Cairo slammed on his breaks, the tires of his car screeching in protest. Spinning the wheel to the right, Cai rolled his window down and pulled up next to the car he almost hit. A woman jabbering on her cell phone looked over at him and even began to smile.
"Get off your fucking cell phone cunt!" Cairo yelled, the woman's slight smile morphing into a snarl that did nothing to help the condition of her face. Cai shook his head in disgust and took a right onto Carry Street hoping to avoid some of the traffic.
Rush hour on the busiest road in Richmond and the city finally decided to fix its pothole problem, so the road work worsened the congestion. It was a frustrating end to an especially frustrating day.
"I'm the kinda guy that you ain't ever seen before, if you wanna hit the floor are you ready for more? I'm the kinda of guy that it ain't easy to forget, girl I'm gonna make you sweat. Are you ready? Are you ready for more?" his phone rang loudly in the passenger seat. Cai reached over and groaned as he read Anna's name.
Answering the phone—with more than a little reluctance—Cai flicked on his turn signal and moved smoothly into the right lane. "What the fuck do you want Anna? Correct me if I'm wrong but when you break up with someone, don't you stop talking to them? Or is that not good enough for you? You just have to bug me day in and day out with your inane shit?"
"Fuck you, Cai." Anna's sweet digitized voice struck a note right between Hunger and Thirst, and that devil of a note was called Lust. If Anna was good for anything, it was igniting flames. Not in the way one might light a match but in the way one blows a nuclear plant to high hell in a video game. "I just need to pick up some stuff I left over at your place."
"Jesus does it honestly need to take you three months to move out?"
The only response Anna gave Cai was the dial tone. She hung up on him. Not only was she good at getting him horny she was even better at pissing him off.
"My day just can't get any wors—" Cai's world cut to black as the sounds of fiberglass car body crashing into fiberglass body sang him to sleep.
"Thank you officer, you have a good day." Cairo said trying to keep the overwhelming dismay from seeping into his voice.
Ever since the drunken night he spent at his boss's place, she had been riding him harder than ever—and not in the good way. He had three midterms coming up, none of which he was prepared for. His break up with Anna threw his life in a circle, mostly because she was in and out of his life every five minutes like a fucking television commercial. And now, now his car was totaled.
Cai all but threw himself down on the curb; resting his forehead in the palm of his hand he took a handful of deep calming breaths. He needed a shrink, or he thought he needed one, someone to talk to without risking the ruination of another personal tie in his life.
"God, listen to me, I'm fucking pathetic." Cai laughed at himself, took another deep breath and called his roommate, Jo.
The phone rang for too long. She wasn't going to answer her phone. "Hi this is Jo, leave your—"
"Damn it," he swore, thinking about who he might call.
"Fuck me."
He flicked through the phonebook, leaving the selector on Anna's name. He sighed, closed his eyes and mashed the call button.
Fuck me,
he thought again as the phone began to ring.
"What is it Cai?"
"I need a ride," said Cai, biting back the sense of dread rolling in on him, a sense that oddly seemed to overpower his physical injuries.
"Why can't you just drive home?"
"Car accident. Look I don't want to explain, can you pick me up?"
A long pause before she spoke again. "Where are you?"
The change in her tone struck another note somewhere deep in Cai's emotional maelstrom, but he didn't want to think about that so he pushed those thoughts away.
"East Carry and 5
th
, thanks." He hung up before she could reply.
