The traffic's four lanes thick. Half the drivers lip-synch into phones. Half drift home somnambulic. Bound, the cars creep, promising release like a belly dancer's beads beetling towards her mons. I drum 'Perdido' on the steering wheel, glomming on the Voyager ahead. Does its driver shave his neck each week? Wow! He's just blown up a jumbo gold balloon, tied a curly ribbon to it and finger-rolled it back into his van, where it floats like a yolk sac with its cord still attached. Miracle: a hole opens left. I creep abreast of him as nine balloons jostle for the ceiling. He sucks a blast of helium himself then quacks at his dispatcher: "Quit bugging me. Tell them that I'm trapped. As soon as I can slip this jam and squeeze into my pantyhose and wig, I'll sing their freakin' anthem like Joan Sutherland, rock them with my Hindenburg kabooms." The voyager lifts above the road until his tires graze the roof of a Lexus just ahead. He breaks no laws except, perhaps, the certainty of jealousy: cell phones drop from hands waving him godspeed, and waking eyes record a burst of memory as this intrepid pilot flips a kiss-stained tissue to the breeze. by Bob J. Clawson

art by Pat Jones