It had started out just like any other evening that followed such misery. In a traffic jam. Packed bumper to bumper, on the bridge, no less (I could just picture the news clip after the bridge collapsed, concrete and steel twisting in the wind, cars clinging for precarious seconds and then dropping the five hundred yards into solid water), with the air conditioner sucking up the gas and the seats sticking to my legs through my suit. I was flipping through the radio stations, trying to block out the grinding of gears and horns bellowing around me, when the phone rang.

Yes, the phone. The very one I bought almost a year ago to the week that has never been touched before. Sitting under the seat, for a full year, with only the slow drain of its battery to amuse itself. It rang.

At first, I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was on a crashing plane and I suddenly had to remember how to get to the oxygen mask. I figured that it must be Nancy, of course, who else could it be, and maybe she had some sort of emergency. I answered it. I even said, "Nancy?"

But it wasn't Nancy, it was a man's voice.

He said, "Uh . . . hello?"

And I said, "Who is this?"

And he said, "Um . . . who is this?"

He actually said that. So then I figured I had some sort of wiseass. But I still wondered why he would call me, now, and on a car phone. So I didn't hang up yet. Instead I said, "Robert."

He paused, and I thought maybe my answer had bored him enough to hang up. But he wasn't gone. He was just . . . thinking. After a minute, he said. "I'm Jackson."

Then there was another pause, and maybe it was just some guy looking for a friend or something. Or he could easily be some jerkoff getting his kicks. I said, "Can I help you with something, Jackson?"

He said, "Call me Jack . . . I was thinking . . . "

Then he stopped. He waited for a second; maybe thinking some more. I was getting pretty curious, and then I remembered that this was probably expensive, that he could be calling from anywhere. "Listen. Jack, this is getting kind of expensive," I said.

And he said, almost at the same time, "You should inch up a little."

And I realized that I had been staring down at the phone this whole time, and when I looked up there was a good car and a half of space up ahead, and only then did it occur to me to wonder how the hell this guy should know where I am. Of course I asked him, while I was inching up, "Where are you?"

He laughed and told me to look in my rear-view mirror. "Back here, on your left. In the blue Volkswagon."

I looked up in the mirror and there behind my baggy eyes and wired forehead, in the left lane, I saw him. In the driver's seat of a blue Jetta, waving out the window. I waved back. "What the fuck?"

He laughed, and now I could see him actually throw his head back and laugh; it was odd to watch him there and hear him in the car, like he was two different people in different places. "Sorry to surprise you."

My eyes were still wide in the mirror, and I was starting to feel a little stalked. "Who are you?"

He shrugged in the mirror. "Nobody. I mean. I'm Jackson, but you don't know me."

"How did you get this number?"

"Move up again." He shook his hand out the window, waving me forward. "I just got lucky here on the dialing game." I saw him stick his phone out the window and shake it.

I just shook my head and crawled up a few more feet. I could make out a sign, now, about three hundred yards and twenty minutes away. "The dialing game."

"Yeah," he said, and took the phone back in. "I was just trying to pass the time. Nothing on the radio and my air conditioner's broken. I was just sitting here, hot and tired and just plain fucking bored. Excuse my language. Anyway, I started just dialing numbers, to break the monotony. After a while, that wasn't enough to hold my concentration so I started people watching, too. You know, just studying all the people wrapped up, all probably feeling the same way. Except for the guy in the gray Nova, he's singing up a whole damn aria in there. Looks like he's having a great time."

He paused, and I could see him in the mirror, looking across the lanes. In the right side, I found the gray Nova, and the fat man sitting behind the wheel, pouring his heart and soul into something. His mouth was wide on every note, his brows raised, then furrowed, then raised again. He was losing his hair, it was combed back, with no shame of exposing more than the average acreage of forehead. I wondered what he was singing; if he was horrible, or if he had some magnificent tenor voice that would bring tears to my eyes and make me beg for a recording. "I see him," I said. "But what does --"

"Sorry, sorry, I just got caught up again. So where was I? Yes, the people-watching. I was just dialing the phone, all different numbers, on autopilot. My eyes were wandering from car to car, and then I saw you. You were wiping your forehead, just like everybody else, and then you leaned down. And it was interesting for me that you leaned down because a number I had just dialed was ringing. And then you never came up. And I just guessed maybe it was you." He shrugged again, and waved his hand forward out the window. "Wake up."

I pulled up more. Then I laughed. "Well. That's pretty amazing."

"Pretty goddamn amazing."

I laughed again, and then I ran my hand through my hair. "What should we do now?"

He thought for a second. "I don't know. What should we do?'

I suddenly felt a little better, sharing my misery with him. "We can't just hang up and pretend the other one's not there."

"No, no. Keep me company. Can you tell me what the bumper sticker on the car in front of you says? I can't make it out."

I read the sticker. "It says. "No Dukes. Bush for President."

He started laughing some more. "Jesus, people are crazy."

"For voting for Bush?"

He shook his head and waved his hand down at me. "Just for being people, that's all. I mean, why leave a losing candidate's bumper sticker on your car for five goddamn years? People just leave things everywhere. We have an insurmountable compulsion to leave. To litter."

I weighed this, and thought of the gum wrapper in my pocket, left from after lunch. Would I really throw it out when I got home, or would I wait for it to turn to lint and then toss it on the ground? "Maybe you're right."

"Of course, I'm right. When was the last time you really recycled all your bottles?"

I thought. "I don't know, Jack. Are you trying to make me feel guilty?"

"No, just making a point."

We bitched, then, for a good few minutes. I was pissed off about everything, anyway, and I needed to ventilate. Get it out. So I told him about my job and my boredom and just stagnation all over the place. I had been in a crappy mood since Christmas, about everything from velcro to the greenhouse effect. He said he had problems with his boss and his girlfriend. "Although I guess they only count for one problem," he said, and laughed.

"Your boss and your girlfriend?" I asked. "Nah, that's too terrible."

He made the sign of a cross out his window. "I kid you not, Bob. Rita and Mr. Tuffman. She told me a week ago."

I shook my head and thought about Nancy. Wondered about her. "My wife's about the only good thing I've got left."

He laughed. "Don't hear that out of many people."

"Well, it's true. Marriage isn't all bad, once you get used to the whole name-sharing thing." I felt like I was probably depressing him. and I looked back to my radio. "Hey, what station do you listen to?"

He shrugged. "I don't listen, really. Too much crap."

I flipped it on and started scanning the channels. "Well, we got NPR . . . "

"Too depressing."

" . . . we got Barbara Streisand . . . "

"Too old."

" . . . we got, umm, punk? . . . "

"Too young. Too loud."

"CSN."

"CSN?"

"Crosby, Stills and Nash."

"Hm." He was intrigued. "What song?"

"Not sure." I racked my memory, churning up the old tunes and titles, mixing and matching. "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, I think."

"What station?"

I told him the station and he turned to it, turned it up loud. "I love this song, this is my old girlfriend's song. Turn your radio up."

We rolled down our windows and turned up the volume. I could hear him; Jackson was singing over David Crosby, going for the high notes and missing.

I looked over at the fat man, who still sat, mouth opening and shutting, maybe on a recitative now. His arms moved every once in a while to accentuate a beat, or a lyric. His eyes were squeezed shut, letting his own sound mingle with the recording, filling the inside of the Nova with emotion of the barest and loudest kind.

Jackson didn't say anything for a second, and then he started to laugh again. "This is great. This is just what I needed."

And then I realized that I hadn't moved in about ten minutes. I was afraid my car would overheat, or just get sick of sitting there and shut off. I could barely see the end of the gates, about two hundred yards away. A while, yet.

"We need a break," said Jackson.

"Yeah, a vacation," I nodded.

"No, no. Just a break. From everything. From all these little annoying problems that make our lives crap from six in the morning until the alarm is set again. We need a break from this fucking traffic jam."

"Yeah, let's just go on strike." I laughed.

There was a long pause.

"Jack?"

He cleared his throat. "Robert. Bob, let's do that, let's go on strike."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's just quit for minute. Let's stretch out, and yell, and feel like fucking people, like individuals. Just for a minute."

I considered for a second. He could easily just stop the car for a minute; nobody would even notice. "We could just stop the cars."

"And get out."

Another pause, and the ludicrous idea started to seem not so ludicrous and we both laughed, at the same time, and opened our car doors. I heard his engine die, I heard his radio cut off, and I turned the key backwards in my ignition. That constant, omnipresent low groan that had shaken my body for so long tonight just ended, ceased. I felt a wave of relief, like I had seldom felt before, and Jackson and I stepped out of our cars. I suddenly felt like a teenager again. Just a goofy sixteen year old kid in his Dad's car on a Friday night, calling Chinese fire drills at red lights.

"We're on strike," I yelled, not just to Jackson, but to the people around me, watching me take off my sportcoat and shake out my arms.

I went over to Jackson, who was smiling and loosening his tie. His beard was stretched into a beaming smile, bright white teeth on black, while his whole face crinkled with indomitable joy. We shook hands. "Good to meet you."

I nodded, and then the lady in the car behind mine stuck her head out her window. "What the hell are you doing?"

Jackson shook his head. "We're just taking a little break. Don't worry, the cars weren't moving with us in them, either."

I looked at her closely, then, and saw that her face was drawn, that her eyes were a little glazed, a lot tired. Her hair was undone and twisted from being curled around her finger so much. "Why don't you come out and play?" I asked.

She gave me the finger, then rolled up her window.

"I'll play." An older man in a three piece suit, he was at least fifty, got out of the car next to hers, in front of Jackson's. He took off his coat and stretched his arms out, revealing the perfect ovals of sweat that had gathered under his arms. "This is just what I need."

Jackson and I laughed, and then I jumped up and waved down the bridge at the gate openings and all the cars and all the people. I could hear horns blasting at me from behind.

The older man extended his hand to me and Jackson, then motioned for the unwilling lady to come out. She smiled coyly and shook her head. He insisted, with a slight bow, that she join him. She laughed, covered her mouth delicately with her hand, and opened her door.

And it went on like that. Like the rings that spread out on a pond after you throw a pebble. Like a spiral starting at a tiny point and whirling outward, people got out of their cars. At first, they were all coming up to me and Jackson, introducing themselves, shaking hands. Then they started to branch out, talk to each other. Somebody took his shirt off, commented how nice the weather actually was, traffic aside.

Jackson climbed up onto the roof of his car and sat down, Indian style. He called me over and he said, "I know what we really need, Bob. We need quiet. I want to relax."

I went back to my car, and as he repeated the same thing to the people milling about his Jetta, I told people around me as I climbed onto the roof. I sat Indian style. The older man and his new lady friend climbed gingerly onto his roof, him holding her arm as she struggled onto the bumper. Soon, like a wave, all up and down the bridge, people were sitting Indian style on their roofs. Some were meditating. Some were just watching, listening to the wind rip around their faces.

I looked back at Jackson, who had his eyes closed. "Jackson, you did it. We did it, Jesus, everybody's out here."

He shook his head. "Almost everybody." He paused. "Listen."

And I shut my eyes, and I focused my ears. And above the whipping of the wind, above all the people sitting on all those cars, above the bridge and the city and the sky, was the fat man, singing his aria; and his beautiful, eloquent, Nova-muffled tenor voice was the only sound in our world.