This time the kinks didn’t quite work themselves out, and I gave Boston a wide berth and seemed to descend on Wooster, then Hartford, before my blueberry coffee, purchased in Maine, became completely cold. I drove into a speed trap coming down a long, Connecticut hill, and was stopped and ticketed right away. Fueled by seeing my wife tonight in the city, at the premiere of what would turn out to be a provocative play, I crossed from the Bronx into Queens via the Whitestone Bridge; Manhattan’s glass buildings, as well as Queens’ lone skyscraper, the Citybank Building, gleamed like jewels. As soon as I secretly congratulated myself on the good fortune that traffic was at a standstill in the other direction only, I met the same fate. Congress was convening in New York with a stop at Ground Zero, and downtown bridges were closed. I was going to be backed up for quite a while. I looked at the odometer. I had driven 2500 miles.

As F-15s cruised the skies, I felt secure but the noise of fighter planes and honking horns was something I had done without for a week. I looked over at the cars across the concrete divider, vaporous heat visible above the hoods, and I could take in: cars packed to the roof with grinning children, silent families setting off to their Berkshire homes, a woman who drove with a flip-flop dangling from a single toe, her foot hanging out the window. They inched forward on this midday Friday and I inched home. Each was going someplace and I became filled with a selfish and unfair envy.

They were heading north.