Part 9 Nineteen Black Cadillacs

The roads run snaky along the train tracks. On Tuesday mornings, they are usually full of cars full of anger and burning gas. When you always take the 8:22 to work, it’s not just the same faces on the train, but the same cars and rage off of it. Or maybe they just look and feel the same, coffee smelling, with the occasional whiff of bacon grease, with donut glazing mustaches, and an uncanny loathing for the morning commute. The lipstuck lady in the severe office black frowns at me and wishes she were on the train instead. Every day, as I look back at her and smile, and wish that I owned a car.

A different today. The roads silently echo the grating train wheels. There are birds on the road, pecking at one of their own, fallen. The train is uneasy, for work days are usually incomplete without your morning glance of your car driving counterparts - what you could or couldn’t be or become.

In the distance, the red and white cop flashes sober up the hung-over commuters, like unwritten rules. One of them blows into her palm and smells back her rummy breath.

And then the cavalcade, swings by, drowning Ms. Lipstick’s “hurry-the-fuck-up-and-get-outta-my-way” car-horn protests, and sends the birds scattering, flying, in a V.

When you are somebody important, you race trains for the fun of it. When you are very important, you do that covertly hidden in one of nineteen black cadillacs. And you buy an hour of Matt Damon’s time and put him in car number 12, so everyone on the train believes that it’s him that their off to work Elwyn line is going to race. On your marks.

Rumor catches fire, and suddenly everybody’s usually worthless caffeine kicks in, as they cheer the train driver on.

The driver is sweaty. He watches the blinking lights and signals on his dash, and jolts forth the train’s joystick. We will win!