I used to drive, late at night. For hours, in an everwidening loop, I would pass house shut tight. I would pass stores, locked but with the signs lit, advertising to my late-night eyes enticing offers I would never take up. There were twenty-four hours stores where I could buy cigarettes and piss. My reflection is left in every cracked mirror in every partially cleaned customer restroom in town, pale and half-aged, slump-shouldered under some imagined weight. I felt nothing as I drove. It was sacred and holy to me, starting the pursuit and grasping nothing and holding on for as long as I could. The sulphur yellow street lights all had halos through the dirt on the windscreen, the creaks and cracks and groans of the car were a choir, I smoked like a thurible and crushed butts into the overflowing ashtray. Even on the hottest nights the air coming through the window would wash cool across my face. Eventually I would steer toward the river. Through the city was the usual route, the only signs of life were the drunks spat from the mouths of pubs and nightclubs or a hunched figure making a doorway a bed for the night. A detour took me down the long stretch to a ferry stop, prostitutes waiting on the corners in increasing numbers. The cop cars cruised slowly up and down, warning off the johns, and the mean eyed cops would eye me with suspicion as I passed. I would slow down and ready myself to turn at the ferry stop, or perhaps find a park and stretch my legs, depending on whether anyone was lurking in the shadows. I would find my path back, head up the hill past the cops and light another cigarette at the perpetual red light that caught me. The transition from old to barren to a hideous attempt at progress took place outside the car. The buildings thinned to intermittent scraps of old and half built before I hit that second forever red light at the curve before the hill. The hill was thickly populated, the homes growing in stature the higher their position. At the very top stood the mansions, gated against ingress unless invited, but they held no interest for me. The narrow streets carved into the hill were trenches for the old and new rich to block with expensive cars. I would glance up, always, and wonder a little, but there wasn’t anything that could steal my focus. Between the steep hill and the river the road curved and without warning