Round 14.

14.

She is driving a white Audi compact, which is just as well as she is in a traffic jam crawling up the exit ramp from the motorway.

She decides this is a good moment to add some mascara before she reaches work and leans forward and uses the rear view mirror.

In front of her, driving an ageing Renault, Terry is listening to Bruce Springsteen’s River album. It’s an old album, but Terry realises that he doesn’t know half of the songs it contains.

In a moment he will sing along.

He looks up to his rear view mirror and sees the woman in the white Audi trying to apply mascara, not crash and not block progress on the exit ramp. It is not easy for her to do these three things at once and Terry wonders at the way her mouth seems to be working independently from the rest of her body.

He looks ahead.

There is a woman in a green Ford; he can see her face in her rear view mirror.

She is smoking.

She shouldn’t be, her face no longer looks able to cope with the poison.

As if sensing this she takes a final, obsessive drag and drops the remains of the fag onto the hard shoulder, changes gear and edges forward.

She is not only worrying about her health; she is late for the meeting that will decide much of her future.

There is a new director at the office and he has decided it is time to make changes.

She wonders why it is always the men that have this role.

The director’s name is Jason and every time she hears it she thinks of the Argonauts.

Jason and the Argonauts; it was the name of a film she saw when she was nine years old.

She thinks about it now as she edges up the exit ramp.

What was it all about?

Something about going to the end of the world?

At this moment Jason is sitting in a blue Mercedes.

He too is edging his way up the exit ramp.

He too is late for the meeting that is meant to implement the decisions he has already made.

He is imagining that his car is fitted with some sort of destructive ray with which he can zap the cars in front of him to another dimension.

Jason is fairly childish for his age and job title, though that could be changed to Trouble Shooter.

For much of his waking time he thinks he is a character in his own fantasy; for much of his sleeping time he dreams that fantasy.

He is un-married.

Right now he is imagining the destructive zapping of the car immediately in front of him.

The driver is married.

She is applying mascara.

She is blocking his exit ramp.

She is driving a white Audi compact.

   (ALL ABOUT ROUNDS)

happy easter - the ed.