Up there, it narrows from two lanes to one, backing up traffic the whole way home, but I don’t mind. It’s Friday before dark and I’m in love with the world again, from the opening bars of “Hotel California” to the quality of the light at this particular hour, this longest possible interval before being thrust back to the working week once more. The men and women who fought for our rest wanted it this way: three days of freedom, instead of two. Life is full of compromise— we zipper merge, each vehicle ceding ground to the next until we’re a single line, the shadows of trees and buildings passing across my eyes like a zoetrope. A century and a half ago, in Europe, my family’s store was burned, so they came to America and sold matchbooks, their lives a testimony to the effectiveness of their product. When I’m depressed, I feel guilty for having grown soft in relative comfort, despite my ancestors’ sacrifice. I don’t even want to look at the wreck that caused us to come together, though it seems like a bad one— splintered pole, downed lines, flashing lights. No way anybody walked away from that.