Her grandmother left her a Chevrolet Impala almost the same pale color as her eyes. Were they blue? Green? Either way, metallic flakes set into both of them. And she ran it the way her grandmother had, devoid of all the abandon she lifted up inside of herself. In the car she pushed the gas as methodically as the brake and the thing slipped over the streets with an evaporating sense of propriety. Young guys would pull up to the driver side and roll down their windows layering their sexual innuendo in the lexicon of automobiles. She liked that more than I did, the seat belted passenger beside her, almost as inanimate as her three year old’s car seat cinched down in the back. I sat there waiting to flood those orbs of hers, waiting to have something more than the quick conversational reactions upon which so much of my existence relied. And again I let my eyes wander out the window. The world was a place I was only watching. The world was a place I lost out to every fucking day.
by Hank Cherry
