Vanishing Point

by Spencer Dew

She slept through the ambulances, the aftermaths, palm trees plowed into, divider rammed, revelers bloodied, exits missed and flown.  She slept past cops closing lanes, past shattered glass and plastic pieces strewn across the highway, Fort Lauderdale to Miami and back again, repeating.  She slept through the year’s first hours, cradled by motion, as cars wove around me and I dry swallowed another measure and played back the night.

She had worn herself out with screaming and with rum and, before that, with her scowling insistence that all she wanted was to watch the fireworks on a beach and why couldn’t I do that, or anything, right, why couldn’t I just find a place, why weren’t we already there, why weren’t we already drunk.

I had apologized for everything specific I could think of, then apologized some more, blankly, and managed in the meanwhile to find a perfect place, midway between municipal displays, with kids on the sand around a bonfire counting down to the chorus of kazoos from the windows and balconies of overlooking apartments.  But even before the spirals and starbursts started, she had stormed back to the parking lot and locked herself in the car, with her bottle.

After the shows died down, the kids on the beach started lighting off their own pieces, then opting just to toss them into the fire, shrieking and running back as the rockets scuttled out, spinning down the sand, whistling or popping into showers of sparks.

After the last explosion I walked back to the parking lot, tapped on the glass of the passenger side, set off the alarm.

“You can’t even fucking do that right,” she said.

She said she just wanted to leave, wanted to sleep, wanted me to drive so that she could sleep, even though as soon as I started she told me I had no idea where I was or where I was going, that I missed a stop sign, that I would get us both arrested, that I would get us both killed, that maybe that’s what I wanted, to just be done with it, done with her.

But one road led to the next, in course, white lines guiding, her curled like a baby, breathing heavily, gone, gone until after dawn, sleeping through all the opening horrors of the year, not waking till the rental car return lanes, at the airport, sober, cuddly and sweet, full of forgiveness.