He gripped the steering wheel and drove along the dark two-lane, headlights on, his cruise control switched off. Ahead of him, single and double headlights approached, some with their high beams left on, the bastards not even caring whether they blinded him. Behind him, red taillights stretched off in the rearview, disappearing around curves or dipping below valleys in the road.
Pink light was rising in the east above a landscape of sleeping oaks and maples and sycamores, still shrouded under a blanket of purple night. The world would awaken soon, and crowd onto the streets, and demand his attention, and not really care in the restaurants and the grocery stores when they asked him how he was.
But not yet. He still had this fleeting in-between moment to himself, where the stresses from yesterday were still trailing off in his rearview, and the glares from today’s problems hadn’t yet blinded him.
The perfect twilight time