Reading Roads

It was the third Friday of the month. Marine Road was covered with a fresh sheet of rain. The cars parked on the curb reflected cloudy October light. Riding a bicycle down the walkway David read the tags of the cars, they spelled out a story before his eyes.“Wait. Things. Shape. Blue. Art.”“Blue” was a small truck, unwittingly painted red. It had been parked in the same place for several weeks. David wasn’t sure if it had been abandoned or not.The Vehicle Commission passed legislation the previous year with the intention of making traffic more interesting by assigning random words to vehicle license plates instead of the jumble of characters and numbers used before.“Rest. Autumn. Around. Truth. Talk” read the next string of cars. “Autumn” was a large sedan and the driver had forgotten to put the windows up, soaking the interior with rain. The trucks and cars seemed to be trying to communicate something to David as he cycled past, their random selection of language confused and disfigured, but David felt something prophetic and strangely purposive in their statements.He arrived at the corner of Newkirk Lane and turned, his house was just a few meters down the way. He locked his bike on the railing and sauntered up the stairs to his home. He dropped his bag on the floor and slumped into the sofa, grabbing a small laptop from the table and powering it up.He was an accountant for the Transportation Feasibility Organization which had opposed the program to give the tags their new purpose. Three months before the initiative was finalized David was hired as help in the TFO’s mission to kill the project. They were running numbers and trying to prove the Vehicle Commission would run out of words to slap on cars, or they would become redundant.The offices of the TFO were a few blocks away from the Vehicle Commission. David had traveled between the two buildings for the final assembly reports before the “Reading Roads” project was accepted by the Interior Ministry. As he made his way by foot, walking down the sidewalk, he remembered having looked at the plates of passing cars and thinking he would never see “JF2-9WK” or “J3I-44SK” again.He remembered that final assembly as he stared into the screen of his laptop reading an email from his brother. Though David had moved into the city for his job, his brother still lived in the suburbs, an hour drive away in traffic. The traffic drove David crazy and was one of his main reasons for moving.David-Just got message from Thursday. Maria is jumping through hoops trying to finish getting ready. I think it will be a great time. Hope you can make it.JoshDavid tapped out a quick reply that he would definitely come to the party next weekend, a birthday bash for their father’s 60^th. Maria was their sister who also lived in the city but didn’t stay in close touch with either of her brothers.The week passed and David did his usual routine, biking to work, where he ran numbers on the latest construction projects in the region, determining the least amount he could use of taxpayer funds to support infrastructure that he didn’t really think was smartly designed.On Saturday he got on the underground rail and rode out as far as it would take him, where Josh was waiting to pick him up at the end of the line and drive him to the party. When he arrived he walked out into the fresh air, smelling the trees, and scoping out the open landscape he hadn’t visited in months.“Hey Bro” Josh said.“Hey, thanks for coming to get me. It feels colder out here than in the city.”“Yeah well Fall is so fast. Could have ended on your train ride. You missed it man.”“Yeah, oh well. Thanks for picking me up though. You know my thing about cars.”Josh slapped him on the back and they walked through the large parking lot back to the car, passing hundreds of vehicles, sitting empty in the full lot. The plates read out nonsense as they walked. Josh’ s license plate had been assigned the word “space.” As they approached his blue coupe, the line of cars next to his spelled out – “Desert. Busy. Little. Open,” and Josh’s finished with “Space.”“Desert Busy Little Open Space,” David read aloud. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I still don’t get this Reading Roads thing.” He winced. “Well, actually.” Josh gave him a glance over the roof of the car as he unlocked the door. “That one almost makes sense. If the desert were busy, there wouldn’t be much open space.”“Deserts can’t be busy, dude,” Josh said. “I think the whole thing is stupid too. But I’m not moving into a little tiny closet in the city just so I can walk everywhere.”They had discussions before about the roads, the tags, and the benefits and annoyances of suburban life. Josh and David grew up with in Weaverston, a suburb of New Rocks, the state capital. When David had finished college he settled into New Rocks. Josh had never left.“Well you were kind of working on the whole thing, right? I don’t know jack about it.” Josh said as they drove toward his neighborhood.  “How do they keep it from getting mixed up? You know? Like, some words are more common than others, right?”“Yeah, there are buffers in place,” David explained. “Public utility vehicles, things like that, they all get the same common words. Like, That, The, When, etc.” Josh listened as he drove and David continued retelling what he learned through his job. “And for plates like yours, there might be another ‘Space’ car out there, but it will be on a different color plate. There’s nine background colors, and nine text colors, and forty some paint and trim combinations. So there are like two hundred thousand cars in the state, and three thousand of them could have ‘Space,’ and like twenty thousand could have ‘The’ because all the cop cars have ‘The’ and five thousand ambulances could have ‘that’. Its kind of stupid, I mean, they tried to make it balanced, but its still rare to see a string on the road that makes any sense.”As David spoke, a string of cars passed by in the left lane, and as he said, they didn’t make sense:“Home. Begin. Kitten.  Sign. Process. School. Grapes. ““I think it might be dangerous, actually. When they didn’t say anything, I never even looked at them. Now I’m always reading them trying to catch something that makes sense,” Josh said. He had indeed been glancing at each car that passed as they drove, taking his eyes off the wheel for just a moment each time.“Exactly,” David said. “Nobody took that into account.”The instant David said the word “account,” a white hatchback cut into Josh’s lane and nearly hit his fender. The license plate said “account.”Josh braked hard to avoid an accident. “Shit! Did you see that! That asshole almost wrecked us.”David noticed the connection between what he was saying and what the plate said. “I know! I hate driving. Did you notice I said “account” the second that happened? So creepy.”Josh glanced over at the passenger seat. “You said that? No I didn’t notice. I must have stopped listening when he cut me off. Freaky coincidence.” Josh honked his horn several times at the car, which had slowed down in front of them. He was going to change lanes and pass, but another car had sped up in the lane beside him.David looked at the license plate of the car blocking them from passing, and read it aloud: “Coincidence.”They both kept silent a moment and then David said “Fuck. Weird man. See. This is why I don’t like driving in cars.”They arrived at the house and found Maria and their Dad sitting on the sofa talking, a few guests were already there, including some cousins, their uncle, and a neighbor. Everyone got up to greet David who didn’t keep in touch very often.“Hey Son, so glad you came,” said his father.“60 years, wow! How could I miss it.”Their mother was in the kitchen working on some food and she smiled through the door at them. Maria hugged David and said hello.“How was the ride?” asked David’s father.Josh jumped at the chance to make a few jokes about David and his new city life. “It was hell for him, he can’t stand cars now I guess,” Josh said. “I guess he forgot he used to love racing around in them back in high school.” David avoided the topic and didn’t respond.“Well I’m not a big fan either,” Maria said. “Can you believe Dad’s license plate says ‘Sunshine?’” she laughed. “I mean we know he’s a handsome guy, but sunshine?” Everyone chuckled, and their Dad stood there with some sweat on his forehead, and a red plaid shirt with green denim pants. “I should be the one with the ‘Sunshine’ plate,” Maria said.Now their mother had come outside, wearing a blue apron over her sweater. “Oh I love when everyone’s home. Why don’t you all just move back in? Your Dad would be thrilled.” She slipped an arm under her husband’s.“Mom, if we did that, he’d have to get a plate that said “Crisis,” David joked.  Everyone laughed, despite knowing that drivers couldn’t just pick whatever plate they wanted. The ugliest man in the world could drive around with a plate that said “Handsome,” or vice versa, and there wasn’t anything that could change it.Maria enjoyed being around her family, but as they settled into the pattern of making jokes and telling old stories, she became restless and started looking forward to returning to her apartment. David, too, was growing weary of the banter.That evening as he rode home on the train, David slouched against the window and drifted in and out of sleep. Headlights reflected on the wet road as the train passed. He was planning a trip to Jamaica for the summer and had a brief dream about walking through a rainforest trail with a group of donkeys.The next morning, David grabbed the newspaper from his front steps. It was soaking wet, and he tossed it straight into the trash. A car drove down the street with a plate reading “Nearest.”  It made David think of calling someone a “Nearist,” a person who disrupted personal space. A spark of mischief grew in his mind.As he walked home after work, David passed by an art supply store. He stopped in and grabbed a can of black paint. Later that evening when the sun went down, and the windows on the street all dimmed, David dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt and took his can of paint outside. He walked up to a car which read “Purpose.” No cars were passing by and he didn’t hear anyone on foot. David opened up the paint and splashed some onto the license plate, effectively covering up the word.Giddy and nervous, David ran up the street until he found another parked car. “Design,” the plate read. Again David splashed black paint over the letters, rendering the word illegible. He found another plate he didn’t like – “Course.” After covering it, he ran back to his house, laughing, ditching the paint can in a sewer drain.