The sun was burning off the dashboard, just as it was yawning its way over yet another morning. His feet were cold and bent up against the foot pedals, poking out from his work suit trousers, bound by stiff leather and shoelace. Fidgeting or maybe shaking, he wasn’t too sure. He’d be dozing under his blazer since he pulled up at about 4 in the morning, and when he wasn’t dozing he stared into the doorway of a block of flats. Just this one block of flats. Just one doorway for all those flats. There’s, say, sixteen flats in there, so that’s a minimum of sixteen people who could walk through that one doorway, but he’s only waiting for one of them.
It’s turning out to be an icy sort of morning where the grass seems to shimmer, but there’s still definite promise of a warm day to follow. It’s a good day to wake up on when it’s like this, it’s like the day is getting up with you, and you can feel like you didn’t sleep alone.
The door opens, and the only one he’s been waiting for steps out, burying her eyes from the sun, and looking slightly up like she’s breathing in the day. And then someone he’s not waiting for follows.
The frost is staring to melt.
They kiss, they smile, they hug, they smile again and he turns to leave and then he does.
He wasn’t waiting for this, though maybe he should have been.
She reaches her hand out for the door again, takes another breath of the day and stops. She’s looking at the car, and she’s staring at it ‘cause she knew one just like that, and this one’s got the same fucking dent in the drivers door and the trim’s coming off the body in the same fucking place and she’s walking towards the car and now she’s running and her mouth is open and she’s screaming and her fists are hitting the window and the door and the bonnet and her boyfriend has run back and he’s holding her he’s holding her her boyfriend’s holding her ‘cause that’s what they do.
And the engine is starting, the car is pulling away, and he’s driving.
He reaches the split in the road and turns off left towards the museum.
More fucking dents.
Copyright Dexter Selboy 2011 (c)
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