by Ro London
We couldn't tell what it was when we were waiting at a dead stop. My heart was pounding because I'd told him to take the L.I.E. instead of the Northern State; the route was longer, less attractive and full of alignment-busting road work that caused cd's to skip beyond all listening and I wished to make him suffer in small ways. And so, predictably we were sitting in traffic. He shifted into park when an ECNALUBMA sped past, kicking up dust on a strip of ill-maintained sun toasted grass. I sank a little deeper into my seat, and he pulled his sunglasses off to squish his eyes with a loose fist. When a noxious greenish yellow smoke blanketed us he turned off the music; a repentant silence might protect."What do you suppose?"
"I don't know? Should we discuss it? Ponder, list and dissect the many and varied possibilities like every other passenger and driver in every other car stuck as we are? Or is there something more interesting to talk about?"
He just looked at me like he'd never seen me before. I relaxed my jaw and softened the curves of my eyes to make it easier on him.
"Want a Violet?" I asked flipping out a chalky top-most square from a badly wrinkled pack.
"What? No, they taste like your perfume."
"And, so."
"Well, you don't necessarily want a shot of tequila, for instance, when everyone around you is having breakfast."
"Does that actually make sense to you? Do you listen to yourself? Or are there just always people around rapt by the mere sound of your speaking?"
"I think I know why I like to fuck you from behind. So I can smother your face in a pillow."
"Is that the most inventive solution you can think of."
A velvety black cloud was wafting long fingers over the shimmering roofs of sedans just ahead. "Roll up your window," he ordered. I cranked up my window and hot dust sputtered out of the vents. I toggled the lever to the recycled air position for him. "Thanks." We sat with our eyes closed. The sun's heated stare, magnified by the windshield, bathed our faces and our necks.
"Are you afraid of me?" I asked.
"Afraid of you? How?"
"Any way you are."
"Not physically, no."
"Oh, the former-jock can kick my ass?!"
"Mentally. Emotionally."
"Emotionally? Tell me about this."
"I'm not sure I want to."
"Well, is it more than just your normal cowardice or is there an advanced state of fear reserved for me?"
"That would please you."
"Only just as you're saying it, and then it might make me sad."
"Sad? Why?"
"Because it would mean you don't know me."
"You don't want me to know you."
"How can you possibly say that?! All I show you. You idiot!"
"I'm afraid of you when you're mad." He pointed an accusing finger.
"But you're not afraid of making me mad? The journey's fine, just not the destination? How safe. How simple-minded. Bleck!" I spat my tongue out of my mouth.
"Traffic's great, wouldn't you say?"
"It's had its uses."
Silence
"Can you see anything happening on your side?"
"When have you ever seen me angry. I don't think I've really ever--"
"It's like far away thunder, could be a plane, or a truck passing by, but you can smell it, the electricity heavy in the air."
"You should use that one. Here write it down."
"I think we're gonna start moving." He had the side of his face pressed to the cool glass. A fish-eye westward view.
"I think we're standing still." Pair beside pair of red lights flickered and flashed as cars shivered into drive, bucking a little disbelieving. He fumbled with the keys in the ignition and shimmied into driving position to inch forward with the rest of the crowd who were anxious for the gratification of mobility.
"I'm surprised."
"At what?"
"That you're just driving into a curtain of smoke."
"Where else would you suggest I go?"
"I don't know. It's just without objection you're about to slip into a cloud of smoke. Where there's smoke there's fire and do you have any notion what has burned?"
"What?"
And there it was. In the center of a sloppy circle of frozen fire trucks and ominous black sedans through whose windshields bobbed a pretty blue light, it sat smoldering. It had once been, we could all see, one-by-one as each passing car slowed to make its own examination of the scene, a Town Car. It was a charred shell. Discolored and in some places glowing. The air around it undulated like a ethereal nimbus. We down-shifted. I held my mouth. "God, there's nothing left."
"It's down to the rims."
"Did you see an ambulance leave?"
"No. I don't think so. It looks like a mob-hit doesn't it?"
"A cremation. And we've all inhaled the poor victim's ashes. Think about it."
"No, no. Look, we've had the vent closed."
The End
Ro London is Associate Editor of the Queens Historical Society Newsletter. Her fiction has appeared in Nobodaddies, Helmsman Magazine, Rough Draft, FUEL Magazine, Lynx Eye and Happy. She was a participant in the Festival of Poetic and Fictional Pirates during the autumn of 1994 in Pittsburgh, P.A. Ro lives in New York City, prefers listening to speaking, sitting to standing, and wears Viva Glam lipstick no matter what she's doing.