Headlights Rain Quotes

Soon it began to drizzle for the second time that night. The drops grew heavier and became visible in the headlights of the cars. It was said by some of the police on the scene that God was crying for the girl in the garden. To others, it was only rain.

My scars were reflecting the mist in your headlights I looked like a neon zebra, shaking rain off her stripes

...skeins of mist like translucent silk, bending and unbending in the headlight tunnels...

The rain blew in soft sheets, making the oncoming headlights shimmer.

Occasionally a car swooshed by in the rain and its headlights would swing round momentarily and illuminate the room-the pool table, snowshoes on the wall and the rowing machine, the armchair in which Henry sat, motionless, a glass in his hand and the cigarette burning low between his fingers. For a moment his face, pale and watchful as a ghost's, would be caught in the headlights and then, very gradually, it would slide back into the dark.

My skin has the crinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me often—in the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving, this new unreliability in my vision. Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.

How long are you going to wait for this guy?” I’m thrown by his sudden shift. “Ah . . . I don’t know.” “Give me your keys.” “What?” “Give me your keys. I’m going to change your tire while we’re waiting.” I fish in my purse and come up with a handful of keys. “You’re going to—” “Stay in the car.” He grabs the keys and practically yanks them out of my fingers. Then he slams the door in my face. I watch him in the path of his headlights, mystified. He opens my trunk, and, moments later, emerges with the spare tire. He lays it beside the car, then pulls something else from the darkened space. I’ve never changed a tire, so I have no idea what he’s doing. His movements are quick and efficient, though. I shouldn’t be sitting here, just watching, but I can’t help myself. There’s something compelling about him. Dozens of cars have passed, but he was the only one to stop—and he’s helping me despite the fact that I’ve been less than kind to him all night. He gets down on the pavement—on the wet pavement, in the rain—and slides something under the car. A hand brushes wet hair off his face. I can’t sit here and watch him do this. He doesn’t look at me when I approach. “I told you to wait in the car.” “So you’re one of those guys? Thinks the ‘little woman’ should wait in the car?” “When the little woman doesn’t know her tires are bald and her battery could barely power a stopwatch?” He attaches a steel bar to . . . something . . . and starts twisting it. “Yeah. I am.” My pride flinches. “So what are you saying?” I ask, deadpan. “You don’t want my help?” His smile is rueful. “You’re kind of funny when you’re not so busy being judgmental.” “You’re lucky I’m not kicking you while you’re down there.” He loses the smile but keeps his eyes on whatever he’s doing. “Try it, sister.

I took my bike instead of the car so I wouldn’t wake Mom. I remember it started to rain and then I saw headlights coming when I turned the corner. I tried to get out of the way, but it all just happened so fast I couldn’t stop.

I squinted drunkenly into the rearview mirror and tried in vain to find the headlights of the black truck that was chasing us, but I actually wasn’t sure if its drivers needed headlights to see or if they even had eyes. I also wasn’t sure it was a truck, or if it was black, or if we were being pursued at all. It was definitely raining, though.

His grip on the wheel tightened as we left the limits of DC and reached the beltway. Through the blur of rain pelting the windows, we could just make out the shapes of the new highway lights and cameras that would be installed over the next few months. Right now, though, our only real sources of light were the car itself and the glow of the capital's light pollution. "Did I really always side with him?" I wondered aloud "I swear I didn't mean to...." Chubs risked a quick glance at me, then fixed his eyes back on the road. "It's not about choosing sides. I shouldn't have ever said that. I'm sorry. You know how I get when my blood sugar is low. He's Lee–he's funny and nice and he dresses like a walking hug." He does wear a lot of flannel," I said. But you're those things, too. Don't make that face just to try to prove me wrong. You are." "I don't feel that way," he admitted. "But I always got that you guys had something different. I respect that. I've never been... It's harder for me to open up to people." The headlights caught the raindrops sliding off the windshield and made them glow like shooting tars. He was making it sound like one friendship was better or more important than the other. That wasn't true. They were just different. The love was exactly the same. They only difference was that Liam had lost a little sister; a part of me had always felt like he wanted to prove to himself that he could save at least one of us. "I always understood you," I told him. "Just like you always understood me.

Telegraph Road A long time ago came a man on a track Walking thirty miles with a pack on his back And he put down his load where he thought it was the best Made a home in the wilderness He built a cabin and a winter store And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore And the other travellers came riding down the track And they never went further, no, they never went back Then came the churches, then came the schools Then came the lawyers, then came the rules Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads And the dirty old track was the telegraph road Then came the mines - then came the ore Then there was the hard times, then there was a war Telegraph sang a song about the world outside Telegraph road got so deep and so wide Like a rolling river ... And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze People driving home from the factories There's six lanes of traffic Three lanes moving slow ... I used to like to go to work but they shut it down I got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles They can always fly away from this rain and this cold You can hear them singing out their telegraph code All the way down the telegraph road You know I'd sooner forget but I remember those nights When life was just a bet on a race between the lights You had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care But believe in me baby and I'll take you away From out of this darkness and into the day From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain From the anger that lives on the streets with these names 'Cos I've run every red light on memory lane I've seen desperation explode into flames And I don't want to see it again ... From all of these signs saying sorry but we're closed All the way down the telegraph road

After the library closes in the evening he walks back to her apartment, maybe picking up some food or a four-euro bottle of wine on the way. When the weather is good, the sky feels miles away, and birds wheel through limitless air and light overhead. When it rains, the city closes in, gathers around with mists; cars move slower, their headlights glowing darkly, and the faces that pass are pink with cold.

lure of reinvention. Lately, though, I find myself thinking about the war and my past, about the people I lost. Lost. It makes it sound as if I misplaced my loved ones; perhaps I left them where they don’t belong and then turned away, too confused to retrace my steps. They are not lost. Nor are they in a better place. They are gone. As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us. I have aged in the months since my husband’s death and my diagnosis. My skin has the crinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me often—in the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving, this new unreliability in my vision. Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present. I want to imagine there will be peace when I am gone, that I will see all of the people I have loved and lost. At least that I will be forgiven. I know better, though, don’t I? *   *   * My house, named The Peaks by the lumber baron who built it more than a hundred years ago, is for sale, and I am preparing to move because my son thinks I should. He is trying to take care of

But then I don’t begin to understand a lot of things about Sweden and Norway. It’s as if they are determined to squeeze all the pleasure out of life. They have the highest income-tax rates, the highest VAT rates, the harshest drinking laws, the dreariest bars, the dullest restaurants, and television that’s like two weeks in Nebraska. Everything costs a fortune. Even the purchase of a bar of chocolate leaves you staring in dismay at your change, and anything larger than that brings tears of pain to your eyes. It’s bone-crackingly cold in the winter and it does nothing but rain the rest of the year. The most fun thing to do in these countries is walk around semi-darkened shopping centers after they have closed, looking in the windows of stores selling wheelbarrows and plastic garden furniture at prices no one can afford. On top of that, they have shackled themselves with some of the most inane and restrictive laws imaginable, laws that leave you wondering what on earth they were thinking about. In Norway, for instance, it is illegal for a barman to serve you a fresh drink until you have finished the previous one. Does that sound to you like a matter that needs to be covered by legislation? It is also illegal in Norway for a bakery to bake bread on a Saturday or Sunday. Well, thank God for that, say I. Think of the consequences if some ruthless Norwegian baker tried to foist fresh bread on people at the weekend. But the most preposterous law of all, a law so pointless as to scamper along the outer margins of the surreal, is the Swedish one that requires motorists to drive with their headlights on during the daytime, even on the sunniest summer afternoon. I would love to meet the guy who thought up that one. He must be head of the Department of Dreariness. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if on my next visit to Sweden all the pedestrians are wearing miners’ lamps.

The headlights of parked cars shone through the rain, and the sidewalks extended, empty, into the darkness. Underground, the sewers surged like rivers, and a few blocks away, sirens blared. He was no longer aware of his heart or thoughts, only the image of a sunken face staring up from a well, the paleness rising through the water like polished bone. A ringed hand reached toward it, but as the fingers approached, the face would sink away, its eyes opening, closing, and the droplets of red falling like leaves. He was a child running through an autumn cemetery, leaping over cast iron fences, the rain bleeding into the tombstones and the roofs of the mausoleums, his legs following the wings of a crow, flapping to the north. A hedge of withered roses stood between him and his childhood house. He tripped and grazed his cheek on a manhole, his red blooming in the water. The sun set behind the hill; the house turned black—abandoned and derelict—and Chris knew he had to keep running, ahead, into the unknown.

Two hours later there was no call, and still no answer when I tried his cell phone. Around midnight, the clock and I had a conversation, I told the clock I wanted to wait another fifteen minutes before my new life began, the life in which Karl had been killed in a plane crash. I requested fifteen minutes more in this world—which I was quickly coming to see as the past—before figuring out who to call, who to wake up. You’ll remember this feeling when the phone rings, I told myself. You’ll remember how scared you were when he calls to tell you he’s fine. And it was true. As many times as I’ve been in exactly this situation, I never forget it, and it never fails to shock me, the flood of adrenaline that does not serve for fight or flight but drowns me. At twelve-thirty I shifted my perspective again, from wondering what it would be like if he were dead to the knowledge that he was dead, and I decided I could wait another fifteen minutes. He would be dead forever, so what difference did it make if I have myself a little more time? I still had no idea what I was supposed to do. After I had extended the final cutoff two more times, he walked in the door. That’s how these stories always end, of course, except for the one time they don’t. I saw the headlights against the garage door and went outside in the rain to meet him with my love and my rage and my sick relief. I wanted to kill him because he had not been killed. I wanted to step into his open jacket and stay there for the rest of my life. How had he not called? “I did call. I called you from Kentucky.” “But you never told me you’d left Kentucky.” “It took a long time to get the transponder fixed.” “Then why didn’t you call to say you’d landed?” “It was too late.” In the house, he went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He was dead tired but not dead. “I didn’t want to wake you up.” He might as well have said, I thought you were sleeping because I have no idea who you are, or who any normal people. I stayed awake for what was left of the night to watch him, just to make sure he was really there.

A BLESSING FROM MY SIXTEEN YEARS’ SON I have this son who assembled inside me during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared, in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled. Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras. Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous. Look at the muscled obelisk of him now pawing through the icebox for more grapes. Sixteen years and not a bone broken, not a single stitch. By his age, I was marked more ways, and small. He’s a slouching six foot two, with implausible blue eyes, which settle on the pages of Emerson’s “Self Reliance” with profound belligerence. A girl with a navel ring could make his cell phone buzz, or an Afro’d boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell— creatures strange as dragons or eels. Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel arcane as any oracle’s. Dante claims school is harshing my mellow. Rodney longs to date a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman willing to do stuff she’ll regret. They’ve come to lead my son into his broadening spiral. Someday soon, the tether will snap. I birthed my own mom into oblivion. The night my son smashed the car fender, then rode home in the rain-streaked cop cruiser, he asked, Did you and Dad screw up so much? He’d let me tuck him in, my grandmother’s wedding quilt from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Don’t blame us, I said. You’re your own idiot now. At which he grinned. The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy took it hard. He’d found my son awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights, where he’d draped his own coat over her shaking shoulders. My fault, he’d confessed right off. Nice kid, said the cop.

When at the same time vast cloud massifs are hanging motionless in the blue sky out on the horizon, or rain dashes against the windscreen forming its irregular patterns, which a moment later are swept away by the wipers, I can sometimes feel intensely happy. The feeling can get particularly strong in the forest by the sea on these autumn afternoons, in the long straight passage between the trees, leafless and stark, when approaching cars come towards us in the dusk with their shining headlights, their dark panes and gleaming bodies, below the surface of which an archaic fire smoulders.

It’s like at night, when it’s raining and there’s cars and headlights moving through the darkness, through the window. Everything’s shiny and wet and looks so new. Undamaged, you know? Alive. Everything looks alive. And just for a moment, the whole world makes sense, it all fits together. You know it. You see it so clearly. And then it’s gone.

I can’t hear you, people! Make some noise if you want a good show. How about death? Do you wanna see lots and lots of death tonight?” I took in the applause, the hollering, the hammering feet, basking in it. Then my arm shot up, pointing one finger to the ceiling. The guard-tower window exploded. A man plummeted from the tower, slamming on the concrete floor behind me with a splat like someone stomping on a tomato. He’d been torn open from throat to groin, his chest a ragged ruin of splintered, wrenched-back ribs and mangled organs. His dead eyes were still open, jaw wrenched wide in terror. Then came the rain. The second sniper, one piece at a time. Hands. Feet. Arms, wrenched off at the elbows. His severed head bounced like a basketball as it hit the concrete, rolling across the floor and coming to a stop next to Warden Lancaster’s Italian leather shoe. A horrified silence fell across the room. The guards looked at one another, uncertain, hands on their guns but not sure if they should draw. Lancaster stared down at the severed head, frozen like a deer in the headlights. “Well,” I said, “you’re about to get everything you asked for. What do you think, Warden? Is this good and messy enough for you? Wouldn’t want you to think I ‘pussied out’ again.” His gaze snapped toward me. He took a halting step back, away from the carnage. “How? How did you—” A third body dove from the shattered window. Not in a guard’s uniform, but a billowing white leather coat. She landed as graceful as a raptor, absorbing the impact with one knee and the outstretched fingers of a single hand, and slowly rose to her full willowy height. Her eyes blazed like molten copper, as radiant as her twist of scarlet hair. “If anyone in this room believes themselves to be a righteous soul,” Caitlin said, “I suggest you kneel down and pray. If nobody answers…then you belong to me.

In the headlights of the truck, I saw small animals popping out of the ground everywhere. Steve leaped out of the truck excitedly and motioned me over to get a close-up look at the creatures emerging from the mud. “Cycloranas,” Steve said, “water-holding frogs.” He explained that these frogs would burrow into the ground and then cover themselves with a membrane that would hold in water. They wouldn’t pee, and none of their bodily fluids would evaporate. They could remain underground for weeks, months, or even years, until the next rain hit. “Then they emerge up from their tiny tombs, lost their membrane, and are good as gold,” Steve said, marveling. “They’re ready now to reproduce and feed and do their own thing.” It was an epic task to get the camera out and set up the waterproof gear to film the cycloranas. The rain finally broke, and Steve was able to film a scene. We had been driving all day, out in the rain, changing flat tires from the debris on the track. Steve even had to repair the fence when the crew’s truck slid sideways across the slippery mud, knocking a neat hole in one section. Everybody was beyond exhausted. No matter how hard Steve tried, he couldn’t get his words right. He couldn’t properly explain how the frogs could go so long without water. “Membranes” became “mum-branes,” “water-filled” was “water-flood.” We were all getting frustrated. John said, exasperated, “Just give us something really concise.” I whispered two words into Steve’s ear. He turned to the camera. “Water…nah,” he said. The whole crew cracked up. Two words to sum up the water-holding frog.

JAMIE'S SONG 'August and November': They say it was a beautiful summer. I say I felt so cold the whole short while. I heard that it rained for days, Between August and November. Well I didn’t see it rain on the enslaved river. I am the river no more (x2) And the rain is just acid water from their cloudy black smoke. And now I’m at a standstill on the streets, That are lit up like a funfair from some forgotten dream. Yet faces, headlights, and the whole world passes by me. Without taking a step, I’m down in the hole too. And if it rains this coming Dark and lonely December, I will never watch it fall on the entrapped river. I am the river no more (x2) And the rain is acid water from their cloudy black smoke.

Nevertheless, Chinese drivers haven't grasped the subtleties of headlight use. Most people keep their lights off until it's pitch-dark, and then they flip on the brights. Almost nobody uses headlights in rain, fog, snow, or twilight conditions - in fact, this is one of the few acts guaranteed to annoy a Chinese driver. They don't mind if you tailgate, or pass on the right, or drive on the the sidewalk. You can back down a highway entrance ramp without anybody batting an eyelash. But if you switch on your lights during a rainstorm, approaching drivers will invariably flash their brights in annoyance.

A black moth was resting on his car's windscreen. Strange, he thought. It hadn't rained in weeks. He flicked on his headlights and turned on the windscreen wipers to scare away the creature. But it did not move and instead of flying away, the moth was squashed, its innards splattering all over the glass. Fuck. Jacob pressed the lever that squirted water onto the windscreen. Just then another moth appeared, flying up to and resting on the glass. He got out of the car and flicked the insect away with his fingers, but as he did that, he felt something brush his left ear. Spinning around, he saw another moth and swatted at it, but it fluttered all the closer. Another landed on his right eye and, cursing, Jacob choked as yet another winged insect bumped against his chin and then flapped its way into his mouth. The feel of powdery wings against his tongue made him gag and he tried to spit, but the creatures seemed to be flying deeper, making for the back of his throat. Soon he was crouched on his knees, coughing, trying to vomit for he was sure the moth and many others had got inside his stomach. Jacob shouted for help, but made no sound, his mouth full of wings.

I have aged in the months since my husband’s death and my diagnosis. My skin has the crinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me often—in the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving, this new unreliability in my vision. Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.

I watch the car headlights stripe the ceiling and try to make a list of everything I want to do with the rest of my life. I get to number three, 'Find my rollerblades,' before the rain starts plucking at the roof and I give myself over to sleep.

I look at the speedometer as it rises from seventy miles an hour, to eighty, then ninety, before the dial spins completely out of control. I hold my hands in front of my face, as though trying to protect myself from the scene ahead, and see that my fingers are covered in blood. The pitter-patter of bullet-sized raindrops on the car is deafening, and when I look up, I see that the rain has turned red. The woman is almost right in front of us now. She sees our headlights, shields her eyes, but doesn’t move out of the way. I scream as she hits the bonnet. Then watch in horror as her body bounces off the cracked windscreen and soars into the air. Her red silk kimono billows out behind her like a broken cape.

TAKE ONE STORY, viewed from two different angles. Take a rainy Sunday morning in July, in the late 1920s, when Eddie and his friends are tossing a baseball Eddie got for his birthday nearly a year ago. Take a moment when that ball flies over Eddie’s head and out into the street. Eddie, wearing tawny pants and a wool cap, chases after it, and runs in front of an automobile, a Ford Model A. The car screeches, veers, and just misses him. He shivers, exhales, gets the ball, and races back to his friends. The game soon ends and the children run to the arcade to play the Erie Digger machine, with its claw-like mechanism that picks up small toys. Now take that same story from a different angle. A man is behind the wheel of a Ford Model A, which he has borrowed from a friend to practice his driving. The road is wet from the morning rain. Suddenly, a baseball bounces across the street, and a boy comes racing after it. The driver slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel. The car skids, the tires screech. The man somehow regains control, and the Model A rolls on. The child has disappeared in the rearview mirror, but the man’s body is still affected, thinking of how close he came to tragedy. The jolt of adrenaline has forced his heart to pump furiously and this heart is not a strong one and the pumping leaves him drained. The man feels dizzy and his head drops momentarily. His automobile nearly collides with another. The second driver honks, the man veers again, spinning the wheel, pushing on the brake pedal. He skids along an avenue then turns down an alley. His vehicle rolls until it collides with the rear of a parked truck. There is a small crashing noise. The headlights shatter. The impact smacks the man into the steering wheel. His forehead bleeds. He steps from the Model A, sees the damage, then collapses onto the wet pavement. His arm throbs. His chest hurts. It is Sunday morning. The alley is empty. He remains there, unnoticed, slumped against the side of the car. The blood from his coronary arteries no longer flows to his heart. An hour passes. A policeman finds him. A medical examiner pronounces him dead. The cause of death is listed as “heart attack.” There are no known relatives. Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue, where one worker calls another worker over to marvel at the blue skin of the newest arrival.

Chapter 2 After stopping for a hot breakfast, Dad and I were ready to hit the mountain and now our anticipation was really building. My heart was beating a little faster and my eyes were alert watching the headlights paint a mountain picture in front of us. We pulled off the highway and made our way up a narrow two-lane road that ran through a little old mining town. About a half mile past the last house, we came to our turn. The road was pretty quiet on this Saturday morning. We only passed two or three trucks on our way to the dirt road. “Here we go!” Dad said, turning the wheel. The blacktop was behind us and we were now on a well-packed gravel road. It started by winding right, then left, and then back right again. It was like riding a rollercoaster up the mountain. We finally came to the end of the gravel and now we were heading up a true back country mountain road. The road was littered with huge rocks Dad had to swerve around and plenty of big gullies where rain had washed the road away. The truck growled in low gear as we crawled our way up the mountain, heading to our camp. I could feel butterflies of excitement building in my stomach with each turn. I rolled down my window to get some fresh air and the crisp mountain breeze instantly sent chills down my back. “Whoa, it’s pretty cold out,” “The truck thermometer says its thirty-six degrees. That sure is a change from the sixty-five degrees we had yesterday at home. But don’t you worry, that Colorado sun always warms it up around noon,” Dad explained. That last half hour seemed to take forever because we could only manage about five or ten miles per hour on the steep, rugged road. The last thing we wanted to do, after all the hours we spent on the journey to elk camp, was get a flat tire or bust a shock. Dad patiently and expertly guided the truck through the obstacle course as we kept climbing up, up, up. Finally we leveled off and I could tell we had reached the top. We made our way around the back side of the mountain and headed down a dead-end road to a grassy field where we have camped before. “I sure hope no one is in our spot.” “I’m not worried. There are plenty of areas to pitch a tent,” Dad replied. “That’s true, but I really like our old spot. It’s flat, which is perfect for the tent, it’s

Maggie switched on the Mustang’s headlights as the first big drops of rain marbled the glass, the windshield wipers coming on automatically. Dark clouds gathering in the north and a detectable drop in air temperature.

...When my nephew was three, [his mother] was worrying about getting him into the right preschool. Kid's fifteen now. He's under pressure to make sure he gets good grades so he can get into a good school. He needs to show good extracurricular activities to get into a good school. He needs to be popular with his classmates. Which means be just like them. Dress right, use the proper slang, listen to proper music, go away on the proper vacations. Live in the right neighborhood, be sure his parents drive the right car, hang with the right group, have the right interests. He has homework. He has soccer practice and guitar lessons. The school decides what he has to learn, and when, and from whom. The school tells him which stairwell he can go up. It tells him how fast to move through the corridors, when he can talk, when he can't, when he can chew gum, when he can have lunch, what he is allowed to wear..." Rita paused and took a drink. "Boy", I said. "Ready for corporate life." She nodded. "And the rest of the world is telling him he's carefree," she said. "And all the time he's worried that the boys will think he's a sissy, and the school bully will beat him up, and the girls will think he's a geek." "Hard times," I said. "The hardest," she said. "And while he's going through puberty and struggling like hell to come to terms with the new person he's becoming, running through it all, like salt in a wound, is the self-satisfied adult smirk that keeps trivializing his angst." "They do learn to read and write and do numbers," I said. "They do. And they do that early. And after that, it's mostly bullshit. And nobody ever consults the kid about it." "You spend time with this kid," I said. "I do my Auntie Mame thing every few weeks. He takes the train in from his hideous suburb. We go to a museum, or shop, or walk around and look at the city. We have dinner. We talk. He spends the night, and I usually drive him back in the morning." "What do you tell him?" I said. "I tell him to hang on," Rita said. She was leaning a little forward now, each hand resting palm-down on the table, her drink growing warm with neglect. "I tell him that life in the hideous suburb is not all the life there is. I tell him it will get better in a few years. I tell him that he'll get out of that stultifying little claustrophobic coffin of a life, and the walls will fall away and he'll have room to move and choose, and if he's tough enough, to have a life of his own making." As she spoke, she was slapping the tabletop softly with her right hand. "If he doesn't explode first," she said. "Your jury summations must be riveting," I said. She laughed and sat back. "I love that kid," she said. "I think about it a lot." "He's lucky to have you. Lot of them have no one." Rita nodded. "Sometimes I want to take him and run," she said. The wind shifted outside, and the rain began to rattle against the big picture window next to us. It collected and ran down, distorting reality and blurring the headlights and taillights and traffic lights and colorful umbrellas and bright raincoats into a kind of Parisian shimmer. "I know," I said.

He watched the ghostly army on the march. Headlights swept the immigrants. The concrete gleamed wet and black beneath their boots and gym shoes. His countrymen covered their heads with hoods, baseball caps, newspapers, plastic bags. Or they simply hunched their shoulders, impervious to the rain, the fatigue, the roar and hiss of metal monsters rushing by a few feet away. The immigrants knew the freeway median was a reasonably safe limbo in some ways: no bandits, no Border Patrol, no rough terrain. Just put one foot in front of the other. Pray the cars stay in their lanes. Try not to think about the moment when you'll have to sprint across this cement deathscape hauling your wife, your kids, your worldly possessions. Maybe the moment can be postponed indefinitely. Maybe you can just keep walking north and the freeway median will take you where you want to go.