A Bright Soothing Noise

A Deeper Color

1 A Deeper Color Ifound one of the old benches and set the bag down. I took everything out: a plastic lime, an empty Sprite bottle, the Beefeater and two cans of Schweppes. I poured it all into the empty bottle and squeezed in the last of the lime before I sent the lime tumbling down the steps into the sand. I shook the drink with both hands and sat for a minute more, looking out at the big black Atlantic. I raised the bottle and toasted the boardwalk, the crime lights and the balmy air. Everything seemed familiar, as if I had stepped sideways from one life into another. I wished only for someone to talk to, anyone really, someone who might hear me if I made a little oration when I raised my reinvigorated Sprite in the burnt-yellow luminescence. I had a couple more swallows before I cursed the city. Go to goddamn hell! I shouted. I put the bottle down between my feet and threw my arms wide. If only for one lonely moment, it was great to be back. Back in the car, I felt even better. I hit the gas and the Corolla fishtailed for fifty yards. What I needed now was speed. The ocean air had opened my lungs and the Sprite opened my soul. I could breathe! One-hundred-eighty thousand miles had turned over somewhere in Maryland and I checked the odometer—now it was 180,311. I dialed all the old stations, tempted by nostalgia, but “indie” was all I came up with. Ha! More pissed off than ever, 2 A BRIGHT SOOTHING NOISE I saluted myself and reached for another big swallow. I held the Sprite out the window and hailed the filthy bay, the black sky gone blue, the lost stars. They were independents, all right. Until some gigolo in LA finds them and they’re doing spots for Verizon. I hit the gas again and slapped all around the seat for my phone but didn’t find it. One eye on the road, I rummaged in my bag, in the glove, and jammed my elbow onto my horn when, at eighty-five mph, I almost detonated a collie-mix on Cross Bay Boulevard. Enough, I decided. I wouldn’t phone-flame those artsie-fartsie little twerps, not give them the satisfaction. Tuesday, four AM on WNRT in East New York and no freakin’ Ramones? Who the hell do they think they are? Who do they think is listening? How alone was I? I had crossed out of Jersey only an hour earlier and was already within striking distance of New England —of Lizzie, my ex, and my two boys. My restraining order had expired months before and I couldn’t imagine Lizzie and the lawyers would renew it, seeing as they hadn’t heard from me since the fall. I sped up again in celebration and in her honor sang all the verses of “Rockaway Beach” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away.” Orient Point, where I was headed, was the place I gave up rock-and-roll guitar for good, fifteen years before, after I mistook Joey DiGennaro’s fridge in a bourboninspired blindness and pissed into the salad crisper. The Point was also the terminal for the New London ferry. I needed the nine AM, so I pushed the Corolla and even hit ninety-five until the road got bumpy and the old floozy with so many miles on her began to wobble. A half hour later the sun was up and I joined all the New York plates speeding east. I made time on the Sunrise Highway but weather was against me and everything overhead turned black again; the only colors on the horizon were the red and electric green of stop lights in a long perspective. A snarl of traffic stopped A Deeper Color 3 me a mile after Nageltown and I closed my eyes, suddenly winded by the lack of motion. It was the worst, this paralysis in the humidity, this long moment of traffic death. With my fist on the wheel, I leaned on the armrest and the window. I rubbed my eyes. I wanted, for the first time in days, to sleep. At last I got through Riverton. I rode like lightning up the ramp onto the LIE and over a hump and accelerated almost to a hundred...