the jutting carapace of the steering column shroud

Crash by J.G. Ballard

8 min in Parkdale, TO

The Englishman was being a twat.  Madhu loved the word ‘twat’, it was a perfect marriage of sound and meaning.  Madhu could tell the Englishman was lying to his wife.  In his five years driving cab he had learned a lot about how people communicated in his second language.  He could tell that the Englishman wasn’t listening to what the wife was saying, and like a bad actor was only focused on the next line he was going to say.  He was telling her things he’d decided she wanted to know – “Oh it was even hotter than the weather reports had said… hmm… Ate on the plane, it’ll be enough until the client dinner.”  But the loft address the Englishman had given Madhu was not a neighbourhood where custom-tailored businessmen took clients for dinner.  Madhu didn’t care about the Englishman’s lies because he knew it would prompt a bigger tip.