Abe holds the spliff between thumb and forefinger, speaks to it softly. “It’s getting so that anytime I can hear that sound”—glancing up briefly at the freeway—“or, or anytime I see a stream of headlights flowing red white, I hear the snips ripping through the metal. I hear the cutting hidden in the rest of the sound, sometimes I even hear some poor torn-up bastard moaning—just in the freeway sounds!”

He’s squishing the spliff flat, and suddenly he hands it back to Jim.

“And following taillights is like blood over exposed bone, red on white, you know the headlights, so bright coming at you … I mean I really see that.”

His voice is going away, Jim can barely hear his words. “The way the cars crumple and shear, and the blood—there’s a lot of it in a body. And their faces always look so—like Lillian’s face, it was so…” He’s shaking now, his whole body is racked with shaking, his face is contorted in the mask that faces go to when crying is stopped short no matter the cost to the muscles. Abruptly he stands again.

As if on a string Jim stands too. Tentatively he puts a hand to his friend’s shoulder. “It’s your work, Abe. It’s hard work, but it’s good work, I mean we need it. It’s what you want to do—”

“It’s not what I want to do! I don’t want to do it anymore! Man, haven’t you been listening?” He jerks away from Jim, turns and paces around him like a predatory animal. “Pay attention, will you?” he almost shouts. “I’m going crazy out there, I tell you, I can’t even do my job anymore!”

“Yes you can—”

“I cannot! How do you know? Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do out there—so fucking glib—” He reaches up and takes a wild swing at Jim’s upraised hand, hits it away, swings again and backhands Jim on the chest, for an instant he looks like he’s going to beat Jim up, and appalled Jim holds his arms up across his chest to take the blows—

Abe stops himself, shudders, twists away, takes off rapidly down the street; turns, wavers indecisively, plops down on the curb and leans over the gutter, face between his knees, buried in his hands. And there he rocks back and forth, back and forth.

Jim, frightened, his throat crimped tight at the sudden exposure to so much pain, stands there helplessly. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have any idea what Abe might want him to do.

After a long while he walks down the street, and sits down next to Abe, whose rocking gets slower and slower as his shaking subsides. They both just sit there.