Sharing Cars with Strangers
Part III
Days blur into weeks and months into seasons. I can’t remember how I imagined 2015, but it looks different from the other side. I’ve made and lost friends and watched others slip away. I’ve seen familiar buildings torn down and grown used to the vacant spaces they’ve left behind. I’ve found comfort in recognizing the same faces along my morning commute.
Last week I got into a car with two strangers, both artists. The driver made whimsical etchings of skeletons doing things like driving a convertible over the Bay Bridge. The passenger was a graphic designer. I don’t remember the details. We dropped her off at the Academy of Art and headed north, toward my apartment.
Traffic was heavy and it had been a long week; I’d woken up that Tuesday thinking it was Saturday. We crawled up Third Street and I regretted leaving the office during rush hour. The driver sat beside me, quiet, and I noticed his three watches — two on the right wrist and one on the left.
“We have so much time,” he said.
I didn’t detect any irony.
On the face of one watch, Salvador Dalí looked up at me with his crazy eyes wide and mustache erect. The antennae of his whiskers marked the minute and hour. An ant marched around the perimeter, telling the seconds.
“If you wear three watches, you’ll always have time to do the things you want to do,” he said.
I laughed. He didn’t.
“Are you a fan of Dalí?” I asked.
“Yes, very much,” he said, nodding at a photo he’d taped to the inside of his windshield. This version of the painter held a cat — a pet ocelot, I recalled, named Babou. How strange the things we remember.
I wasn’t paying attention when the driver asked me a question.
“Have you ever been in the eye of a hurricane?” he asked again.
I recalled sitting at home during heavy rains — but no, that’s not the same.
“It’s otherworldly. Like being in a dream,” he said.
He told me about sitting in his backyard during the middle of a storm. He lived in the south and thunderstorms were common, but his was a big one. I imagined him in a plastic chair in the middle of an unkempt lawn, eyes closed.
“Not even the birds are chirping,” he said. “They know before we do.”
I asked how long he stayed outside, but he didn’t know.
“I sat there until it was stupid to stay,” he said. “At a certain point, you have to go back inside. I didn’t want to, though.”
Much of my life has been an exercise in leaving at the right time.
“Time stands still,” he said. “I can’t explain it to you. If you ever experience it, you’ll understand.”
I wished desperately to understand. I still do. The ant kept marching around his Dali watch.
