"What do you think?"
"Of the kid?"
"He ain't much younger than you."
80 miles per hour on the southern highway.
The sun's at an equivocal angle of either rising or falling, but it bothers them not.
"So what do you think of him?"
"I asked first."
"You get to answer first."
The light pierces through the corner of the window of the convertible, barely registers at the seam of the woman's sunglasses. She took it off and on the dashboard, it moves a few inches left on every bump.
"He's alright. Paranoid enough to live an uncomfortable but longer life."
The girl on the steering wheel snarls.
"I'm not asking about the expiry date."
"Well, what are you asking about?" The woman in the passenger seat takes a quick glance at the rearview mirror.
"I want to know what you think of him as a living, breathing person." The woman signs deeply and slips her arm out the rolled-down window, catching wind between her fingers.
"He's a mess." The girl tabs the steering wheel but doesn't say anything. "And he's in bed with the Russians." A short silence sits by the broken air conditioner, with hands hanging on the rearview mirror.
"You see him as one of them?"
".....No." The pause from the older woman draws a quick glance at the rareness of it happening. "I don't think he is."
"Me either." The driver confirms in a plain tone. The rail by the cliff disappears at the next turn and the woman stretches her arm over the rolled-down window, couple miles under her curl up fist is the ocean at the brink of day or night, dimming the reefs inches under sea level the same color as the heart of a flame. But she wouldn't notice, in her view there are only occasional seagulls.
"What about you?" The woman asks out of boredom after checking every pocket, and pocket of the coat in the back seat to find no packs of smoke left.
"I'm thinking about the Colombian bunch by the park before a drink but you know, a drink first would be a nice change of pace....."
"Viviane." The woman pronounces the other's name calmly as if resounding a poem. The girl signs.
"Why would I ask you if I have any notion?"
"Because you figured I'd say it for you." The girl gave a defiant look that turned hollow by the rattles under the wheel, the road's been deserted for over a year now.
"I don't....I think he might be a bit...out there." The girl stops for a second, dash a glance at the woman with a grin under the unreadable mask. "As in...bonafide fuck in the head. Couple of days ago I saw him handcuffed himself as a joke just so the cops wouldn't search him." The woman raises a side of her brow before it meets the other in the middle.
"Couple days ago?"
"You were drunk.....seriously you need training on the aspect." The woman shrugs.
The girl signs.
Stolen novel; please report.
"That aside, I don't see him as another crazy. Just way too conscious of himself." The woman was about to say more but swallowed them back.
"I didn't use the c word."
"Because you're still waiting for me to say it for you." The girl grunts as they speed into a short tunnel with the sunset on the other reach becoming more apparent. After the third flash of tunnel light, the woman notably continues the conversation for it's usually the other way around.
"You shouldn't think that way." The girl's right cheek pushes a line under her eye and stares between the road and the passenger seat woman. "He's more real than anything in a long time.... despite occasional behavior." The woman smiles to herself, for the first time in a long time. "Besides, you ain't much better." The girl rolls her eyes at 65 miles per hour, hands on stirring wheel.
"That was blunt slander." The girl steadies her grip as the tunnel ends in a slow turn along the riff. "And very unlike you." The woman moves both her gaze to the driver, the tunnel gone behind them as the last bit of sunlight passes its glint to the sea and makes the girl squint but the woman's eyes only reflect its shimmer, one more than the other.
"How's that?" Her left eye encapsulated the glint and her faintly red lips narrowed.
"You never care much about these things. You just nod and act like whoever it is doesn't exist." The girl pronounces with a slow but aggressive cadence. As if singing an old rhyme she'd forgotten.
"It's better judgment." The woman responds in dry. Brown and browner eyes speak aloud.
"That doesn't even make sense." The girl pauses for a second but continues this time. "How's doing fuck-all around other people called better judgment?" She exclaims puzzled, as the girl waits for an actual answer to a remark. The woman only hums a silent exhale and leans back on the seat, closing her eyes.
"Whatever you say." The woman's breath becomes sluggish and indolent.
These pacifying words infuriate the girl more than any malevolent act upon her at any given time. Her lips purses down and the corner of her eyes lengthen, biting teeth sends a hint of pain up her skull and gathers around the dotted eyes staring in the setting sun and the distant city lines afar the perilous highway like an abstruse and foreign word. She wasn't going to say anything for the rest of the drive, but by the third slope, she had gotten sick of the silence already.
Turning the radio on did it until the next tunnel ruined it, the girl results to plunging and unplugging the cigarette igniter by the air conditioner, and by a slip or a flick, the burner rolls off the slot falling on her leather boot, the bounce trigger her reflexes to retract her legs up bumping the dashboard.
"Oh for fuck sake ...." As the girl curses and kicks the igniter to the far end behind the peddle, she peeks a sly twitch of lip on the presumably sleeping woman. The girl thought about giving the woman a wack or just keeping the silence but ended up doing neither, for the woman speaks first.
"I care a lot, Viv." Upper arm covering her closed eyes as if blocking the sun, she said. "I do."
The girl glances over her and back on the road, and back to her again.
"So......what do you think of the kid? For real this time." She asks, not knowing a smirk blooming on her cheek as well. Upon the inquiry, the falsely napping woman stretches her neck while still leaning on headrest like a cat upon waking.
"I think, he had seen enough in his life." Voice husky, shorter eyes lashes slowly rising. "To the point that he couldn't recognize how messed up he is." A blink turned her gaze from aloofly afar to the girl's darker shades of brown.
"...Are we talking about his line of work or personality?" The woman cackles.
"I'm talking about he himself. He sees what he does as normal, and to an extent, what we do as normal too." The girl's grip on the stirring wheel results in leather cracking sounds.
"Haven't you noticed?" To which she receives no response. The girl sits with slightly puzzled frown. "Our work, his walk. Nothing bothers him...." The woman lets out another chuckle and adjusts her seat to accommodate. Her gaze was still for a moment before blinking to the left, not necessarily to the girl but very likely.
"Let me ask you. Why didn't you pull the trigger that night?" The woman asks, not expecting an answer while the flashes of memories fly through the girl's mind. Some more lucid than others, the further it goes, the blanks expand. But there is a part that remains clear after months and presumably, after years.
"Consequences." The girl recites quietly in a nod.
"What's that?"
"Nothing." She says with haste and a turn of her head before she remembers she's the one driving. "...You said it yourself, he had no intention to kill you and I thought you got it." The woman frowns in an intrigued demeanor.
"Aye, he didn't. I did." She sings in the passenger seat. "But why didn't he pull the trigger?" The woman's question, again, hangs in the humid coastline air.
With eyes back on the tendril of the city suburbs, where the lifeless blocks of identical apartment buildings in plain white or brick-red are inhabited by equally lifeless walks of normal. Good father, dead beats. Junkie mother, extra shifts. Six miles to school, two floors underground.
"I think we should just head home after collecting. I'm not in the mood for a drink." Eight fingers tabbing the stirring wheel eyes far from where she's at, the girl says.
"Shame," The woman exhales, and the last breath turns into a faint smile as she spots the last of sunset between the harbor and the towers. Her browner eye dipped a shade of glee and serenity. "I think I could use one."