Last Exit From New York

As I weaved through the valley of the Verrazano Bridge’s massive iron cable, high in the air, arching over the water, well above any murk or distortion, I monitor the stinging blue reflection of some mounted floodlights on the sturdy ancient wiring that floats above my car like levitating spaghetti. And then Pink Floyd’s Breathe connects sonically on some local college radio station that I’d zapped on to, and near the crest, near the peak of that massive bridge (bridge being an understatement), I put the pedal down heavily. Into the dark New York night I push my rental car hard, and I find a certain comforting space between speed and distance.

But as I slowed on the downside, the City fading quietly behind me, I saw a structure, blinking and blinking, demanding that I come to a full stop and do…something. It was a toll. An eleven-dollar toll. An eleven-dollar toll. Wait, I don’t have any cash on me. I used it all at the rental car place to bribe one of the guys to give me a car (they didn’t take debit cards). And he took the bribe, and now I have no cash.


So I approached the toll at the end of the Verrazano Bridge with a credit card out my window. Just hoping. And before I even got to ask the toll-booth fella’, he quickly shot me down. No credit, kimosabe, this toll is for cash carrying hombres only. And none else shall pass.

“What do I then? I’ve already passed over the bridge,” I said.

“Give me your registration,” the toll-booth guy said with a grin.

I’m in a rental car. I don’t have a registration. Do I? Where am I? What a price to pay.

So I just say simply, for some reason, as if to convey my situation: “I’m from Florida”.

Charlie, the toll-booth operator, falls to pieces. Cackling and wheezing for air. He yells over his shoulder to no one I can see, “Hey Bennie, he says he’s from Floor-ida,”

Distantly: “Floor-ida, yee-haw”.

Bennie’s having a field day. Behind me horns are already starting to blare, cursing seems close behind, and a good beating on the bottom half of the Verrazano Bridge not far from that. My guy, Charlie, grins, soaks some sweat off his brow with an old oily rag and starts laughing again.

“Well”, Charlie says, “anything worth about eleven-dollars hanging around that fancy car of yours?”

“It’s not my car.”

“So you stole it?”

Now I’m panicking. I’ve been at the booth making no progress for about two minutes, and the cars behind me are now like a bunch of aging Barry Manilow fans out front of a suddenly canceled and intimate concert.

“No, for god sakes, it’s a rental,” I say.

“Hey Bennie, a rental, and he says he’s from Floor-ida,” then he turns back to me, "still, Floor-ida, anything of value will work.”

So I start feverishly looking around my stupid giant Chrysler 300 looking for something to give him (and how could I have spent two weeks in Long Island without buying a gold chain?). Nothing. My notebook is very valuable to me but no one else, my used copy of Mephisto is probably worth eleven bucks, but certainly not to this toll-booth operator, and although I just bought a new toothbrush at the Save-Rite, I went cheap. Sigh, just another error.

Then I start looking around the rental car for things that I can tear off and give to him. Horns are blasting behind me. A good steering wheel could probably fetch that eleven, right? The rear-view mirror maybe? I could rip the-

It hit me. I looked back up at Charlie, who at this point was writing something down and not looking at me at all.

“You’re fucking with me aren’t you?”

Charlie starts cackling again: “I am Floor-ida, don’t you guys have bridges down there?” And then he passed me the piece of paper he’d been scribbling on. “Here, pay it online when my associate Bennie gets through gathering your information. Which he can proceed to do if you pull up about 30 feet for just a few minutes.”

“We call them causeways,” I say. Mistake.

“Well you’re gonna cause me to get outta this booth and discontinue my kindness if you don’t pull forward Floor-ida. And I think I have about 40 motorists behind me that would cheer and cheer.”

Fair enough. So I eye down the spot he’s directing me to and pull forward. But it’s about as wide as a shopping cart, and the Chrysler 300 I’d been given at the rent-o-lot is way more car then I’m used to dealing with. Even the door handles work.

I end up coming to a stop at some strange angle that blocks to some degree not only my lane, but that of the E-Z Pass lane next us. And those drivers are just blasting past. And everyone that starts driving angrily around me already has their windows down, so they are just lighting me up. It was like an unrehearsed motorist version of joke The Aristocrat’s; each piece of the anger got meaner and dirtier.
So I put my hazards on (this is a major hazard!), and just keep yelling out my window, “Sorry, I’m from Florida.”

Five-minutes pass. No sign of Bennie.

“You maniac!”


“You’re worse than Bono!

“I’d have a field day with your face!”

A car almost clips a giant truck as it swerves to avoid my highway abomination. And I would just drive off, screw the fine, something awful is about to happen at the bottom of the Verrazano Bridge (Headline: Local Floor-idan Pummeled to Death at End of Bridge; Witnesses Say Deserved), but New York City toll-booth operators aren’t just that: they’re actually cops. That’s right, full on cops, and they are packing. And when a cop with your license plate number and a good look at your face tells you to go somewhere and stay, it’s generally a good move do so. And especially when you have no idea where the hell you are.

So I sit there and take it. Starting to panic, wishing there was an ejection seat on this car (why aren’t there?), and watching for any incoming 5-irons. Then finally, I see Bennie, approaching, slowly, from the toll booth plaza. He comes up to my window, completely expressionless, completely, and hands me another small piece of paper.

“Pay it online, if you make it home Floor-ida”.

And he lurches back into the night. I floor the peddle hoping jet engines came standard. Covered in sweat, and scanning my mirrors for any still furious motorists (those who seek unending revenge), but there are none. I’m nearly out of New York, and it’s been a crazy ride, but you buy the ticket, you take the ride.

And I suddenly see a sign that says: LAST EXIT FROM NEW YORK.

I exhale, relax in my seat and take a large swig of Fiji water (tastes them same; side effects are condescension and the need to watch re-runs of The Wire).

Then I see another sign, this one muddy and covered with graffiti. It says: WELCOME TO NEW JAR-SEY: HOPE YOU HAVE YO’ SHIT TOGETHER.

Check my seat-belt, it’s tight, and I focus in on the long winding road ahead, back down south, to a place where the birds chirp but we can’t tell if they are real.