Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 5: Stuck in the Middle With You

5 
Stuck in the Middle With You

===========DANNY===========

Ever been on a date with a mute? Me neither. But I am sure it would be something very similar to being stuck in the car with Mary. A black dome lowered over the sky to enter the world into the obverse and oversee the activities of the night. The sun had been swapped for the moon, and on the streets, the drivers behind the passing windshields lost their identities to the shape and shine of their headlights.

Nothing on the radio seemed to impress Mary. And making conversation through the radio was my backup plan, hoping that a song I landed on would be one that she liked and we could talk about—a girl's taste in music can reveal a lot of her heart. But Mary's radical indifference to all the amazing tunes I stopped for a second on revealed that she was clearly heartless. Or deaf.

I forgave her though. Something on her phone must have been very pressing in that it demanded all of her attention. The light cast from her phone was really distracting to my driving, and so was the annoyance of her being on her phone, but I used it as a good excuse to check her out.

Mary's face shone pale blue in its glow. And when I looked down at her phone, sitting atop the shredded denim strings on her thighs—thighs—I wanted to do everything from crash the car to make out with her.

"What band were you at Mansion to see?" I eventually asked her.

Mary grumbled, her body turned away from me, her eyes now fixated on the suburbs that sprawled over the streets the further north we drove.

"None of them."

And asking her about The Broken Lyre proved just as pointless, as in seeing she had "never heard of them."

Despite "Let's Live For Today" by The Grass Roots on the '60s on 6, I didn't dare suggest she stop rolling through the stations. Yes, she seized the dial without asking. The speaker grilles rattled with a hard pounding bass beat when Mary landed on a song that's lyrics had something to do with: cutting your head off, and your mom's too.

The digital green writing on the audio deck read: "Dirty Ridin' Niggas" by a fellow named Nukka. I wondered who I would be if I lived my life through Nukka lyrics.

My mind was taken off the radio for a second as I slowed the car for a red light. Baffled that Mary liked that sort of music—as, you know, she did not flip it off like the other hundred more bearable song choices—I looked over at her.

"This is Tanner's favorite rapper," she said, eyes glued to the dashboard.

Before I answered, I asked which way to turn at the intersection of Lockport Road and Ocean Avenue. "Right," she said, just as the light blinked green.

"Tanner?" I asked, resuming the topic, knowing damn well who he was, remembering her shouting at him in Wright Bros, but for the sake of creating something like conversation between us, I asked anyways.

"The guy from the grocery store," she said.

"Oh, ex-boyfriend, Tanner."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mary shoot up an eyebrow. "Yeah, the ex-boyfriend who almost broke your arm, Tanner." She went back to her phone.

Over the speakers, Nukka was informing me that I was having a far lesser amount of sex than he was.

Then, while we were caught at the next red light, my eyes drifted back over to her and unfortunately had to notice the clear distinction the seatbelt made strapped between her breasts. I caught a whiff of her perfume and immediately stiffened in my seat.