The light turned yellow. Making it through before the red was wishful thinking. I am not a wishful guy.
I sat at the light and waited. For the cops, the apocalypse, for anything but her. I would not have been surprised if she found me here. Now that I did not want her, she might come to me at any time. I held the wheel in one hand, a bottle in the other. I would go straight ahead when the light changed. The wheel did not need my attention.
I drank. It was bourbon, it was necessary. Not something I usually drank from the bottle, but I did not usually have this much to fear.
The light changed and I wedged the bottle between my thighs, gripped the wheel with both hands, and screamed into the intersection. It was me that screamed, not the car, and even if my windows had been down, the music was up loud, I don’t think anyone would have noticed. This was Oakland, people screamed all the time without being noticed.
I’m short and white and don’t look intimidating, but everyone knows you don’t fuck with a crazy person. Unless you’re another crazy person. That was where Ella came in. It was also why she’d had to go. I don’t know whose call that was.
I wanted to be downtown, I wanted to just wander. I wanted so many sights that I’d never see what I’d left behind. A normal life, but only my version of it.
Downtown Oakland was better than that. It was warm outside, mid-seventies. The homeless or close-to-it were on every corner, at every bus stop, pushing their shopping carts or wearing their blankets. I drove a twenty year old Buick. To them, I was rich. I looked for eyes as I drove past, but no one looked at me. I was driving past, I could not give them anything.
I turned off the radio, drove forward in ugly silence. The next light was green. I drove through it scared. I drove slowly, Ella in my head like a pillow pushed down against my face. I drove even slower. There was a bus stop at the corner up ahead on my right. An old woman sat there. She wore a baseball cap over her bald head and a torn puffy blue coat that she’d zipped all the way. It hung to her thighs. Her ancient uncovered legs were heavily bruised. One of her bare black feet kicked at a tennis shoe a couple of feet away. Her other leg hung lifeless.
I rolled to the red and reached across the passenger seat, turned the hand crank for the window. “Hey!” I yelled. “Want some food?”
Her head cocked, as though trying to acknowledge my existence in her reality, her eyes concave things that had seen too much and chose to see no more.
“Get in!” I said. “I’ll drive you where there’s food.”
She opened her mouth and shut it. No words came. “You are the Devil,” she rasped.
Her voice sounded satanic. I nodded. Yeah, I thought, I am. “I will drive you to food,” I said.
She stood from the bench and took a feeble step toward the car. “You,” she said, still rasping, her head still turned, only now her eyes worked, and they glared through mine like lasers.
Still bent to reach the door, I opened it, let it fall toward her.
She stepped back. “You!”
“I will buy you food,” I said. “I will buy you shoes.”
She stopped where she stood. “You always want me naked!” she yelled.
I sat up straight and my foot hit the gas pedal. The Buick leapt into the intersection, my door still open, the light still red. Cars came at me and swerved. I yelled. Drivers honked their horns at me. I yelled louder, pushed the gas pedal harder, got out of their crazy ways.
I heard skids behind me but I was on the next block, away from everyone who made loud noises at me like they loved me. Away from all of them but Ella. I would never see her again but she would always be with me. She would always love me. I had bought her food and shoes. Like I had bought them for all the Ellas before, and would buy them for Ella again.
by 
Rob Pierce
Latest posts by Rob Pierce (see all)
- Busy Day - January 20, 2017
- A Small Knife Or A Large Vehicle - January 8, 2015
- Ella - July 2, 2014
Eerie to the point of haunting. Well done.
Sad and beautiful. A story that stays with you. Great work, Rob. (tips hat)