Short I

Well I hung around this guy who once said he knew a shortcut to get uptown. He said he there was a way around all the bullshit and all the strife. I didn't believe him, but I was interested in just how long he was going to go on pretending.

"Alright. Is there much traffic that way?" I asked him.
"None. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a shortcut."
"That's true," I said.

So we both got in his car. It was an old kind of car, green and hard to start. It always made three or four loud smoker's coughs before it finally turned over, that time was no different I'm sure. One thing I remember about that day was how bright everything was. It had snowed the night before and the sun reflected against all the white and the ice and made it painful to look anywhere but at my feet or at the glove compartment. Whenever the natural world is too much like that, I wonder how people used to get by years ago, before Foster sunglasses, Chevy Impalas, or without a dirty apartment on 63th. Part of me thinks it was easier, like it wasn't such a problem because it was the problem. Bad weather or blinding sun was the only thing ancient people must have thought about. But I think about it more and I realize that they still needed to eat, still needed water. Still wanted to get laid.

About twenty minutes in, I said that we might as well have gone any other way because it was taking as long as it was.

"That's a lot of horseshit," my friend had said.
"You're just upset because you're wrong."
"You'll see," he said.

He was right about the traffic at least. There was no one else on the road and the sun and the snow made it seem like we were floating in the clouds. I felt drunk or high or something and my friend handed me a cigarette which just made everything spin. I started to feel a little uneasy when my this guy started saying that he was surprised I was willing to go along with him, he said he never had me figured for this sort of job.

"I mean, this is heavy shit," he said when he stopped the car.

I knew then what it was all about before I even went inside, but I didn't see the point in turning around. I told myself he was going to do what he was going to do, and that it didn't matter much whether I was around for it or not.

I kept my mouth shut until we left the place.

"He wasn't innocent, right? He did something to deserve that, right?" I asked.
"Who's innocent?" my friend said no one in particular.