The bridge

Inside the convenient store it was dark. The cars were piled in the narrow lot, crammed and angled abruptly against the walls, which extended far higher than the lot was wide. The sky was a blue slither that shone between the tops of the buildings, velvet against concrete. The air was steel. I was frantically grabbing little bags of Doritos and barbecue chips, dropping an armful on the counter. The attendant looked as if he had been working on cars all morning. I gave him a bag of shells and a book of matches in exchange for a handful of the chips. I walked outside, the air hurt like cold water. I paused in front of my car, some chips landing on the hood while I fumbled for my keys. While I was doing this, an older middle-aged couple was getting into a rusty station wagon. The rust spoke to me in long sentences. I pulled a napkin from my pocket, ran to them yelling and spitting, "give me your car or I'll tear this into little pieces!" They panicked, dropped their things and complied, the old man's blue blockers falling onto the pavement along with his papers. I told them to get in. I swung open the door and climbed into the back seat, the napkin falling into a dark puddle of antifreeze. I took hold of the steering wheel, which was fixed to the back of the driver's seat. "What kind of gas mileage does this get?" "Oh, about 43 miles to the gallon. But if you push this button you can run indefinitely on one tank. The problem is the word 'indefinite'. You could theoretically run out at any minute, it depends on the weather." We screeched out of the lot, after backing into the opposite wall. "Why is the driver's seat in back?" "Because his back is broken," the woman said. "How did this happen?" I asked, swerving around parked cars. "Swimming pool accident," he said looking back at me with his greasy comb over. He had been shaving with motor oil. "I was putting chlorine in the pool when I slipped. My spine was fractured in three places when I landed against the corner of the pool. The doctors say I'm lucky to be alive." "You seem like your moving around pretty well for a man whose spine is in pieces." He made a greasy noise that was probably meant to be a laugh. "Don't it?" He pulled a cigarette from the glove compartment. The wife slapped him. "I thought you quit." He put it down and pushed up his blue blockers, looking her in the eye. The car smashed into the side of a building, his head made a bulging spider web in the passenger side window. We sat for a moment, the woman's breath rasping in shock and the man wincing at his head injury, which had left strawberry jam all over the window and his forehead. "I'm used to smaller cars," I apologized. The man looked back at me, a lens gone from his blue blockers. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth and flicked his lighter; I asked him if he wanted any toast. He inhaled the smoke and handed me a package of coconut and chocolate cookies, the ones with the stripes of chocolate across the top and the hole in the middle. I put the car in reverse, and we floated off the sidewalk back onto the street. I made a mental note never to steal a car that had to be driven from the backseat, because it felt like driving a building through flood waters, where every window was the blind spot. In the front seat, the man and his wife had set up a game of Mousetrap, she still shrieking from the shock of the collision and he holding a piece of toast to his strawberry skull. The street and its traffic were flowing faster now, the car now gently swelled on its swift current. I took the peppermint out of my mouth and said to the woman, "should I turn left here?" "Yes, we'll cross the River here." The man glanced back at me and smiled, his broken sunglasses atop his head and the strawberry jam dried on his temple. The car drifted around the bend. We glided up the ramp and onto the bridge.