48 5B Reading

He was a tollbooth operator, she was a soprano who sang in

Carnegie Hall. Their eyes met at Exit 19 of the New York State

Thruway, when he charged her 37c. The romance that followed

was even less likely than the plot of an opera!

onya Baker was a frequent commuter from her home in the

suburbs to New York City. One day, when she was driving to

an audition, she came off the Thruway and stopped at the

tollbooth where Michael Fazio was working. She chatted to him as

she paid to go through, and thought he was cute. For the next three

months, they used to exchange a few words

as she handed him the money, and he raised

the barrier to let her pass. ‘It was mostly

“What are you doing today? Where are

you going?’" she said. They learned more

about each other, for example that Sonya

loved Puccini and Verdi, while Michael's

love was the New York Yankees. But their

conversations suddenly came to an end when

Michael changed his working hours. ‘He used

to work during the day,’ said Sonya, ‘but he

changed to night shifts.’ Although Michael still

looked out for Sonya’s white Toyota Corolla,

he did not see her again for six months.

When Michael's working hours changed back

to the day shift, he decided to put a traffic

cone in front of his lane. He thought,‘It will be like putting a candle

in a window.’ Sonya saw it, and their romance started up again. 'I

almost crashed my car on various occasions,' she said, 'tryingto

cross several lanes to get to his exit.’ Finally, she found the courage

to give Michael a piece of paper with her phone number as she

passed through the toll. Michael called her and fortheir first date

they went to see the film Cool Runnings, and then later they went

to an opera, La Bohème, and to a Yankees game.

They are now married and living in Kentucky, where Sonya is a

voice and music professor at Murray State

College and Michael runs an activity centre

at a nursing home. It turned out that she had

given him her number just in time. A short

while later she moved to New Jersey and

stopped using the New York State Thruway.

‘I might never have seen him again,’ she said.

Glossary

a tollbooth a small building by the side of a road

where you pay money to use the road

Carnegie Hall a famous concert hall in New York

City

New York State Thruway a motorway

New York Yankees a baseball team based in the

Bronx in New York

a traffic cone a plastic object, often red and

white, used to show w here vehicles can or can’t go

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