I appreciate your assistance in this matter, said no one in Miami ever

The stu­pid fuck­head was­n’t just in the wrong lane — they were two lanes too far, with no way out of the exit lane before the exit.

But they made space and time for their SUV’s last-second exo­dus, rather pre­sump­tu­ous­ly bor­row­ing the space where my car should have been. And their turn sig­nal must not have burned out — could there be any oth­er expla­na­tion for such an irre­spon­si­ble slight?

I con­grat­u­lat­ed them on a maneu­ver well-executed with my horn. They did­n’t seem to notice. As our cars drift­ed fur­ther apart, I found that for some rea­son I just had to gaze upon this spec­i­men of unadul­ter­at­ed Mia­mi dri­ver­dom. I glanced over and saw just the sil­hou­ette of a pro­file. Only but a moment lat­er, a lighter came into view and lit the cig­a­rette between their lips.

Not sur­prised, not even a little.

There was bread in the air

It was dark and the car was point­ed east — some express­way was behind it and some more was ahead, with the exact pro­por­tions rapid­ly chang­ing. Its win­dows were down and its sun­roof was too. Around here, la madre nat­u­raleza usu­al­ly cra­dles us close to her sticky and often gross bosom, but she had tak­en the night off.

In Mia­mi, mid-60s is fair­ly cool for any time of year. I take what I can get.

I could­n’t hear what was play­ing because the engine and the wind were too loud, and I was deter­mined not to be that guy. I prob­a­bly had some­thing on my mind too, but who can remem­ber? For a stretch of road per­haps a half-mile long, how­ev­er, the air and my thoughts were sud­den­ly full of the unmis­tak­able scent of freshly-baked… sour­dough. I think it was sourdough.

This was pleas­ing to me. Then it went away. I kept driving.