The Scintilla Project, Day 3. Get Busy.

Day 3.  Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone.  Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road?

I hit pause on the CD player.

It's late.  Late enough for Philadelphia to sleep as I pull up to the intersection of 20th and the Ben Franklin Parkway.  I can hear Awesome's wheels as they creep along the pavement in the post-midnight silence.  I know what song's coming up next.  I'm saving it.

My finger stabs the play button as I peel off onto Kelly Drive.  My head begins to bob to the hi-hat chatter, my fingers drumming on the car door as I pull up to the light at the art museum.  The bass hits.  The shadows deepen, the lights get brighter.

Fourteen measures in, my snarling lips chase five words humming out of my speakers.

I guess I didn't know.

The light turns green.  The old Volvo's engine growls as my foot hits the floor.

I am dancing as the song bursts from those heavy, wedge-shaped speakers.  There are no words in my mind anymore - the music is in my blood and bones, my world is sweat and love and rhythm and sensation.  My eyes are wide and dilated, my heart is swollen, and there are glowsticks taped to each of my fingers.  These are my people, and I never want this night to end.

Boathouse Row flies by on my left as the drums kick in earnest.  My eyes are narrowed, my smile is sinister.

Get busy, child.

I coast into the turn like I do; I pump the brake to grab the road before I floor it around the curve.  The river is black as the sky as I pull into the straightaway.  Streetlights give way to trees and stones.

I am riding the Northeast Corridor home, tapping my fingers on my borrowed Discman as the song thunders through my comically oversized headphones.  Newark is sliding by me, and there are hundreds of dollars of pills in the secret pocket I cut into the collar of my coat.  I am feeling clever.

The bass lets up as I break free from the trees.  The words are a chant, a spell; I can feel myself say them even if I cannot hear myself over the siren's cry of the speakers.

Get get get get busy, child.

I am tangled in the arms of my first real love as the song throbs in the background.  The kind of love you can't control, the kind of love that burns your heart and leaves wounds that never really heal.  The shitty metal frame of my broken futon screams beneath us in our furious passion.  She was Russian. She was always angry.

The streetlights are back, ticking past me in time to the beat as I arc around Fairmount Park. Awesome's nose scrapes at the dip, branches clatter at her windows as I intentionally overcorrect, letting her fat ass swing into the empty lane beside me.

I guess I didn't I guess I didn't I guess I didn't know.

Kelly opens up, and my mother's car roars as I race the lights, my teeth gritted against the explosion of blurring lines, the Schuylkill and Laurel Hill forging a Strait of Messina.  I am beset on all sides, but I do not fear. I am going too fast, but I do not fear.  I am running away.  I am running towards.

I closed the bar down an hour ago.  I am alone in the dark with a cigarette and a whiskey, the only light the technicolor flashes of the jukebox as it pumps out the song.  This is my world now.  I have never known a loneliness like this.

Get busy, child.

One note in the background, a seraph over a battlefield, and I breathe.  Relax my grip as I coast past the Route 1 overpass.  The music fades to eldritch strings as my heartbeat slows.  I breathe to the measures as I roll through the last two lights before Ridge, ease my jaw and lean back in my seat.

I collapse on the couch in laughter as the song ends.  It is our housewarming, our first apartment in New York City.  There is still pain in my heart, memories of the woman I buried the day before, but it is dulled by the wine and the hugs and the dancing.  It is a new chapter for all of us.  And we're ready for it.

I guess I didn't know.

The last few bass beats bleed into one last note; it lingers in the air like smoke.  I hit the power button on the stereo.  I drive the rest of the way home in silence.