(Originally posted on a now defunct blog a few months ago. Slightly modified, here.)
Fog was lifting when a white van drove ahead of me down the road on which I was walking the dogs. The bald man
inside gave us a cherubic smile and a curt wave as he passed. It was a
slow motion moment, the kind that usually foreshadows an horrific event in a
B-grade film. On cue, headlights raced out of the fog from the opposite
direction.
The road, aptly named Prospect Row, bears the markings of a two
lane road. It’s the kind of thoroughfare that can easily confound an
American. The road appears to be too narrow for passing traffic.
Yet, pass it does. One vehicle will hug the curb. The other will
climb onto the pavement (i.e., the sidewalk). That is what the white van
did. It crawled in advance of us, leaving the bulk of the roadway to the
approaching car. But the car, refused to give way, claiming the middle of the road defiantly.
Now, cleared from the fog, the car showed itself to be
one of the smallest and narrowest of cars travelling British roads. “ForTwo”
announced its paint-job. ForTwo! ForTwo! ForTwo! ForTwo! ForTwo!
Inside, it carried a passenger of one. The van came to stand-still in our
path, on the pavement, while the driver of the ForTwo rev-ed the engine as though it were the
baddest thing on the block. As time slowed further, it seemed that we
approached a singularity, its event horizon pitched between wheels and opposing
headlights.
With no movement from the vehicles, the dogs and I
swung around the van, into the road, in front of the ForTwo, and down the
intersecting alley that leads toward City Road. From our moment in the
headlights, the drivers came into view. The driver of the van looked on
with the eyes of a Pac-Man ghost. The driver of the
ForTwo, with the eyes of Gossamer, the Red Monster of Bugs Bunny fame, though the look
of the female driver was pure rendition of Nancy Walker on 1959′s album cover of I Hate Men. With our passing, the
engine of the ForTwo fell silent; and, the driver’s door was thrown open.
The driver appeared to crouch behind it in the fashion of American TV cops,
using the door as a shield. The world of opposites was about to become
the more peculiar.
The woman marshaled herself from behind the door,
stepping forward forcefully on goose-stepping legs. Rounding at the
waist, she stood no taller than the driver’s side window; here was Pac-Man. At the same time, the
door of the van was propped open; and, its driver threw himself out. He
wore painter’s white over gangly limbs that now seemed to have been bent up improbably inside the van. He was monstrously tall, preposterously
thin. She approached him at speed. Why have you blocked my
way? she demanded. Her voice was gruff, and, deep. You
saw me coming! she added empirical fact to countermeasure the fact
that she, too, must have seen him coming. To this he answered, Why
have you not moved aside? His voice was as high as the foggy clouds
from which he spoke. Must you have taken the middle of the road? he
attempted to clarify his question. She would have nothing of questions
that were not her own.
I don’t know how long they remained there, at
impasse. The fog was burning off. Children on bicycles were
beginning to race madly toward school. It, soon, would be unsafe to
remain there with dogs at the ends of their leads.
