a day (# 35)

What makes one day preferable to another? Is one day juicier? Does it bend more easily to my will to shape it into a compelling story? What is “a day”? I may know the answer to that. Or rather, my mind may have an answer to that. But driving is slowly teaching me the difference between the fabrications of the mind and the inchoate flux of reality.

Jackie’s going to visit her girlfriend at a nearby college. Jackie’s from Alaska or maybe Oregon, or maybe both. We have a very friendly, animated conversation. But I don’t know what we are talking about. Maybe nature or wilderness or something like that. But it might be psilocybin research, or maybe that’s a conversation with someone else. It could be both. I don’t know what Jackie and I talk about because I am somehow simultaneously engaged and distracted. I know Jackie rows for the college team. I know her coach. We briefly delight in the smallness of the world.

Catalina, who lives in a poor neighborhood, is a college student. I feel surprised and then ashamed for having assumed otherwise. Catalina, a Latina city kid, is an animal science major. Again, this surprises me, again to my shame. Catalina is headed to her job at a veterinary clinic. But when she graduates, Catalina has no interest in becoming a veterinarian. She wants to return to Puerto Rico to take over her grandpa’s land and open an animal sanctuary. Surprise again, but this time, no shame: simply joy because the boundaries of my narrow mind have been thrown open. 

My mother owned a book called Surprised by Joy. My father hated surprises. He used to mimic my mother’s heavy Spanish accent in his own—also heavy, but different—Spanish accent: “Surprised by Joe,” he would say and start laughing nervously. Then his laughter would become hysterical. Then ravenous.

Route 9.

What is the weather?

Tamara’s voice is quiet, calm, low, and clear. A late-night R&B DJ, maybe. Tamara is getting off the early shift as a manager at Dunkin’. But the dream is broadcasting. Does that count as me getting one right? Is anybody keeping track of the accuracy of my snap judgments? 

Back to Route 9, where Walmart squats like an airport.

I don’t know. Stray thoughts flash like birds across the sky of my mind. It’s nothing.

1:38 pm. “Hate” is not a real name. It is the name of Daniel, who is appalled to discover that somehow “Hate” has become his name on Uber. 

“What? It says ‘Hate’?!” 

I show him my phone, which says, “Picking up Hate.” Daniel was born in Haiti. I notice quietly that the name “Haiti” has the sound “Hate” in it, at least the way we say it in English. Anyway, for some time Daniel and I wait for his girlfriend to come out of the house. She is getting ready to go to work at McDonald’s. He texts her gently but insistently. He is anxious about keeping me waiting. I tell him it’s all good. Finally, his girlfriend comes out, apologizing. She is Sade. Sade was not born in Nigeria (as I guess) but in the Dominican Republic. Daniel’s not going to work. He is just going to keep her company on her shift. They are young and beautiful and sweet. 

Slumped behind a thick beard in the backseat, Travis pulls out a little black notebook and a stubby pencil. When I ask, he explains that he wants to become a stand-up comedian and that later, after his shift at the local pizza joint, he is going to an open-mic night. I say it sounds like he’s already a stand-up comedian. He looks down, but his whiskers tug upward.  

Diamond waits at the bus stop. What a great name! Diamond! At first I wish I’d been playing Rihanna’s uplifting anthem “Shine Bright Like a Diamond.” But I am not. Instead, because of my earlier encounter with Daniel and Sade, I am playing Sade, the famous Nigerian singer. But this turns out to be perfect because Diamond was born in Nigeria. And the Sade album I am playing, I realize, is called “Diamond Life.” I’m awed by these little moments. Diamond likes that I know Sade is Nigerian. I like that Diamond likes Sade, who stopped being popular before Diamond was even born. We are both smiling. My smile reveals old nicotine stains and new coffee stains. Diamond’s reveals a line of braces, glittering like stars.

Route 9 once more. Sunday: so the holes they’ve been digging are abandoned. The digging, hammering, and lifting machines, the giant concrete tubes, and thick black coils lie strewn by the roadside as though a group of child giants were suddenly called in for milk and cookies. 

Misty does not know Diamond, though they go to the same college. I already know this, but I must ask anyway for some reason. She is not sure if she likes her school. But today, she is not thinking about that and does not want to think about it. On this day, she is going to the rock climbing gym. Today, Misty just wants to climb rocks.

The sky hangs low, swollen gray. There is no snow. There is no wind.

Bodiqua emerges in pajamas from the punched-in wreck of an apartment. She barely returns my greeting when she gets in the car. But she is not unhappy. She just doesn’t want to talk to me. I am just the driver. She does, however, want to talk to someone on her phone. She does this on speakerphone for the whole 24 minutes and 34 seconds she spends in my car. She sounds animated and happy on the phone. I feel invisible and irritated to be taken so far out of my way at the end of the day, but before long, her happiness distracts me from these feelings. 

A day ends.

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