i drew the gnarly curtains and they felt weighed down, it seemed, with- what's the word? - persistent pessimism in this ill lit room at this motorists' hotel in tea neck, new jersey. i looked out and this summer light was making me believe i could see the end of this turnpike now choked with weekend traffic. he was still in the bathroom, reading, i suppose, the new yorker he insisted on lugging along. "am i not interesting enough?" he was the one who suggested we avoid the gridlock getting back to the city from a curt afternoon at the beach by getting us a room in this motel. i told him it didn't matter, it would still be hell, the drive back to the city later in the evening. on the tv was a woman - wasn't she on mtv before? - hawking some breakthrough invention, a rubbery thing that braids hair in a jiffy. i kept on looking outside although there was a spot on the window that insisted on reflecting, albeit shabbily, what was going on tv. as the woman continued to ham it up in the infomercial, on the window, it looked like she was directing overhead the groaning traffic in the turnpike. "you, the new range rover, bear left. you, that's right, the green solara, not there, you don't have an e-z pass." but the weekend snarl continued to get knottier, a mess of unbraidable tresses. a woman with flabby arms, the one in a white sedan, threw up her arms in the air, a child, a terrible two -- he should be -- was throwing a tantrum in the back seat of a coral green saab suv. i called out to him, if everything's alright. he yelled back something like everything's fine. i am awed by this man, he who, it seemed, has boundless faith in everything. and yet, i couldn't stop myself from wanting to ask him back, "is it really?"
