Some days I decide to drive to work. I drive because Nels
can’t, regardless of whether he’s sober or not, because if it’s not the booze
or the snorted Oxy or whatever over-the-counter fix he discovered on Pinterest
this week, it’s the narcolepsy. He operates plenty of heavy machinery at work,
he says, and has to devote all of his time and concentration to it. Children’s
lives are at stake.
We’ll bundle up and sit in the car and wait for it to warm
up. It’s a Honda Civic, that car, old enough to drink, and it barrels down the
road in all its compactness. Nels sleeps for most of the trip, thank God, but
not before his nicotine-stained fingers fiddle with the radio. Classical music
comes on.
“Mozart,” he drawls.
On the Verrazano the sun begins to rise. I’m sitting behind
some spacey Escalade with Italian flags hanging off the side when I notice it,
the pink stretch of sky looming above the water’s edge. Nels’ angular features
cut into it as his head lies against the frosty window, but I can still see it,
the sun rising over the Narrows. There’s a salty smell in the air, but that’s
probably just Nels, and the heat in my car always makes it smell like a dog is
on fire.
I feel constricted suddenly, in my little Japanese car with
Nels on the Verrazano bridge, “Requiem Mass in D Minor” chanting on the radio.
My hand can’t spin the window lever fast enough, and the cold Staten Island air
blowing in my face is welcomed by my dry-heaving lungs.
“You put that goddamn window up,” Nels hisses, his hands
shielding his eyes from the sun. “You put it up right now. It’s too early for
this.”
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