Stay Tuned, page 5

Milo took the first right-hand exit after the toll. Try it, he thought. Let the VCR watch the movie. Go someplace new.

The ramp emptied onto a tree-lined parkway. He cursed the speed limit sign, 50MPH, and the drivers of the cars ahead of him who obeyed the sign. On the expressway he took home every day, the drivers set their own limit by consensus and the troopers seemed to honor it, pulling over only those who blew past the line of cars doing their consistent seventy. Here on the parkway no-one was doing more than fifty-five even in the passing lane.

Milo settled into the soft leather seat and crooned with the lead singer:

For seven long years, I gave it to you free, I showed you, baby, just how it could be, Now it's out there, I'm just trying to see, Is there anyone, girl, who understands me?

The gentle curves of the road, the green grass on the shoulder and median, the pleasing array of verdant trees, the brown trestles of the occasional overpass--all comforted him. It was a type of communion between the vehicle, the passing landscape and himself that he hadn't felt since his first joyride on the country roads around his home town, before his wallet had taken the shine off his driver's license. It was driving for its own damn sake. He no longer chafed against the restricted speed; in fact, he lost all sense of time and distance passing. He couldn't remember a more beautiful drive.