The day passed like it never happened, despite my anticipation of seeing her, and when the hour came; it went. She wasn’t there and for some reason, I wasn’t disappointed. My life returned to normal, living with big ideas and every so often I tested them; not for thrill seeking, but to know I was sincere.

She must’ve dropped the class. All was well, except that I was exploring Freud’s Death Instinct and I felt compelled to act it out. Finding a way to almost die was pressing on my brain like an edema and I decided to rent a red Ferrari. My morning class was filled with pitiful souls who didn’t want to be there, but the hour came and went, and I stopped off at the corner cafe for my triple espresso and drove to pure success.

The October roads were awash with color. Red and yellow leaves glinted in the sunlight beaming through deep rain clouds. The gray haze and the hum of the V14 took me into a mystical world. Traffic was light and it felt doubly good to leave the hardworking industrial district and find tall roads overlooking the ocean.

Everything slowed down, despite my incredible speed. And right when I fell into a waking dream a bathtub Porsche honked behind me. The woman wore sunglasses, a scarf, and a red fedora, and even with her cosmetic camouflage, I knew it was Joy. She gunned her engine into oncoming traffic and cut me off, smiling in her rear-view mirror.