The woman unclicked her seatbelt.
‘I’m so sorry again,’ she said. I nodded back.
She smiled, nodded in reply, then she opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. She closed her mouth, smiled again, then she turned away and opened the door to the cold morning air, the interior light flicking on as she went. She pushed her hair back behind her ear and stepped out onto the concrete, her face disappearing from my view. She leaned down to look back in.
‘Thank you again,’ she said.
Blue eyes, the colour of the ocean in the early-morning sunlight.
I raised my fingers from the wheel, nodded.
The woman closed the door and walked away, bent to the side to wave back one more time, then she continued, stepping up along the concrete path towards her door. I watched her as she went, waited a moment to see, just to make sure she was okay. The woman stepped up the stairs to the door, tapping at her dress, her legs, maybe looking for her keys, and then she stopped. She turned her head to the side quick. She was staring back down the road now, angling to see, then she looked to me. Panic opened across her features. She pointed down the street and she was yelling, saying something I couldn’t make out, and she was coming towards the car, then there was a sound, rising, roaring, and a car rammed into the back of mine, jolted me forward. The side of my head flung into the hardened plastic of the steering wheel and my teeth clapped shut. The impact resonated through my jaw and my face felt hot, burning, and the seatbelt choked me back, whipping me into the headrest, my skull bouncing off it, then my head slumped forward again, hanging over. Something was damaged, like a line had been torn right along my face, and my lips felt split, numb, and the engine sputtered and stalled as I took my foot off the clutch and I opened my mouth wide and grabbed at the pain rising at the back of my neck, connecting into my head. Muscle fibres tightened like guitar strings. I pushed my hands onto the sides of my head and tried to hold it together, as if everything might fall apart at any moment, as if everything was collapsing, and then it stopped.
My chest felt empty, shivering inside. I could see the stream of my breath.
The warm taste of blood was filling my mouth.
The engine of the car behind me was still running. I could feel it rumbling through the metal and I looked up and I could see the driver in my rear-view mirror. The back window of my car was broken, cracks patterned across it like brickwork, but it hadn’t fallen through, and I could see.
The other car beyond the shattered glass, the bent metal of it right up close. A dark outline sitting behind the wheel, holding on to it. Knuckles in the sunlight.
Waiting. Still.
I pushed onto the sides of my head and I watched the driver in the mirror.
The image rattled with every pulse throbbing through.
The woman was screaming outside, roaring as she ran towards the other car.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she yelled.
I was touching at my lips, my face, looking at my fingers for blood, and my hands were shivering. I trembled them across my skin.
In the rear-view mirror, I could see the dark outline of the driver, jerking at his seatbelt in exaggerated motions, and I kept touching my face and looking at my shaking fingers. I ran my tongue along my teeth, felt for jagged breaks and pieces.
In the mirror I could see the woman holding her hair back with one hand as she bent over to look into the other car. She yanked at the passenger-door handle but it didn’t open, then she smacked the side of her fist against the window.
‘What are you doing?’ she screamed.
Okay, I thought.
My hands still flickering, the warmth still filling my mouth. The blood hadn’t appeared yet.
Okay.
The woman raised her foot, stomped onto the passenger window of the other car then the driver burst out, as if his door had been stuck. He stood up quickly, his face disappearing from my view. He was wearing an old black T-shirt, the logo on it cracked and peeling.
‘What the fuck?’ the woman yelled at him, and she leaned over the car to spit her words in his direction. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Who’s in the car?’ the driver said, and he pointed in my direction. ‘Who the fuck is that?’ He stepped alongside the car, towards my door, the woman mirroring his path on the other side.
‘What are you doing?’ she yelled.
‘Is this another one?’ the driver asked. ‘Is this another one?’ He was right up at my door now, his body, his clothes behind the glass, and I skipped a breath. The woman was yelling and I missed the seatbelt button a couple of times, fumbling, then I cracked my door open and the driver dropped back, like an animal hearing a gunshot. I pushed my door out and he put a hand up in front of my face as if ready to hold me back and the woman was screaming ‘No’ and ‘Don’t’ on the other side. The driver waited, breathing heavy, then he rushed back to his car, his shoes scratching across the bitumen. He swung round his open door and got back into his cabin, twisted over to reach the back seats.
I stood up, leaning to get my balance.
‘Go,’ the woman screamed from the other side of the car. ‘Fucking go.’
‘What’s going on?’
I took a step towards the back of my car to see the damage, just to check, and the driver was a black outline in his car again, his shape jolting in quick movements.
‘You need to get in your car,’ the woman screamed.
‘He just rammed me. Why did he do that?’
Then the driver found what he’d been looking for. He stood out from his car.
‘Oh shit,’ the woman mumbled. ‘Get in the car,’ she screamed. ‘Now.’ Her voice wavering, squeaking. She opened the door and dropped back into the passenger seat, and the driver slammed his door shut, his head tilted forward. He had a hammer in his fist.
‘Get in, get in,’ she yelled, and I got back into the car and closed the door and started it up and the driver was right up at my window again, peering in. He put the head of the hammer onto the glass, crunched it round.
‘Go, go, go,’ the woman screamed, and I pushed the accelerator, the driver’s hand squeaking along the metal as we pulled out.
In the rear-view I saw the hammer bounce off the road a few metres in front of him, the front of his car all bent and broken, headlights pointed in the wrong directions.
His black figure stood in the middle of the road, watching, getting smaller as we went.
The woman was breathing heavy, looking back over the shoulder of her seat.
‘He’s fucking lost it,’ she panted. ‘He’s fucking lost it.’
‘What’s going on? Who was that?’ I asked.
She stomped her foot onto the floor, hit the back of her head on the headrest.
‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.’
‘What do you mean? Who was that?’
She put her hands up in front of her as if surrendering, closed her eyes.
‘He hit my car,’ I told her. ‘It doesn’t feel right,’ and I wobbled the steering wheel to show her.
‘Okay,’ she said. Me checking the rear-view over and over.
‘We’ll work something out,’ she told me.
‘Work something out, what do you mean? This is nothing to do with me.’
The woman covered her face into her hands.
‘Why did he run into my car?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the woman snapped back. ‘I don’t know.’ Her worn eyes, lashes clumped together with tears. She covered her face with her hands again.
Her whole body shook with every breath.
We rushed through the morning traffic, accelerating through the gaps and switching lanes.
‘He’ll follow us,’ the woman said.
‘What? Why? Who is he?’
‘Just drive.’
Me looking up to the rear-view, through the cracks in the glass of the back window. Waiting to see the other car, its bent exterior in t
he distance.
Parts of metal on my car bent up, shaking outside.
‘Pull into that car park up there.’ The woman pointed to a shopping centre entrance up on the left, a large, yellow archway framing a tunnel that sloped down beneath ground level.
‘Why is he coming after you?’
‘Just pull in, pull in,’ she yelled and we took the corner too hard, swerving down the ramp.
‘Did you see him?’ she asked, and she turned to look over the shoulder of her seat. ‘Is he following us?’
‘I don’t …’
I wound down the window and pushed the button on the machine, took a parking ticket, moved through beneath the boom gate.
We hit a speed bump too fast and the woman’s face slapped into the headrest.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said.
I watched the rear-view till the daylight of the entrance faded from view, and we drove down the twisting ramps, level by level, curving too quickly, skimming along the edges of the concrete pylons.
The underground levels were nearly empty, rows of yellow boxes painted across the concrete, and we drove along, looking for where best to stop. I chose a spot next to a group of other cars, so we didn’t stand out.
‘Reverse in,’ the woman said. ‘So you can’t see the damage.’
I eased the car in, pulled it to a stop, then I flicked the engine off and everything fell silent. I could hear my heartbeat, could feel the blood surging through my hands, pulsing against the steering wheel. The woman sat still, silent at my side, then she slapped her hand onto the edge of the seat. She scraped her fingers up into a fist.
‘I am so sorry about this,’ she said. ‘I don’t know …’ She shook her head.
I looked at my hands gripped over the wheel, my knuckles white, the knobs of them pushing against the skin. Quivering.
‘He’s totally lost it,’ the woman said. ‘I mean, he’s never done anything like that. He’s totally lost it this time.’ She pushed her fingers onto her temples, slid them up into her hair. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Who was he?’ I asked, and she was crying again, hands on the sides of her face, hiding her eyes. She struggled to take in breaths.
Outside the car, I checked the damage. The metal was shoved in, reshaped like melted plastic. The bumper bar had been cracked open on one side, you could see its metal innards underneath. The clear bulb of the brakelight was naked, exposed between shards of plastic.
The back window looked like a giant insect wing, tiny tiles of the shattered glass held in place, and through it I could see the woman talking to herself inside, her head bouncing and jolting.
I looked around the car park. A thick layer of soot was caked along the walls, scribbles of graffiti scratched into it, scraped through the muck. Tiny trails of yellow liquid had been spilled across the bitumen surface. Tyre squeals and engine revs echoed from levels above and below.
It was poorly lit, darkening in the corners, and over on the far side, away from us, there was an area of brightness, a supermarket right on the edge of the concrete. Its light beamed out across the painted lines.
The car door opened and the woman got out, squeezed herself between the gap of the door and the car parked next to mine. She had one of her hands covered in the sleeve of her jacket so she could touch at her eyes.
‘I am so, so sorry about all this,’ she told me, and she kept her eyes down, avoided connecting with mine. ‘I’ll give you his insurance details.’
‘Who was that?’
‘It’s okay. I’ll give you the details and …’
‘Was that your boyfriend?’
‘No.’
‘Who was he?’
The woman looked to the roof, sucked in her bottom lip. She levelled her face, eyes shifted onto me.
‘I’m sorry. We’ve crossed paths at a very strange time. Do you have a pen?’
‘What are you going to do now?’
She held a long blink. ‘I’m going to go in there and get myself some new clothes. These ones are no good.’ She pulled her dress round to show me the dirt stain across the back. ‘Then I’ll work something out,’ she said. ‘Do you have a pen?’
‘No.’
The woman let out a breath. She walked round to the driver’s door, squeezing between the cars again, and opened the door and leaned inside. She searched the car, me watching through the cracked glass, and she found a pen in the middle console. She clicked it, then reached over and grabbed an unopened letter from the floor on the passenger side. She flipped the envelope over, scratched the pen across to get it working, then she wrote on the paper. The woman sat the letter on the passenger seat, then she rose back out, shut the door. She stepped towards me.
‘Thank you again,’ she said, and she handed me the pen and she held it for a moment, her eyes locked onto mine. Then she walked away, her footsteps echoing across the bitumen, trailing towards the entrance to the shopping centre.
I watched her leave, the hollow sound of her shoes clunking, her blue dress shifting over her legs. I watched the glass doors slide open before her as she approached, welcome her into the warmth, then they closed over. There was a security guard in a black-and-white uniform just inside, standing beside the escalators, a twirling wire connected into his ear, and for a moment I thought she touched him, tapped his shoulder as she went past. But he didn’t respond. The security guard turned, walked away, kept moving on his path.
I watched her step onto the escalator, her face illuminated as she drifted up towards the light, till she disappeared from view.
I watched.
Then I followed after her.
The woman noticed me behind her, my distorted reflection stretching across the darkened shopfronts of the unopened stores, and she stopped. She turned around.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be weird.’
‘No, I didn’t think you were being weird. Why are you following me?’
‘I want to help.’
‘Help what?’
‘Who was that guy?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘That’s okay.’
She tilted her head, a slight smile.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That guy is very upset with me, but he has good reason to be.’
‘Is he going to hurt you?’
‘Hurt me?’
‘Yes.’
She paused a moment. ‘No.’
‘But you don’t know that.’
She looked away, shifted her eyes back to me.
‘You can’t go home,’ I told her.
‘I know.’
‘So where will you go?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Will you call the police?’
The woman laughed, one ‘huh’.
A worker in a store beside us dragged the security door up the shopfront, roaring towards the roof, and we both jumped and my hand rose up out of instinct, blocking the path between the sound and the woman. She looked to my hand, then to me. Her fingers trembled as she pushed her hair behind her ear.
‘Do you need help?’ I said.
‘No, it’s …’ And the woman stopped. She was looking past me, over my shoulder, and her expression dropped and I turned around to see what she was looking at but couldn’t make it out among the empty white-tiled walkways and wandering store workers. And when I turned back she was already moving, rushing away at double speed. I caught up alongside, matched her pace.
‘He’s here, he’s here.’ She was talking fast. ‘I have to get out of here,’ she said.
‘I’ll take you.’
The woman dropped back into the passenger seat and I started the car and out in front, parked in the spot directly in front of us, we saw the other driver’s car. Broken headlights and bent metal. The woman strangled her seatbelt.
‘He’s been following me,’ she said. ‘He’s been outside my house, watching from the footpath at night.’ Her voice wavered as she spoke. She narrowed her eyes
as she looked at my face, forced a smile. Strands of her long hair had stuck into the trails of her tears.
We accelerated back up the curving ramps and rattled over the speed bumps.
‘Have you got the ticket?’
‘Yeah, yeah, just …’
I pushed the ticket into the machine and it came back out, the gate still blocking our path.
‘What are you doing?’ she screamed. I flipped the ticket over, pushed it in again.
The boom gate lifted and we revved out into the morning traffic, moving in tide. I switched lanes to drive faster, rushed along the bitumen.
‘What do we do?’ I asked, and the woman was staring over the shoulder of her seat as our distance from the shopping centre grew.
‘I can’t do this,’ she whimpered. She looked down at her rattling hands, palms up then palms down.
Her frightened eyes caught onto mine.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
‘I’m gonna be sick,’ the woman told me and I pulled into a side street, still moving too fast, flickering along the parked cars by the roadside.
I turned into a car park next to an abandoned playground, bounced up the kerb and pulled up on the bitumen across two spots.
The playground was all straight lines and colours, drips gathered along the metal bars in the early light.
The woman was breathing heavy, puffing fog across the windows, and she shoved the door open, held her hair to her chest as she lurched over. The sound of her vomit splashing across the concrete. She coiled up and released more onto the ground, then she was coughing, bent over. The smell sharp on the air, spreading.
She took in deep breaths, spat out what was left. ‘
I’m so sorry,’ she said.
The woman straightened herself back into the seat, eyes closed, a hand up at her mouth. I watched her as she sat still, waited a moment, calmed herself down. She was crying but trying to hold it together and she looked to me. Eyes wobbling, filled to the brim. Then she got out, slammed the door shut behind, the car rocking in her wake.
I rushed out after her, the woman quick-stepping away along the bitumen, across the white lines of the car park.
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