Daytona Raceway

Rosemary Daniell

The woman in a cheap print dress, a slight hump at her back
styleless gray scraggles of hair, asks the Day's Inn clerk
for a room for another night: "Why do we have to check out
now?" Her son, graying, fiftyish, stands back, head bent.
"We'll see what we can do," the clerk, an Indian, says,
"but at the moment we're booked up." "Where's the bus stop?"
she asks. The Indian points through the glass to an already
blazing South Florida morning, across the four-lane that leads
onto the interstate. "See that pole over there? That's it."
After I pay, I get into my Camaro, scanning the dazzling
roadway, the vast asphalt, but they have gone. Why do I
always have to see such as them? Or the black -- gray face,
gray shirt, gray pants -- leaning back as if stunned on thin
elbows at the freeway exit. Or the skinny man I will
glimpse tonight, rain-soaked, looking lost, holding one small
suitcase, on my way to the restaurant with my husband
where amid the white cloths, the low lights, the golden loaves,
the dish of oil, its island of cheese; the vodka martinis (extra
olives, extra large) I must not think of them.... No, I must
not think of them. For who are they to me? Everything.