Black Ribbons pt 2

The next twenty minuets found me standing outside the motel. Making a few calls on the phone down my list: Dad, Girlfriend, friends back home, and finally any thing I was missing for work.

I was in the middle of texting my girlfriend, about what she did last night when the driver pulled up. 

"Ruh-ne?" he yelled out his passenger window phonetically stretching my name out to it's recognizable limits. 

When I grabbed my case, he popped the trunk and pointed his thumb, before tapping the Bluetooth connected to his ear.

He was mid-way through a sentence when he turned around quickly and asked, "The Metro?" 

"Yeah," 

And he was back on the phone, as we took off.

"I'm just tired of it man. She thinks..." he paused for a minute, listening to the other person as we wove through the city, "Yeah, yeah. The sh** she thinks she can just take from me. Take. Take. Take. All she's ever f*in done."

We hit a red light. And I tried looking out the window, block after block of tinted windows, banks, law firms, basically 'Nothing to look at,' I sighed. 

I didn't want to listen, but there wasn't much else going on.

"Ok, Ok, but listen to this remember last Christmas? We did a whole cross promotion thing, and I'm set up for the interview and she's gone man. I mean vanished from the building...

"Yeah... and it's not a big deal, I'm thinking, they need this done... exactly, let's get this over with.

He turns the corner slowly and we hit another batch of traffic. I'm waiting for a text from Rachel 

- you won't believe this car ride I'm on babe.

"So I do the interview they give me gift bags to give to the team. And they give me this extra camera like one big bonus for doing the interview. Yeah, so later I give everybody their bags and don't think anything of it until like 8 months later...

The car comes to a sudden halt. And the guy turns around still talking to his friend and points up ahead at the line of cars and mouths "2 more blocks"  as his friend is talking "almost."

"Then guess what? She's on about the camera after a meeting... She says, she deserved the camera. And I'm just thinking, what the hell are you talking about? You are serious about a stupid digital camera... Yeah don't you have a phone that can do all this? Just real dumb stuff like that all the time.

"And, and, and," he stumbles, "the real thing is, I don't care about the camera. It's not like I stole it from her. Just, yeah it never even registered that this would be a thing. You know... This?"

We creep up for two more agonizing blocks. As he goes on and on about this fight he is having with a co-worker. Though I eventually learn somewhere just past the start of the 2nd block, that they were more than co-workers.

It's a mercy when he finally sets the car in park.

I pay him. And he doesn't look at me. 

I start walking away from the car towards the venue when I remember the bass is in the truck. And for a second I start to run back, but I see him there. Still yelling about his fight to his friend. 

I tap on his window, "I forgot," I didn't even finish the line while I'm pointing to the trunk. 

And the driver gets startled. I don't know if he didn't recognize me or maybe it was too unexpected. 

Little things. 

Unaware.

So many problems come from little things.

to be cont.

-rene


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mood: 

Dave Brubeck Quartet - St Louis Blues- Belgium 1964