Traffic was abnormally heavy, and no amount of cursing would change that. Nor would wishful thinking magically produce an exit around the next bend, where all the Toyotas and BMWs and Opels full of mustachioed insurance salesmen would clear the road.
Arjuna Jones was a decidedly unhappy bunny at this confluence of space, time and commuters. It sucked enough that he was stuck on this particularly unattractive stretch of A15 on a grey Wednesday morning. He had a client meeting an hour from now, and there was no way the asshole coked up workaholic of a manager running this project was going to forgive him for showing up late. Screw him. For the kind of hassle the company put its consultants through, signing bonus or no, they could deal with a bit of tardiness.
No, on second thought they could not. Or rather, they would not. Thanks to an economy that wasn’t even in the toilet, but hadn’t even made it to the toilet and was now scattered drunkenly in all its shattered, be-skidmarked glory about the bathroom floor, freshman consultants who dared display the slightest hint of deviation from the Truth were riding the ragged edge of disaster. The Truth, that is, as handed down by even the biggest asshole coked up workaholic to his bleary-eyed minions.
Arjuna pondered his chances of successfully competing for another job with the bright-eyed hordes of candidates virtually knocking down the doors of potential employers. If he got canned, would he have to pay back the signing bonus? Wouldn’t seem fair, especially if it was them giving him the boot. Plus, it hadn’t even been all that great; barely enough to buy this run-down 3-series after paying off his loans. It wasn’t fair. His buddies who’d taken jobs with his current outfit after undergrad had shown him company garages filled with Porsches and AMGs. Arjuna’s passenger-side window didn’t open. It wasn’t fair.
He couldn’t have opened his passenger window even had he dared to reach over and try. The woman in the battered green Hyundai ahead of Arjuna was practicing what could best be described as early-morning rush hour drunken master driving technique, or applying advanced uncertainty theory to her choice of braking patterns, so failure to pay attention would inevitably end up in an even greater delay getting to work, with the inevitable police report and whiplash resulting from rear-ending her. More importantly, though, the dude occupying the passenger seat was doing a thoroughly effective job blocking the as-yet hypothetical access to Arjuna’s right-hand window crank.
“‘Sup, capullo?”
Hold on a sec. There’s a gangbanger in my car. The doors are locked. Why is there a gangbanger in my car. Why is there a blue gangbanger in my car. The thoughts coursing through Arjuna’s mind were a befuddled mixture of incomprehension and…mainly incomprehension. Panic, too, insofar as that sentiment has a chance to bubble to the surface of consciousness through the confusion sewn by a goateed blue man in a Cypress Hill hoody, toking on a very strong spliff, sitting unexpectedly in one’s passenger seat. Cholo crips don’t normally come in blue, unless they’re very very stoned, which in this case didn’t look like such a far-off conclusion.
After a bit of screaming, ineffective flailing about offhandedly deflected by the unwanted carpooler, and wide-eyed blubbering, Arjuna leaned against the driver door, wrinkled his nose at the pungent joint and managed a feeble “who the fuck are you? What are you doing in AHH!” The latter was an exclamation of surprise at the harpie in the Hyundai, who’d chosen this exact moment to slam on her brakes in a fit of inability to concentrate on driving, cell phone and makeup at the same time.
The blue stranger took a drag on his roach, nonchalantly rolled down the window and tossed it out. Never mind that the window was supposed to be broken, blue man was letting a blue cloud of pot escape from a moving vehicle, littering, and nearly causing rush-hour pileups on a notoriously over-copped stretch of road. Not that distracting drivers by materializing unexpectedly and uninvitedly in their vehicles would be an easy offense to classify in the Vehicle Code, but it would certainly complicate things if Smokey were to pull up, “Sir, what is this?” joint stub in hand, only to be confronted with what looked like a stoned, grinning blue Mexican and a harried-looking business type trying to make himself as small as possible against the driver-side door.
To be continued…
