Chapter Five
Saturday morning is one of the few times I find driving on Route 1 bearable. No traffic to speak of, so there’s plenty of room to maneuver around the potholes and bumps and scars in a road that hasn’t been paved in God knows how long. Normally, Route 1 is like one of those driver’s ed movies—cars making sudden lane changes, darting out randomly from hidden entrances, left and right. That morning though, I cruised past the shopping centers of Beltsville, sailed right through the two sets of lights at Rhode Island Avenue, where traffic usually snarls, and breezed into College Park without even getting stuck behind a Metrobus.
I was up early because I’d awakened at four that morning with Ray on my mind for the first time in almost a month. I’d thought about him quite a bit duri
