My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“I always think about earthquakes when I’m on this bridge,” Reva said. “You know, like in San Francisco when that bridge collapsed?”
<…>
“You’re watching a baseball game and then all of a sudden, boom. And you’re like, thousands of people just died.”
<…>
“Maybe a few hundred, max.”
“A lot of people got crushed on that freeway. And on that bridge,” Reva insisted.
<…>“And the next day on the news they were interviewing a guy who was on the lower deck of the freeway and they were like, ‘What will you take with you from this experience?’ And he goes, ‘When I got out of my car, there was a brain jiggling on the ground. A whole brain, jiggling like a Jell-O mold.’”
<…>
“Sounds made up.”<…>Brains don’t pop out of people’s heads and jiggle.”
“I guess there were aftershocks.”
<…>
“You know what I mean, though? Things could be worse,”
<…>
“I’m a very safe driver,” Reva said.

Hey, can you dig my gum out of my purse? I don’t want to take my hands off the wheel.”
<…>
I fished around <…> perfume and hand sanitizer and her makeup kit and rolled up issues of Cosmo and Marie Claire and a hairbrush and a toothbrush and toothpaste and her huge wallet and her cell phone and her datebook and her sunglasses and finally found a single piece of cinnamon Extra in the little side pocket otherwise full of old LIRR ticket receipts. The paper had turned pink and oily.
“Wanna split it?” she asked.
“Gross,” I said. “No.”