The earth turned to bring us closer, it turned on itself and in us until it finally brought us together in this dream.
Some Venezuelan poet, according to Sean Penn, in 21 Grams.
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Every now and then people come into our lives – some great, some terrible (waste men, as they say), one or two will be there till the end (like a spouse or friend), most are average and are merely passers-by, some are the devil in disguise and others are nearly perfect-looking – like Jay, she was, scratch that, is nearly perfect-looking and had waltzed into my life.
Right now, she wasn't waltzing...she was walking slowly toward me, with her hands on her face – I'd love to say that her walk was picture perfect – that the poise, the perfectly weighted steps, the bounce, all came together to accentuate a masterpiece of runway-worthy translational motion – but honestly, she was walking rather awkwardly.
Taking into account her stride and that she kept on turning away and stopping every other second, I'd say she'd reach me in 20 seconds, which is more than enough time for a segue...
So very quickly a hypothetical story – Tolu, 34, is on her bed trying to figure out if she has eggs for tomorrow, all she needs to do is stand up and check but it's 8pm and she's tired, locked into something really good on Netflix...it's a new show called Greenleaf; "I'm sure I saw one or two in the basket...." She thinks to herself; it's still early enough to buy some if indeed she's out of eggs. Tolu lives in my town with her husband and son Jerry who they take to school every morning - it's morning and Tolu is about to make breakfast, it's always the usual, bread, butter and poached eggs; it takes Tolu about 3 minutes to make breakfast, 5 minutes for Jerry to shove it down, and then they'd head for the car.
The whole period of waking up, showering, breakfast and all other prep usually takes about 45 minutes and a 15-minute drive gets Jerry to school on time. Today everything is the same, except one thing...Tolu was wrong about the eggs, she was out. She dashes outside to a kiosk and gets some, it takes her about 4 minutes to do this. Having to get eggs has made them late by about 7 minutes – and her husband Dolapo is driving slightly over the speed limit to get Jerry to school on time; it's a small road with a lot of okadas (bikes) and maruas (rickshaws) parked illegally and he always drives below the speed limit, but they're running late because Tolu decided to leave buying eggs till the morning– as Dolapo approaches a junction to turn, a bike comes out of nowhere...he steps on the brakes and the car makes a loud screeching sound.
Luckily there's no accident, just a lot of cursing and tempers fraying, Jerry is in the car laughing, for some reason he's excited by the whole thing – but a few seconds ago, just adjacent to this junction, Jay was on her way back from a wedding – she was looking down at her phone and about to raise her head and look in my direction as I put the generator in the back of my green Honda Accord, but the sound from the screeching of Dolapo's car made her turn in the other direction and look, with other passers-by, at the accident that was about to happen – so she misses me, and there's no text message.
