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Olly’s mood gets better, lighter somehow, the farther away from his house that we get.
This trip gives him the perfect excuse to let go of the burden of his family for a little
while, at least. Also, an old friend of his from New York, Zach, lives in Maui.
“You’ll love him,” he tells me.
“I’ll love everything,” I respond.
Our flight’s not until 7 A.M. and I have a detour I want to make.
Being in his car is like being in a very loud, very fast-moving bubble. He refuses to open
the windows. Instead, he presses a button on the dashboard that prevents air circulation.
The sound of the tires on asphalt is like someone hissing low and constant into my ears. I
fight the urge to cover them.
Olly says we’re not going very fast, but to me we’re hurtling through space. I’ve read
that passengers on high-speed trains say that the world outside the train blurs from the
speed. I know we’re not going anywhere near that fast. But still, the landscape moves too
quickly for my slow eyes to hold on to. I barely catch glimpses of houses in the brown
hills in the distance. Overhead signs with cryptic symbols and writing come and go before
I can decipher them. Bumper stickers and license plates appear and disappear in a blink.
Even though I understand the physics of it, I find it strange that my body could be
moving though I am sitting still. Well, not exactly still. I’m pushed backward into my seat
whenever Olly accelerates and I lurch forward whenever he brakes.
Every so often we slow down enough and I can see other people in their cars.
We pass a woman shaking her head and slapping at the steering wheel with her hands.
Only after we’ve passed her do I figure out that she was probably dancing to music. Two
kids in the back of another car stick their tongues out at me and laugh. I don’t do
anything because I’m not sure what the etiquette is for that.
Gradually we slow down to a more human speed and leave the highway.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“She lives in Koreatown.”
My head buzzes from trying to look everywhere at once. There are brightly lit signs and
billboards written only in Korean. Since I can’t read the language, the signs seem like art
pieces with beautiful, mysterious forms. Of course, they probably just say things as
mundane as Restaurant or Pharmacy or Open 24 Hours.
It’s early, but still there are so many people doing so many things—walking or talking
or sitting or standing or running or riding bicycles. I don’t quite believe they’re really real.
They’re just like the mini figures I pose in my architecture models, here to give
Koreatown the vigor of life.
Or maybe it’s me that’s not really real, not really here at all.
We drive along for a few minutes more. Eventually we pull up to a two-story apartment
complex with a fountain in the courtyard.
Olly undoes his seat belt but makes no move to leave the car. “Nothing can happen to
you,” he says.