cimorene

so i have four potential snippets of writing, one which isn't available for public consumption, but including the following three of tennessee. (in the mountains, chattanooga).

SNIP #1

It doesn't snow instead. The first drops fall far apart, spraying little stars of droplets on the windshield and staining the pavement black in front of them. They race towards a dusky horizon, muddy purple with thickening clouds. The cars crawling up the hill towards them on the other half of the interstate all have their lights on now in the lowering gloom, and it's a long string of little white jewels like Christmas lights in the snow.
Rhythmic pattering turns to a quick, nervous drumming on the roof of the Jeep. Rain falls faster, slicking the windshield in crooked sloughs in between swipes of the windshield wiper blades. It's like staring alternately through a clear windowpane, and a slab of thick, wavy antique glass. The whole Interstate has slowed; even little sports cars pass them more slowly, only going eighty and eighty-five now.
It slows more, until, staring through a shifting silver curtain of rain, they can't tell precisely where the cars are moving faster and where they're at a standstill from one moment to the next. They're inching along. Viggo drums his fingers on the steering wheel, but Orli, who is looking out the window at a gray-green landscape running together like a watercolor dipped in bathwater, says softly, "Isn't it pretty?"
The ground slopes away from the gravel edges, rather steeply but not too far to be extremely dangerous. It rises again more gradually, smattered with bare black trees and a few evergreens. They have come further south: most of the snow was probably melted even before the rain started, but the rain took care of the rest of it. There's only the occasional spot of white on the ground. Rainwater streams down from the verge into the ditch and pours down a slight incline, vanishing behind them with swirls carrying twigs and dead grass stems.
"It's nice," Viggo agrees. "But it can be frustrating to drive in."
Now the noise of the storm is just a constant rushing that blends with the sound of the heater. The sky is as near to black as makes no difference, and in the distance they can see sheet lightning. "Maybe we should turn the heater back up," Orli suggests, and they do.
Few minutes pass before the lightning has moved close enough for them to hear the first clap of thunder. A flash illuminates the interior of the car, throwing Orli's face into high relief, his eyes darting to Viggo and his mouth open, slightly startled, at the sound. Marmalade slinks back up to the front seat and lies on Orli's lap again close to his body, and hides his head between Orli's arm and his stomach.
Viggo laughs and reaches over to stroke Marmalade's back soothingly. It's starting to warm up again and his hand skims fur that's soft to the touch, heated with the cat's body heat and Orli's proximity. The back of his hand touches Orli's shirt when he's not looking.
"Doesn't the sound of rain make you feel like a little kid again?" Orli asks him. They haven't moved for almost five minutes. Viggo turns to look at him.
"Does it make you?"
"Oh, yeah. I loved rain when I was a kid. --And being in a little place like this car in the rain, all warm--it's so safe. It feels twice as warm and comfortable as it did before. I don't know; maybe it's the sound."
"Mm." Viggo tilts his head a little and smiles at Orli. "I see what you mean. It is nice, now." The whole world is dark fluid, practically, spread out in a circle with them at the center, entirely lit with red and white lights. Moving water captures the light and twists it into stars and beams and snaky lines on the side windows. "It doesn't remind me of when I was a child, so much--but it reminds me of lots of other things. Camping in the rain--it's funny, but even though you hate it at first, you love to remember it. And going outside in the rain in the summer. Swimming in the rain." Another flash. "Although," he adds thoughtfully, "not in a thunderstorm."
"Yeah," Orli says wistfully. "If it weren't so damned cold, I'd get out and open my mouth and drink the rain. After all, no one on the whole bloody road is moving."
Viggo laughs. Marmalade gets up and turns around three times before tucking himself into an even smaller, tighter ball, with his nose underneath one paw and the tip of his tail. Orli retrieves his jacket from the back seat and spreads it over him, smiling slightly.

***
SNIP #2

There won't be anything either of them wants to listen to on the radio. Viggo will rifle through Orli's CDs, between the two front seats, and find some Beatles. Orli will smile a little when he hears the CD come on. He will skip three tracks, though, and finally turn it off in the middle of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."
He'll say "Sorry" when Viggo looks curiously at him, and shrug.
There will be a dead deer in the road somewhere in northern Illinois. Orli will make a disgusted sound and switch far too quickly into the other lane, barely glancing over his shoulder. He will have had plenty of room, but the minivan behind will honk anyway. "Fuck you," he'll mutter, startling in the pervasive silence.
Later, they will stop at a rest area with pictures of Illinois on the trashcans. There will be a map holder next to the doors inside, but it will be empty. Viggo will drink water from the water fountain; it will splash up in his face and make the burns in his mouth tingle. He will walk back out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. There will be two dogs nearby, one playing frisbee on the lawn with some little boys, one small and fluffy, locked up in a car with the windows down. It will stick its nose out as he walks past on the sidewalk, sniffing, and yap sharply.
Orli will be leaning against the hood with his sunglasses on, cracking his knuckles. When Viggo stops in front of him, he'll look up so that their eyes would have met if he wasn't wearing sunglasses. Viggo will stare into his sunglasses and wish he could read his mind, but he won't say anything then either. Orli's lips will tighten and he'll look off to the side. Then he'll pull the keys out of his pocket and drop them into Viggo's palm, and fold Viggo's hand around them.
"I wonder how he is," Orli will say very suddenly, when they haven't even driven past two exits after the rest area. He will be talking about Elijah, of course.
"He'll live," Viggo will sigh, thinking that that is probably the best that can be said. It's not possible to think positive things about the end of a friend's marriage no matter how many negative things you thought about it before. If it is, it's not possible to talk about them.
Orli will murmur after a minute, "Maybe it's for the best," and that will be the closest they come to saying what they have both thought about it.
Viggo will have been in the habit of being impressed with Elijah's maturity and wisdom, before he got married. He will suppose there is only so far those can go for anyone. More than anything, he will feel sorry for Elijah. "Yes," he will say, and that will be the closest they come to discussing it then.
"The kinds of problems he had..." Orli will pause. "He couldn't have fixed it."
"It could have been a lot messier." Even messier, Viggo will think: that's what he should have said.
Orli won't say anything else about the things they have both always known and the other things that they have both always suspected. They will never have discussed them except in the most oblique way, in the shortest conversations in the middle of the night. Only, "I hope he's alright."

***
SNIP #3

The traffic gradually thickens and slows, and soon enough, they're nearly at a standstill, in the right lane. One lane is always closed at Chattanooga, but he can never remember (or guess) which one. It does no good to be in the right one, anyway. Right now the other lane is inching by them, but that will change. "Chattanooga?" Says Orli, with an appraising glance at the other lane.
"Yes," Viggo sighs. "Speak, friend, and enter at your own risk."
Orli has turned to look at him again, and when Viggo glances inquiringly at him there is a warm, private smile on his face again. "Friend," he says deliberately, and Viggo smiles back.
There is a little silence. The other lane has stopped, and in a few seconds the red brake lights flicker and the car in front of them rolls forward; Viggo passes the same red pickup, white Cadillac, blue station wagon, black SUV, and silver Saturn that just passed him. "Fascinating," Orli says dryly. "We never move the same distance or for the same amount of time, yet neither lane seems to be making any more progress than the other."
"Physics of traffic jams," Viggo says, and is rewarded with one of Orli's laughs. Later, he asks if there is a route that doesn't go through Chattanooga. "I could find one," Viggo tells him, "but I sort of like it, actually."
Orli looks at him thoughtfully, then out the window again. They're stopped, and so is the other lane. A pudgy-faced blonde girl, about ten or twelve, is staring out the back window of the blue station wagon at them, nose pressed to the glass. As Viggo watches Orli watch, she crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue, and Orli laughs, delighted, and crosses his eyes back at her. Viggo shakes his head, but he can't help laughing too.
A frazzled-looking gray-haired woman is driving the Cadillac behind the station wagon. They can't see her anymore from here, but she had the window rolled down, smoking a cigarette and tapping the ash against the door so it fell into the street. She was wearing sunglasses the last time they drove past her, but she tipped them up to stare at Orli, and then slowly smiled before putting them back on.
This is why Viggo likes Chattanooga.
They pull forward again, out of view of the station wagon, and Orli sighs and leans his head against the seat back. "I see the attraction here," he says. "Rather like going to a mall just before Christmas. You can't go anywhere and you don't know anyone, yet you can't feel alone because you're just surrounded with millions of people."
"In Chattanooga, you don't have to walk," Viggo says.
"Mmm," Orli agrees, "you're with all these other people that you'll never see again that you don't know at all, and it's so strange... I almost felt close to that little girl there. And yet at the same time you're perfectly safe, isolated in your own car. It's comfortable," he says softly, looking at Viggo again. "Our own little world."
Viggo's eyes are drawn irresistably to Orli. He's smiling a little and his eyes are very deep and dark. "Our own little world," he is saying back, smiling too, before he has had time to think anything at all.
"Sort of like the rain," Orli murmurs, and goes back to petting Marmalade.
Clouds cover the sun and then flee again, and the air is pale, not white but almost transparent. It is unmistakeably winter, even though there is no snow in Chattanooga. The blue station wagon catches them up again, and the girl and Orli play a game of hide and seek. She crouches down below the level of the window, rising again with a grin on her face, several times before they're out of sight.
"I wonder what she'd do," Viggo remarks, "If you rolled down the window and reached out the next time we drove by."
Orli looks intrigued. "Probably roll hers down too and reach out to try to catch my hand!" His hand is on the window control, and Viggo, alarmed, tells him hastily that he was kidding. Orli pretends to pout, but then he says: "So was I."
The girl has a pair of sunglasses the next time they come even, and does a pretty good imitation of Orli.
The next time, she is blowing bubbles with gum. They seem in constant danger of popping on the window.
At first when he says it Viggo thinks he has misheard. His head turns sharply and he says cautiously, "What?"

so any comments or votes would be welcome.