It's 4am monday morning in brooklyn and I have to be at work teaching a class at 9am in chicago so we stumble downstairs to the car and are really fucking bummed out because Juris' battery is dead because we left the lights on a few hours earlier because we were out driving around the waterfront near the sugar factory looking for pieces of wood to make a fire in the hand made buoy-stove-heater thing because it was so god damn cold in the house and we did find some wood but it turned into a disaster because the little metal stove door's metal hinges rusted off and the door fell off just as the fire was really starting to flame up violently so the added air and current created a vortex of flames spitting out into the room and snaking up to the wooden ceiling and everything was filled with black smoke so we're running around opening all the windows and juris is screaming at me to find some sort of stick to prop the door back closed with but I can't find anything appropriate because the whole place is stuffed to the ceiling with boxes full of russian super-8 cameras but eventually I find a golf club and disaster is avoided, for the time being, because now it's a few hours later about 4:15am and we're back upstairs trying to convince a cab to come and give us a jump so we can start the car and get to the airport so I won't miss my plane but the cab company says no and hangs up so we call another cab company and ask for a cab to manhattan and they say ok so we wait downstairs for about a half hour and eventually the cab shows and we tell him we'll give him cab fare to Manhattan if he gives us a jump which he does but it takes an extremely long time because the battery is deader than dead and this is a hulking 73 Malibu but eventually it turns over so we pay the guy and split but we're out of gas so we have to go look for a gas station, fill up, then finally get on the freeway and everything seems good, we're cruising at 75, 80mph, and there's not much traffic yet and in a half hour we're almost to the airport, I mean you can see the planes and we're almost taking an off-ramp onto the airport property itself when the car starts shaking a little strangely and hacking and loosing power and then the generator light comes on as we're ascending the exit ramp itself and the car just dies, looses all power, so we're coasting to a sickeninly rapid stop on this skinny little ramp and my stomach is sinking as all the other cars are screeching past at 60mph and there's not even a shoulder, just a painted line about 2 feet distance from the retaining wall but that's where we are, stopped on an arc, so we get out of the car and open the hood and it's spewing steam and black smoke and it's very clear that the car will not move any further so juris says I should just run, because I still have 15 mintues before my plane's supposed to leave and I look at him a little crazy and then laugh and we say goodbye and it's pretty funny and sad and I tell him I'll look for a somebody to come help him out so I run down the ramp with my small suitcase which is extremely trecherous with all the cars screaming past so I decide to jump off the ramp into the straggly field below because at least I won't be hit by a car so I jump down and run through this totally uneven mucky scratchy weedy mess which is getting muddier every second because it has just started to rain and I keep falling down and my clothes get sort of ripped up and there's mud all over me but eventually I come to some sort of frontage road where they're doing constuction so I follow that in the general direction of what I'm hoping is the main terminal and then I see one of those little push carts which I grab and throw my stuff onto and keep running until I see a security guard who is looking at me with this outrageous expression of complete disbelief because he's just seen me emerging from this huge empty field looking completely derelict so I run up to him and start explaining that my friend needs help because his car died back there and at first he thinks that we drove off the ramp or something but eventually he understands the situation and promises me that he'll send someone so I ask him where my airline is and keep running and eventually I get there and everyone is just staring at me because I look totally crazed and sweaty and I'm very lucky because the plane is late in leaving so they tell me to just run right to the gate which I do but there's something chaotic going on at the gate, I think a bomb scare or something, because all of these super bright stobe lights are flashing on all the walls and there's a continuous piercing bleeping alarm that won't stop and there's security guards running around in pairs and talking on their walkie talkies so the ladies at the gate barely care that the metal detector goes off when I walk through and they just wave those wands and tell me to keep going and I'm amazed because even amidst all this cacophany none of the passengers in the waiting area seem to give a shit, they're just sitting around eating brown cakes with white icing and drinking coffee and the steward looks at me with eyebrows raised intently and says 'chicago?' and I say 'yeah' and he ushers me on the plane and closes the runway ramp thing behind me and they seat me and the plane takes off and I'm looking down to see if I can see a primer-black malibu on a raised curve and a small man with his hands in his pockets and his head hunched between his shoulders in the cold rain, pacing, motionless, or staring but I can't make him out and then the plane curves away. Leaving Brooklyn.

I made it to class on time.
And juris eventually got a tow after waiting 3 hours on the ramp. Some cops came by and gave him cigarettes.

- Deborah