Droplets pull and push against the glass, moving in every direction. The air is blowing on the glass and then the water is rushing. A piece of light plays against the windshield, forming shadows on the dashboard, the seat, and on Bruna’s dry hands.1

The water is rushing, rushing out against the green car, a 2003 BMW 540i. This artificial typhoon is summoned, loud against the metal. Bruna is reminded of a baptism. The vehicle is submerged. She thinks of holy words: thou, doubt, shall, unto, save, whole, thee, obey.

Bruna’s mouth is open and the phlegm is resting in her chest. Bruna is often sick, coughing, or otherwise scratching her throat. So that’s how she is in the car wash: nose stuffed, sitting, scratching her throat. In front of her: a Volvo, a Nissan, an Alfa Romeo. Bruna touches the orange sweater around her neck. She’s sick. Or she’s been crying and her nose is stuffed. Her lips are dry and her tongue is dry from this breathing through her mouth. She can’t smell the leather seats or the tree-shaped air freshener swinging in her peripheral.

It’s nighttime. Bruna watches the road from the reflection in the rearview mirror—blurry people on their way to work, or to the fish section of the supermarket. Behind the Nissan, the Volvo, the Alfa Romeo, and the 540i there’s the sound of a motorcycle rushing past them, past the car wash on Boston Road. They inch forward, the fluorescent lighting in their eyes. They lift the beige visors, folding them in place. They shut off their radios. They listen to the whistling of the phlegm in Bruna’s chest, the air behind her teeth as she breathes, and the tracks that are moving the sixteen tires forward.

The soap falls. Despite having been raised in it, Bruna no longer remembers how religious words fit together—in the name of the Eucharist, all glory is yours—she can’t remember, not any of the verses of the catechism, or how the voices of the Corinthians might sound. Ashes were placed upon her forehead as an adolescent, and she knows the pressure of a priest’s finger on her skin, the ashes falling onto her nose, the pipes of the organ, the dark mark small and illegible.

The 540i is pulled farther into the tunnel. The track underneath is clunking, clunking. Bruna watches the soap moving on the windshield, moving like unsalted butter in a nonstick pan. Moving down. In semicircles. Up.

It’s quite beautiful. If someone were in the 540i with her she would tell them. She would pause and tilt her head to the right, breathe in, sigh, breathe out through the mouth (as her nose is unwilling to open for air). If someone were with her she would want them to notice this tilt of her head. She might offer it discreetly: It is quite beautiful?

Bruna is alone.