It was raining but I was able to get a taxi. We ran over an open manhole and nearly lost a wheel. The driver was an action star and just drove on as if it didn’t happen. It was an outstanding display of controlled recklessness, I thought to myself. I told him the destination or was it what I thought I did? I might have just given the driver the description of where I wanted to go. He was driving me to a bar. Because yes, all roads lead us to that sort of place when we’re simply lost.   

It was my birthday. And it was almost never going to happen – reaching fifty-two. But there I was, still alive, breathing in the backseat of a strange car, alone, in the last hours of my day. Wait, it’s never been mine. Every day, there are about 17 million people around the world who are celebrating their birthdays. Anyway, I was half-awake stretching what was left of the night, never going fast, tired of getting there fast. 

The world rolled past me like in those films where soft, colorful prisms blotted the windows. The good ones always had one of those scenes. Ghosts of fog lazily rose up from the gutters, thick as a summer day’s clouds, giving me permission to search for the heroine’s face in the walking crowd. 

At the bar, I got a free round and a half-shrug as a gift.  

I might have said something smart, that I almost got thrown out. 

All I had was my eighty-proof rhetoric. No job, no women, I’m simply wasting away. 

I hailed another taxi. This time, I told the driver to just cruise around. 

We were going to take our time. I was going to take my time. 

I paid up and gave some extra, for the company.  

I sat on the gutter, propped on my arms as I looked up.

Between the stars and the satellite, I could never see the difference.