Wait, she said, but the rain still fell, washing the dirty world around her.
She spoke as if into silence, and no one responded. Was anyone even listening? She wondered if they could hear her over the weather.
I have things to say, she said, but again, no one paid attention. This is important.
But it wasn’t important enough for them to turn and look. She stood there, drenched and supplicant, her outstretched hands as invisible as her thoughts, her voice devalued yet again.
As I approached the bridge, I realized it was completely fogged in, the tollbooth at its base emerging from the mist like a lit ghost. But the sun rose over my left shoulder, and as I crossed the Bay, the fog began to burn off, so subtly it was hard to see it happening, but there was a glimpse of the water, and there was the lower half of a transmission tower, and there the upward arc of the bridge itself, the sun rising, the fog lifting, the road ahead emerging just in time for me to arrive.
Day turned to night. Protestors still walked the street. The helicopters circled over downtown after dark, the thrum loud enough to require elevated conversation as we walked along the sidewalk two miles away. What’s that? asked my son.
He peered up into the dark toward the light, bright as Venus, hovering in the distance. <i>Why?</i> he asked, and I did not know where to begin, how to explain the eyes in the sky, how to explain the thin line between protection and engagement.
The highway is burning, she said, and they watched the glow on the horizon. He imagined all the other highways catching, one by one, creating a flickering network across the country. He imagined what it might look like from space.
What do you think it means? he asked, though he didn’t really expect an answer. It had become so hard to fathom what anything meant anymore.
It means someone’s going to have to pay for all those repairs, she said.
In other words, he said, we’re not going anywhere.
In the back of the bar, he leaned forward to ask what she did, and he realized she smelled exactly like his fingers after he’d played guitar too long, her body heat mixing oily, metallic notes into something intoxicating.
I used to work on the Hill, she said. But that was before all of… She waved her free hand. I’ve been thinking about the Peace Corps, but that’ll probably get defunded, too. Besides, this isn’t a good time to be an American overseas.
Or maybe it’s the best time, he said. Maybe you should go while you still can.
All we asked for was everything others tell us is long gone. We believe, if we wait long enough, if we stretch our dollar far enough, our jobs will return, we will, again, stop asking the question of whether a few beers Friday night mean we’ll run out of food Thursday.
We were once the people about which songs were written. We were, of course, once the people writing the songs, singing the songs, up at the bar, ordering more bottles of High Life, talking about how great our lives were. We were once happy. We were once free.
I meant what I said, she told him. I just meant it in a different way.
This baffled him. She had just clearly said she’d talked to the Russian minister. How else should he interpret that?
You just hear things differently than I say them, she said. I have one way of saying the truth, and you have another way of hearing it.
He left her office as confused as he’d ever been, his stomach twisted in anticipation of what could happen next.
100 Proof 