Touché, who was already there, had made it sound like nothing, a quick twenty-minute jaunt, fifty bucks tops. But as we inched west on Route 3, twenty minutes became forty, then sixty. It was a hot, muggy day, and the cabbie took the Friday-morning traffic personally, muttering in some Middle Eastern tongue with every roadway slowdown. Somewhere past the Meadowlands, his frustration boiled over and he glared at me in the rearview mirror, his cursing—if that’s what it was—becoming more pointed. I opened the Times and tried to ignore him. Almost a week had passed with no major developments, and the bombing had been relegated to page A17. According to the article, an Al Qaeda splinter group had taken credit for the blast on their website, and though an FBI source questioned the group’s credibility, the larger implication was clear: the culprits were Islamic. A few days ago, I’d have glanced at the piece without raising an eyebrow. But now . . . I put the paper down. Reading in traffic was making me queasy.
What do You think about American Subversive (2010)?
