I’m speaking with a woman parked-driving on my left. Hers is a Volvo, clean and shiny, with a faded picture of Jesus on the dashboard. Mine is an old dirty car, smells of old shoes and expensive perfume; tonight I am taking it home. Susan, I call her, is one of those people who is always happy (because they had a big yard and a small dog when they were growing up) and only know about pain from pocket-sized novels. Her hair is an impossible color, freckles all over her face. She is telling me about cheap fruit and dirty freeways and how her kids won’t listen. I am thinking how good this conversation is going, her talking and me, not listening, chewing on my dirty nails and not being around. It is almost beautiful…She doesn’t have a clue that this is the most precious moment of both our lives or at least mine and how lucky is humanity to have all these colors, especially orange and blue and certain things you say without a slightest forethought like “hello” and a random license plate is a funny exhale. Her voice is thin and 50s like making it home before the rain and a butterfly on a subway I once saw in a movie. I keep thinking as the traffic dissolves and the woman and her Jesus are moving away while a distant echo delivers this moment’s slow death.