The Light Turns

It's Tuesday 7:13 a.m. A cold and clear November morning awaits Ray on his morning commute.

Ray rubs his hands together in the front seat of his Subaru. He turns the air temperature up, but keeps the air on low until the air warms up. He looks at the backup camera screen and reverses the Subaru out of his driveway onto Trimble Road.

As he puts the car in drive, he waves to his neighbor Eleanor, who is sitting on her porch, smoking. Her husband, Don, doesn't like her smoking, and she's trying to quit, but it's hard. Ray has conflicting feelings of admiration and pity for Eleanor as she sits out in the November cold, determined to do something that's wrecking her, slowly.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow, Eleanor." Ray thinks to himself, and drives to the end of Trimble Road.

As he turns left onto Allen Street, he admires the large corner lot of his neighbors, Dan and Celia. It's the nicest house on the block. There are blue and white Christmas lights strewn neatly around the house and on the bushes in the front yard.

Ray catches a glimpse of their mailbox. Dan made the mailbox. Dan is handy. The mailbox is a miniature version of the house.

Ray isn't handy, but it doesn't bother him. Everyone has their own gifts and challenges.

He turns onto Billings Road., which runs past the shopping center where a new sushi restaurant is supposed to open in March. Ray's mind turns to tuna nigiri, seaweed, and wasabi. He is wondering what the sushi specials will be like as he approaches Beverly Street.

Beverly Street runs north and south for just over forty miles. Ray is able to get to Beverly within four minutes each morning from his home, but he almost never catches the light and usually sits, waiting for the light to turn, for another five minutes.

As he waits, Ray checks the sign at the gas station and notices that gas prices have gone down. $2.93 a gallon. He checks his gas level. More than half a tank left. Hopefully, prices will stay low through the week. The light turns. Ray turns left onto Beverly Street.

Just after getting onto Beverly, he turns right into the Starbucks and orders a grande dark roast with cream and a little sugar. The barista, Trevor, greets him by name and Ray is comforted to know that his coffee will be made the way he likes it.

Trevor hands Ray his coffee and tells him to "have a phenomenal day." Ray is always pleased with Trevor's sendoffs. They are deliberately non-cliché. Last Tuesday, Trevor wished Ray "an awe-inspiring day." "Awe-inspiring" was Ray's favorite sendoff from Trevor.

Ray turns right again back onto Beverly. He is far enough north that the traffic is not yet congested. It's 7:27 a.m. He lowers the Subaru's sun visor and continues his journey.

He notices the newly remodeled Taco Bell as he crosses Lincoln Avenue. Ray is not a fan of the new trend in fast-food building design. The buildings look too utilitarian. It's almost Soviet-like. He misses the days of bright, obnoxious reds, purples, yellows, and oranges, when chihuahuas, clowns and kings ruled.

He traverses the overpass for I-235 and sees the traffic starting to get congested on the highway. He looks ahead on Beverly and sees that his route is clear up to Ridge Hill Road.

He passes the old Anderson Tropicals, just past the intersection at Ridge Hill, where he used to buy tropical fish as a child. It's now Enrique's Hair Design. Ray has never been to Enrique's. He holds a small amount of resentment for Enrique and blames him for the downfall of Anderson Tropicals.

As he travels further south toward the city, he notices Winchell Bakery, which has been at the intersection of Winchell Street and Beverly for almost seventy years. They have great peach pastries, but only in season and peach season is eight months away.

He crosses Sustern Parkway and drives past the blue sign with purple letters of Greater Mission Church. It used to be Hampwell Bowling Lanes until 1996. Hampwell used to serve split, grilled hot dogs. Ray enjoyed those hot dogs when he and his high school friends would go bowling at "Rock-N-Bowl" on Friday nights.

As Ray puts the sun visor back up, he sees the Redemption Cemetery on his right. It is surrounded with a stone wall that is mostly blackened because of all the traffic over the years, but Ray still thinks it looks interesting; like an old castle wall.

He pulls up to the traffic light at King Street. New Hope Church is on the corner to the left and the New Hope Clinic is across the street from the church, further down Beverly. New Hope Clinic provides addiction treatment, including methadone. There's a line of at least thirty people at 7:48 in the morning.

Ray turns to the right and sees a billboard. It's for the Turatello Law Firm asking "Have you been injured in an accident?" in a dynamic yellow font. Ray's eyes move back to the road. The light turns.

Ray approaches a stretch of houses that are mostly abandoned and in various states of dilapidation. In the middle of the block, he notices a house that is not dilapidated at all. There are curtains in the windows and Christmas decorations unevenly outline the window. Ray smiles and thinks of Dan, who made his mailbox look like his house.

As he drives further along Beverly, he comes to a stop at the intersection of Beverly and Baynard. Ray studies the house at the end of the rowhomes. It's mostly torn down. There are three gray concrete steps that are fully intact and feel ironic, leading nowhere.

Most of the house has been demolished. Small sections of two of the walls remain and thick metal supports jut outward from the adjoining wall of the house next door.

A pile of rubble and bricks occupies the space where Ray imagines the living room of the house used to be. Ray pictures a family sitting around a table for breakfast somewhere in the forgotten past. As he stares, a rat emerges from a gap in the rubble, sniffs, then disappears into another gap.

Ray shakes his head. The light turns.

He steers right onto Delancey Street and sees another stretch of abandoned houses as he slows to stop at another red light. The windows of one house are boarded up. Someone has spray painted "WHERE'S ERIC?" in black spray paint across the boards.

Ray is unsure that the boarded up house is the most effective venue to find Eric. He hopes Eric is okay, but he suspects Eric might not be. The light turns.

Ray shifts his eyes to the left to turn onto Sycamore Avenue. Sycamore will take him right into downtown. There is a wooded area that separates the abandoned houses on Delancey from the neighborhood he is entering - Rasher's Hill.

In Rasher's Hill, Ray drives past rows of charming, renovated brownstones, each painted or decorated in its own unique way. The yards are landscaped. If you want to buy one of these brownstones, they start at a million. The elegance of Rasher's Hill is only a half mile away from the blight on Delancey. In Rasher's Hill, there are no boarded up houses. No concern for Eric's whereabouts.

Rasher's Hill is a neighborhood where exotic dog breeds are walked daily. Ray sees an older woman with spiked white hair in a camel hair coat walking a corgi. A young woman with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail is walking an ebullient Saint Bernard. Over the past few months, Ray has seen a pair of greyhounds, an akita, a boxer, and a shar pei.

Ray reaches Saint John's Hospital on Sycamore. He doesn't catch the light at the south end of the hospital and stares at the large, rectangular sign with a green background and bold white lettering making it abundantly clear that this is the "EMERGENCY ENTRANCE." The letters are illuminated at night, but not now.

Ray had visited his Aunt Ella in Saint John's at night two years ago. She died there. Lung disease. Aunt Ella never could quit smoking. Ray's thoughts drift back to the image of Eleanor on her front porch, cigarette in hand. The light turns.

Ray approaches the Lighthouse Bank Headquarters Building, known for the searchlight at the top of the building - the highest point in the city. He drives on and enters a canyon of taller office buildings.

Just past Lighthouse Bank HQ, Ray sees the entrance to his garage. He slows the Subaru and navigates carefully into the narrow entrance lane. He has run over the curb twice.

Ray ekes up to the yellow machine that dispenses and reads parking passes. He leans out his window and taps his parking pass on the pad. The machine beeps. The screen flashes "Move Forward," but Ray doesn't see it. He is already looking forward. The parking gate rises. It's 8:11 a.m.