We both were awful at exuding perfume when we worked at the department store counter, and we were friends. Dolly got fired, I quit. "You smell like 1942," they told her. "Go back into your agitprop talkies," they said in a New York accent. " You smell like 1942," I told them after I heard about Dolly, "I quit." On my way home I felt like a Jesus. I held my arms outstretched, the left out the window, the right across the passenger seat. As the evening sun popped and the sky tuned to pink, as the airbag caught its wind (saving my life) I understood the conversation of the metal and the metal. One God was breathing my social security number, the other hers.