Number of miles to Modesto: 5.
Number of times Dominique has laughed: 11. Which, like the number 9, is not
a good number for me. It was the brand of lotion Charmaine used to rub on
her feet. The lotion was pink and smelt of mint and there wasn’t a name on
the bottle, only these 2 thick vertical lines which looked so black against the
pink that they were like the bars of a cage within which there was not a
creature, or person, but instead some substance of pure evil.
We pull into Modesto. “Be back in 15,” I say. Then Dominique’s out of her
seat. She is moving down the aisle, closing the distance between us. Now, I
think, and form the words. But she has come from two-thirds back, so
although she makes it past several rows, the aisle is soon blocked. An old
woman with coke-bottle glasses pats her coat and looks round in a puzzled
fashion. As if her youth had only been mislaid, forgotten in some pocket.
While she searches she smiles and apologises for being in people’s way, but
despite this, does not hurry her hands.
The old woman touches her face, then sighs with pleasure. “There they are,”
she says then steps out of the aisle.
And Dominique is like a popped cork: past and swiftly down the steps before
I’ve said her name.
There is an interval I do not count. When I stand and watch them file past
while I stand there, stunned. And this is the worst part of a slap: the fucking
surprise of it.
I could just stay in my seat. Say it was never going to happen on meeting
number 9. But despite what Charmaine said, I am not a slave to numbers. If I
counted the words in her sentences, the fries on her plate, it was only because
I liked the patterns they made.
I get off then lock the cab. I walk across the forecourt. As soon as the doors
slide open, I smell the grease, the fat.