Melted Freeway

I picked Adam up around up around 4 this afternoon and drove to see what was left of the collapse. We caught up on the key points of interest in each other’s lives from the last two months as I took us from stop light to stop light through West Oakland. On the road that flows between highway 80 and that monstrous Ikea parking lot we hit traffic, and gradually drifted up over the railroad where we could catch a glimpse of the melted and crumbled overpasses. It wasn’t tragic really, just interesting in a sort of numb and morbid way. I mean it will be an annoyance to the entire bay area to deal with the detours, the congestion, that will ensue with the reconstruction of those missing pieces of freeway, but at the cost of no human life its merely a pebble in the shoe of daily life. There’s no need to recall our own mortality, little to feel, little to say but “goddamn!”

Brett supposed that after the driver had pulled himself from the wreck, dusted himself off, before he hailed a taxi to the medical center, he stood at the edge of the flames, boots crunching molten embers, pieces of steel and concrete softly raining down, and with meditative calm lit a cigarette on the wreckage, taking it all in - the emerging morning, the thousands of gallons of burning gasoline.

Brett also supposed that he was The Terminator. Adam, too, had come to that conclusion.