Or maybe it was that the traffic the past two nights had been unusually heavy. Kersh could never tell about those things. All he knew was that the lines of headlights and tail lights stretched all the way to the horizon, the headlights streaming in from New Jersey, the tail lights returning again from Manhattan. In the old days, he thought wistfully, every one of those incoming vehicles would have had had to stop at booths like his. An endless stream of people giving Kersh money to cross his bridge. But those days were long gone. First had come the automated bins where the drivers simply tossed in their coins. Far worse was the abomination called the E-Z Pass. Those drivers still paid, of course, but they paid from their homes, without Kersh or anyone else in the plaza ever seeing or handling that money. Which meant that sitting as he did in the booth marked E-Z Pass/Cash, Kersh had to endure the frustration of sitting idly while most of the cars drove through without even slowing down.
