Reflection

He slid across the back seat and the cracked leather squab wheezed as it grudgingly accepted his weight. I’d only been game to watch from the corner of my eye as he came towards us. Stepping down from the shade of the shop’s awning his footfalls had been heavy and measured, as his shadow loomed and ran away across the pointing nose of the car.

Drawing a deep breath he got comfortable, held it, blew it out slow.

I glanced over to the driver. He was surveying the rear vision mirror, nodding to himself. I was still looking at him as we pulled slowly away. His eyes never left the mirror.

The car swung out into the quiet street and I turned to the wing mirror at my open window. My eyes adjusted and the figure in the back seat came into focus. His dark sunglasses reflected the string of low-slung houses stretched out either side of us, narrow white lines of weatherboard stretching across the slim black glass, elongating, flickering faster, faster.

I must have looked at him for a moment too many, I didn’t mean to. The scar parting the heavy stubble of his right cheek held my eye. That and the way nothing seemed to move.

He looked at me. His head turned, he took his glasses off with a sweep of a powerful hand and his eyes ate up the glare of the afternoon and the space between us.

I like eyes. Bar room braggards are usually leg men. Legs are good. I’m a sucker for eyes though. Man, woman, child, if their eyes can capture me and make the world silent I’ll stay there forever.

I was a decent footballer a couple of years back. Could have been, should have been. Had a shot, messed it up. Moved to the country leagues and made good money, and drank it all.

I was mad. That’s what set me apart from others, no man scared me. I knew who to watch for though. I saw it in their eyes.

Guys who had really been something once, before injuries slowed them. Young ones who knew the scouts should have been looking at them all along, not me, and time was passing fast.

They had the dead eyes of sharks. They were so far beyond fear and hope that no matter how much I hurt them they wanted it, because in that moment they still existed somehow.

Most of all they hated me because I could have so easily been everything they wanted for themselves. But there was always one more party, one more woman. One more bottle.

His eyes were as dead as any I had seen. He hadn’t moved once and I felt scoured.  

Me, the driver, the people on the end of the whatever was coming. He knew everything.

His pupils were huge, they swam with dark tendrils of all the things they had seen.  

There was no reflection. Nothing more got in.

He knew the marks on my arms and my arms were in my lap. He knew the bottles I had kicked under the bed of the shitty hotel room we left that morning, on our way to ‘the middle of fucking nowhere’, to pick up ‘just another wanker’.

We were moving fast, throwing a plume of dust so high it must reach all the way back to those dirty buildings squatting in the heat.

The driver had emptied the mini bar as his parting shot to the hotel. They could ring those numbers all they liked.

The bottles filled the glove box now, crowding my knees. An endless straight of tarmac beckoned us. But every now and again there was just enough of a rise to bring a clink of glass on glass and I would ache to sweep those bottles up under an arm and just walk the fuck away from here, away from the things to come.

I tossed my head back and a long line of blued ridge shimmered beyond the heat haze. When I looked to the mirror again his impassive eyes were waiting and I knew he could smell the whisky and the gin, and the fear.

I could taste the warmth that first long draw brought every time, feel how my body opened as it spread. I ran my tongue over the roof of my mouth and the bitterness of all those mornings made me wince and close my eyes, thinking of the early sun and how its light always found all the bad, the bile and the blood.

‘I didn’t get your name?’

It was so loud, after so long. It took a moment for me to register the drivers voice. I looked to him and his eyes were back at the rear-view mirror.

‘Good’.

Driver was a big man, he leered and blew a stream of smoke across the mirror. ‘Yeah, I thought it might be like that.’

I turned then, for the first time, to really look at him.

He couldn’t even be bothered changing his face.

‘I get the feeling you haven’t been here before’.

It took a moment to realise the words were for me.

‘He’s just a driver. You got told what to do. Not by him. I won’t tell you anything different.’

Driver had pulled off the long gravel drive, rolling in slowly behind the water tower. He stilled the engine and it ran down to the tick of the cooling metal. After some minutes he banged the steering wheel, looked to the rear-view, looked back to the silence of the tumbledown farm house standing in a bare patch of ground.

‘I got it to the minute.’ He punched a finger at the clock in the dash and looked to me, back to the rear-view. ‘Oh, fuck you hard man’, he said loud, sitting forward and spitting his words into the mirror as if into the man’s face. ‘They’re supposed to be here.’

He got out and slammed his door closed, rounded the water tower, slapping his hand impotently at the ragged passionfruit vine dribbling down the rusted tank.

Silent minutes passed. The man slid across the back seat and opened his door. I watched as he rose out and stretched, seeing now how big he was, the sweat in the middle of his light shirt marking the long run of muscle either side.

I counted his slow footsteps as he moved slowly away out of sight.

Their reflections throbbed in the long windows of the porch. The doors were old and bowed, the crazed glass became circus mirrors so that driver was a squat shadow, wider than he was tall, the man towering over him.

I looked down to the glove box. The groove of the handle was cool to the touch. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head.

The crack was so loud I threw my head up, looking for the black anvil of cloud that must hold such thunder. Sun beat my eyes back inside the car, the sky still so hot it could not hold colour.

I looked back to the glass of the doors and the giant stood alone, a ragged dark line marking the ground at his feet.

‘You drive’.

He filled up the window at my door, hand on the handle so that all I could do was slide over to the driver’s side.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere with a train I can catch. Then you can piss off and do what you need to do.’

He opened the glove box. Bottles ran towards him with the heavy tinkle of pebbles on a sloping beach.

He took the closest, regarded the label. The familiar cracking sound and the cabin filled with a scent which called and repelled me all at once. He threw his head back once, flicked the bottle over to the back seat.

He drank the lot, one after the other, metronomic. I would have taken it as an insult, except he didn’t insult people, he didn’t care enough to do such a thing.

He showed me the last, gin. Held the bottle out towards my hands on the wheel.

I looked at him, wondering if this was some peace offering.

‘I reckon these are what got you here. I reckon your phone is going to be ringing soon, I’ve already told them you’ve done what they want.

You mess up like you did, I reckon you and I might be seeing each other again. Only you’ll be driving the other way.’

He threw the last gin back, turned to the open window and scrunched down in the seat so his head rested where he could watch the land peel away in the mirror. I would sneak a look at him every now and again, to see if he slept. His eyes were always open, still, eating up the last of the light.