She grips the little gripping mechanism on the ceiling of the car, meant for transporting dry cleaning, but also for a passenger to steady herself while signaling to the driver that he is driving like a maniac. The Jeep thunders back and forth over the Botts’ dots, chaka-chaka-chaka. Phillip says he’s going to get his money’s worth out of the wide new freeway. He says he will use every goddamn lane.
“Whoa there cowboy,” she says as the Jeep pitches sideways. Phillip doesn’t notice her grip on the dry cleaning hanger. Nervous, she giggles, then feels immediately revolted at herself. This nervous giggling habit is probably why Phillip has slept with her three times and pretends not to remember.
Last week, the firm hosted a baby shower for Phillip’s wife. Nora and one of the secretaries passed around chunks from a vast white sheet cake on small black paper plates. It’s not like she is in love with Phillip or anything, but anyone would admit that must have been hard.
Phillip is screaming wild epithets at State Senator Ike Landry and Robert Moses and the Alabama highway commission. His flask glints in his hand as they pass the lights of gas stations. He’s been drinking all the way from New Orleans.
“How much farther?” she asks. Then shouts. Then shouts again.
Phillip doesn’t notice. “You can’t hear a thing I’m saying, can you?” Her voice is high and reedy and struggles to cut through the wind. “Dick,” she says, “Asshole.”
“You’re right,” Phillip growls. “Four fucking lanes.”
Phillip makes three wrong turns before they arrive at the gravel road leading to the site of the installation. He barrels down it, kicking up dust. He has knotted one of his wife’s silk African-print scarves around his nose and mouth like a bandit.
He parks the Jeep next to other cars on the edge of a field. Nora gets out and stretches. The moon looks cold in the hot night sky. Fleas leap from the long grass and nip at their ankles. Across the field, she sees a small group of dark figures and the dim shape of a silo. She turns but Phillip is gone, leaving his door ajar with the keys in the ignition, headlights glaring, the engine at a wheezy idle.