The woman blocking the intersection, the woman refusing to let me in, is driving a red hatchback, her passenger mid-eighties at least, hair cropped like a jellyfish. The passenger stares out the window. A few car lengths ahead, there’s the ding ding ding of the rail crossing, the twin engines shunting tank cars. We’ll be here a long time.
The driver turns up the radio and I watch the emoji pattern on her scrubs bounce along to Bruno Mars. Suddenly she reaches over towards the open window and I think she’s going to ask me what my problem is. Instead, she uses her index finger to scrape the passenger’s teeth. Is she checking to see if the woman’s died? The passenger flares her nostrils but doesn’t bat the driver’s hand away. No, the motion is more like a toothbrush. A salad leaf, perhaps.
A bike courier scrapes by on the right, going the wrong way up the street. Greasy muscles, shorts ripped right up his thigh, a chain that swings towards the car. The hatchback driver throws her hands up, scowling at how close his pedals get to the front hood. He taps her back window, just to piss her off. As if struck by a defibrillator, the passenger bolts upright. She cranes her neck to watch the cyclist pedal off. Grins as if to say, he’s terrific.
(written by Claire Tacon, read by Chioke I'Anson)
That rad music you hear at the end is by Tigerrosa. Buy their debut album here
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