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nosegays to ward off the stink of death that filled the streets. Fuck. I wanted the song to stop. Worst part was, the first line started looping over and over in my thoughts. Ashes, ashes; Ashes, ashes; Ashes, ashes … maybe we really would all fall down. So not cool. I felt so disrespectful. And I was going insane from the repetition.
    Still parked and desperate for distraction, I opened the glove box and grabbed a birthday gift mixtape this skater Betty girl from work had given me. We’d worked some of the same shifts at Aron’s and her name was Chloe and she was sexy and sweet in a scraggly your-best-buddy’s-little-sister-hits-puberty sort of way. We’d kind of made out a few times in the back room, nothing serious, but she’d most definitely been crushing on me. Evidence: Not only did she make me a mixtape, but she’d gone so far as to cover said tape’s plastic case in a thick layer of red (like Valentine’s red, like I love you red) glitter. Embedded in the glitter were ugly little beads shaped like hearts and stars. She must have smeared a whole bottle of Elmer’s glue on the case and then dumped an entire Michaels craft store on the damned thing. Small handfuls of the red stuff coated my lap and hands as I retrieved the tape. I popped the tape in the deck and tossed the case to the passenger floor mat, where it landed with a ruby poof .
    Engine on. Music started up. Five melancholy guitar strings were plucked. Again. And again. Cymbal crashed. A steady somber drumbeat joined in. Five-string refrain. Low bass reverberated deep in my rib cage. I backed out of my Forest Lawn parking space. And then, coasting past the pissing cherubs, past the ridiculously tall wrought iron and crested gates, turning left onto Glendale Avenue:
It’s a long time coming, it’s a long way down, it’s long division,
crack and divide.
    This is a parting, some separation, we lay in pieces, cracked to
survive …
    Fugazi. One of my favorite bands. “Long Division.” Not necessarily one of my favorite songs, but only because it always left me wanting more. I didn’t like wanting more of anything from anyone. But I did. I wanted more of the song. And I wanted my dad to not be dead. It ended too soon.
    There was a long gap of silence on the mixtape. A clicking sound. More silence. Too much damned silence. The box of ashes on the passenger seat was so criminally small. It just sat there, an inconspicuous little black cardboard box, not making a peep, but so totally filling me with noise. Even though he’d thought to take care of every other detail, my dad hadn’t ever told me what I was actually supposed to do with his ashes once I had them. Maybe he figured he’d be lucid on his deathbed and planned to tell me then, not a minute sooner than he needed to. Maybe it was just his one strange form of denial, like if he didn’t talk about the cremation he’d never actually die. Regardless, I had no clue what I was supposed to do with the ashes. Fuck, what was I supposed to do, period? Something heavy swelled in my chest. I could feel the pulse in my neck. I wanted to scream. My head ached like a demon. There was a steady hot unfamiliar pulse pushing from behind my eyes. Finally, another song started. The music was so loud it became distorted static and hurt my eardrums. I pulled onto the 5 Interstate southbound.
    Entirely paranoid that my dad’s ash-box lid might somehow pop off, that the interior plastic bag would tear and particles of my father would fly away into the smog, I kept all the windows rolled up and didn’t turn on the air. It was mid-June. In Southern California. Sweat stung my eyes. Head to foot I was a soggy uncomfortable mess. My hands kept slipping off the steering wheel. My entire body was tense, and I swear I could feel the individual molecules of my body buzz. Anxiety? Frustration? Anger? Pain? Whatever it was, it was too much. I clenched my jaw and tapped beats with my left foot. My right knee hit the keychain