July 24, 2006

It was a perfect day for a car breakdown: I was in a hurry to be elsewhere; it was pouring outside; and the car just came back from the mechanic the previous day. Thus, I felt a sudden spasm of pleasure when the steering wheel went limp in my hand, the acceleration died, and the dashboard lit up with spastic rage. You see, I work so that I can afford to fix my car — mechanical malfunctions give my life meaning.

I parked the car in a ditch, and ran down the highway looking for a phone. I found one at Belgian Nursery, and my Visionary Indian Friend arrived half-an-hour later to find me wet and angry. We went to the van, which was so comfortable lying in a ditch it refused to budge.

We had to call reinforcements.

“Laura baby,” I said. “I’m stuck by the side of the road, longing for you.”

Laura came an hour later from the other end of the world to call the CAA. I was so happy I started rubbing the top of my head against her belly.

Then we waited in the middle of empty fields for hours for the CAA tow truck to arrive. Whenever we grew tired of waiting, the CAA would call us up to assure us that someone would be with us at any moment. It was all lies. So we sprawled in stalled cars, talked, touched, grabbed bellies and hair as the evening grew desperate around us. The fields disappeared underneath a thick veil of mist.

And out of that nothingness, four hours after my car broke down, a tow truck finally appeared. By this point, we were so exhausted we could do nothing but eat Thai food in our underwear on my Visionary Indian Friend’s floor.

Cars are instruments of terror.