by Brian Peters
(10/4/00)

Two cars, two lives, one traffic jam -- five-oh-three p.m., headed home. Perhaps headed west into a smog shrouded sun still a few hours from sunset. Maybe headed east with a nearly setting sun glancing off the rear view mirror. It's hard to tell for sure. The turnpike is parked solid with a lonely mass intent on travel, and stalled in place. A still life of humanity crowds the road nearly touching, but desperately isolated, perhaps by the proximity itself.

Meet Dusty Smithson: CEO, single, fourth decade and a year, sport utility vehicle four months from purchase, cell phone, tailored suit, NPR, lonely.

And meet Leslie Tolly: between jobs, failed marriage (second), third decade and eight tenths, simulated wood paneled station wagon quickly becoming rust, want ads, stained work shirt, AM radio on local talk, desperate.

That's about all I can say for sure -- you'll have to fill in genders and colors and brand names. The more I concentrate, the fuzzier that gets. I can't say why.

Then meet their fantasy, within sight of each other: a fantasy of love, perhaps.

The car door opens. "I can't believe I'm here."

"Neither can I, but I've wanted this for so long." An uncertain smile probes the now broken isolation.

Broader smile. "Who'd have thought it, all these weeks across from each other in traffic jams?"

A desperate hand brushes across the distance between them: barely touching.

A lonely hand touches fingers to the other's chin, and guides the two of them gently into the softest of kisses. "Ah, that was it, altogether right." A deeper, greedier kiss follows, then an anxious, tentative pause.

"Do you think..."

"No. The timing's just right."

"I think so too."

One button released, then two, as each extends a hand, one lonely, one desperate, to trace the midline between hidden breasts, pausing insistently at buttons still resisting, but no longer secure. A slight flush is growing on their necks as adrenaline accelerates what curiosity began.

"So open here, I don't know..."

"Only as open as we will it to be."

"Hundreds of eyes..."

"Staring ahead at hundreds of windshields, ears locked to hundreds of cell phones."

"Touch me again..."

More buttons give way, and hands slowly search beneath shirts, tracing paths of first fireworks around their breasts, centering toward -- then touching -- hardening nipples. Eyes slowly blink as the light seems brighter through dilated pupils, and hearts beat louder.

"Look at me world, I'm flying."

"They can't look, they're on hold with... ah, no fair. Don't stop."

"Kiss me again."

There follows a kiss felt to the toes, arms insistently tightening and roving over arching backs and through tousled hair, to clenching buttocks and across backs again, zippers opening quickly to allow eager hands between their legs.

"Ah, if you'd only -- how did you know?"

"Just curve your finger so it... no touch has ever..."

"Cup your hand and stroke so... so... oh.."

Slowly, brake lights flash, drivers lean ahead, and the traffic begins to move. Legs rubbery, their hearts pounding in their chests, Dusty and Leslie move forward with the traffic: Dusty in a sport utility vehicle four months from purchase, and Leslie in a simulated wood paneled station wagon quickly becoming rust. Two cars, two lives, two lanes apart -- headed home.