harrowed sibling rivalries never to be equalized. There is no acceleration
on those streets, only a constant pressure. Nunzi drives on.
Coming up on Apache now, whose wide avenue,
funny enough, is home to the house of Johnny Wickiup, one of his earliest
friends. A strange delinquent who had learned his mechanics and autos
on the San Juan rez and had harbored that peculiar tribal trait of referring
to a car’s anatomy as that of one’s own body. A speeded out motor head
whose arms where always covered in fat and had subjointed his dialogue
with how his lungs needed flushing, his liver a recharge, a short in his
veins, or the work needed to mend a crack in his heart. He’d take you
for a ride but his stomach was always hungry.
Ah ol’ Johnny, Nunzi reminisces, surely
he’s moved along by now, he further dismisses. No hope of finding him
out there among all those dead houses and naked streets. And it is more
of the same through this particular stretch of highway here where his
friends, other friends and more friends hidden beyond the darkness of
the roaded banks. Friends lost to addiction, friends lost to bizness,
friends lost to neglect, friends lost to betrayal, friends lost because
they were never friends in the first place. More and more of such streets,
their exits tracing themselves out off existence until he sees the approaching
Price, the one that leads home, the one that leads to Wendy, to one last
chance. Where with graceful gestures of apology, longing looks of sympathy,
hopeful haunts of reconciliations there might be a string of false, fake
and phony fucks fueled by unwanted longings. His eyes angle toward this
last escape, his hands and feet rolling into the far lane, almost unaware,
merely winking towards the intention as the car, now confused with his
own body, responds to the muted drives. Yet, it is already too late, cut
off by a gutsy Ford 350… a great hulk floored… no challenging that monster,
no chance of squeezing through. Though, however abrupt and rude the passing
cut of his neighbor, Nunzi cedes with no hint of anger, even feels a bit
honored by the warning blink of its flyby grunt; a gesture more authentic
then any word ever spoken to him. And with that bulky deliverer from temptation
gone off on the ramp of his own dead end destiny, he knows this to be
true as all traffic dissipates before him.
And with the concrete vestiges of that
last escape falling from sight he rides onto the high curve of an overpass;
where unlike the straightaway, the line, lies a tension. A good taut tension,
like the gentle bend of an erection. Where only the whip of the wind is
left to caress his hard-shelled skin which shoots off, finally, onto the
unfurled pavement of an empty interstate like ejected detritus doing nearly
ninety. Free from the hub of traffic waves, its cyclic rinsing, its vital
spin, its awful whorl. In this sense he cruises through the converging
space as a lost ghost forever to haunt the pavement, the sun never to
rise, never to run out of gas, never remembering the crash.
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