Trial Run

I swing up the highway towards Accotane, where a new brand of gas is to be named today. The birds singing outside my window can't keep up with the sound of a cassette in the darkened hallway. Stars crash down against my windshield at the rate of one per minute; many I don't see. The head is splitting but I'm amnesiac; each morning finds me in a different bed, the same room, sheets a little duller brown. The compulsion to meet my fate by collision with a silver screen drives me on, selective and uncertain, judging the curvature of the earth each moment for a clue to the incidence of grit in my cornea. A companion, more sensitive to the guttering drain thrashing her heart against her rib cage than I can ever be, jerks her head around like the tuning knob of the radio to keep me awake. I read the most discerning show business magazines like some people look through telephone books, as an index to my status and identity in the community. The huge ditch suddenly swerves into the middle of the road and the brakes fail gloriously. We slap, chop, breeze and hustle through to a lengthy marsh. The inertia of illusion is more furious than a wheel: I feel no need to be tied down.