It’s after midnight and we are cruising down Union Turnpike in Julie Grasso’s family car. It’s a metallic pea colored 1959 Cadillac, the one with the cylindrical rear lights that make the car look like a space ship. There are eight of us: me, Julie, Phyllis, Pierre, Jesper, Eddie, Yusef, and Siler. It’s early spring, we are high and bored.
Phyllis is not high; she is the only one who doesn’t do drugs. Phyllis is like our mother, and she is especially watchful over Julie as she is her cousin and a few years younger. Julie is under five feet and needs to look through the steering wheel in order to see. Because of this she is having trouble driving this boat, space ship, of a car.
As we drive down the turnpike we pass mostly closed stores, but the bagel store is open all night. You can buy a dozen bagels for a buck. Fresh hot bagels, soft and fragrant. The bagel store has an orange neon sign that says “HOT BAGELS” in letters that have little flames escaping from them. Julie pulls over as we clamor for, “Hot Bagels! Hot Bagels!” Inside, the windows are steamy and it is brightly lit. Too bright for most of us-we are stoned after all, and most sensory input feels like overload.
Scrabbling in our pockets for change, we hand over coins to Siler and Yusef and we watch from inside our vegetable colored vibrating machine as they make their way into the hall of intense steamy light. They emerge with two large brown grocery bags full of assorted bagels and as Julie pulls away from the curb, nearly hitting a hydrant, we less than hurtle again into the night.
Being small and high, Julie has little depth perception. She also has no speed perception as we seem to be moving at less than twenty miles per hour. Pierre tells Julie she needs to speed up. I don’t know why; there are no other cars around at the moment. It’s not like we have to keep up with the traffic.
We sort through the bags, and the car takes on the smell of onion and garlic. Julie tries to find something on the radio and Pierre keeps yelling from the back seat, which seems like it is yards from the front seat, to pay attention to the road. Pierre appears to be the only one paying attention at all. More than once I have forgotten we are in a moving car and not just hanging out parked somewhere.
The heat from the bags of bagels has steamed up the windows. “Put the windows down!” As we press the buttons and the windows go down they make a strange whooshing sound. I find this funny. I begin to laugh. So does Julie and Jesper. We continue laughing as Julie pulls alongside Saint John’s University, not stopping just moving in slow motion. There are some freaks hanging around the steps of the school and Jesper throws them some bagels as we ooze past. More laughter. We see some collegiate looking kids further on and throw more bagels, although now we are throwing the bagels at them rather than to them. We are spaceship aliens and they are under bagel attack. We run out of pedestrians and bagels and it gets quiet in the car as The Doors play on the radio. Julie makes a left turn and we bump over the corner. She is heading toward the city now.
“Let’s go to Chinatown!!” and so our Caddy wobbles its way toward the Manhattan Bridge. It’s peaceful and few cars are on the road with us. Julie takes up two lanes, but it’s cool, I feel completely safe. We see the bridge coming up in the distance. It’s warm in the car, the windows are back up, and we lay against one another in the backseat. I’m looking at Jesper’s shoulders; he is wedged between Julie and Phyllis who are both small, but Jesper is six foot five, all elbows and knees. He is white blonde and snow-white skinned. He is from Denmark and his head touches the roof. Pierre is also very tall, six seven. He is not wiry like Jes. His body is bear solid and he takes up a lot of room here in the back. Most of the time I’m sitting on his lap to make room for everyone else. I don’t mind at all; Pierre’s arms are around my body and we all sway in the back to the music, and because of Julie’s driving.
We take the outer roadway on the bridge. It is really like being in space. Hanging over the water far below, it’s like we are hovering over the Earth.
“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” Pierre topples me to the floor as he reaches over Julie’s head to grab the steering wheel. We were about to hit the short iron railing, the only thing between us and the river. Julie ducks under Pierre’s arms to change the radio station, I pull my leg out from under the driver’s seat, grumbling about the pain, Siler and Yusef and Eddie all say “Wow” as Jesper, wide eyed, turns toward us in the back saying “Far Out”.
Phyllis is yelling at Julie as Pierre continues to drive from the back seat off the bridge and into Chinatown. “Let’s go to Wong Loh’s!” Pierre pulls over and parks, and we all climb out, stomachs rumbling, talking about what we’re going to eat.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t go over that railing,” Julie says, “my father doesn’t know I took the car. He would kill me.”
