![]() He wonders if he will be spared the fate of Icarus – if his battered chariot will be allowed to continue its flight across the continent and toward the sun. There is a brief stillness as the engine caves in and his hood turns to rumpled silk, then the barrier breaks and he feels untethered flight for the first time in his life. Small cubes of glass bounce from his face and hands, leaving pinprick kisses marked with vivid red lipstick. This offers precious little hope to a man living a perpendicular life.Īt impact, an unexpected silicate rain begins to fall, shimmering in the headlights like tiny stars or the lights he hangs from his gutters the day after Thanksgiving. Their angle of impact must have been slight, barely more than ten to fifteen degrees from the norm. None of these impacts seems to have punctured the corrugated metal of the railing – that faithful barrier thanklessly separating the road from the abyss. Another – yellow and industrial – looks to be from a taxi or perhaps the budget moving trucks for rent at several lots around the city. One is long and bright, a gangrenous looking wound he imagines to be from a low slung sports car. There are streaks along its body from previous near misses with hurtling vehicles. The railing is approaching, squat and dishwater gray in its duty. The ball of his foot feels powerful and well centered on the brake pedal, and he is impressed with its performance in spite of the hopelessness of the chore. No horns blare in outrage as he crosses the center line, and there are no witnesses to offer their pitiful screams of horror. The noise of the calamity is not what he would expect and includes none of the screeching or melodramatic overtures of the movies. Thirteen times he had felt slightly guilty at the condition of his tires, but now there is only a small sadness for the one which had failed.Įven through his smudged glasses, his vision is sharp – unimpeded by the darkness, weather, or distractions. The remaining three were divided evenly between radio, internet, and billboard advertising. Two were on television, sandwiched between the action of a crime drama and a football game, respectively. Others were more modern, focusing not on the price per set, but on the individual engineering of a given brand and model. Some were antique in design and proclaimed half a dozen separate deals, segmented by a dotted line as if anybody still clips coupons. More than half of them – eight, to be exact – were found in the weekend newspapers he buys only for the crossword. In the past month, he has come across thirteen advertisements for tires.
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