Until Ava

Chapter Five

I woke up with a start. It smelled like dog breath around me.

Xerxes stepped off me, having jumped onto me and barked in my face. His tail brushed over my face, some of his fur getting all over my mouth.

'Xerxes!' I complained, wiping and spluttering.

He barked back in response, whined a bit and sat down beside me on the bed.

I looked around and up through the drawn-back teak curtain on my left. It was daybreak, apparently. I yawned, stretching, feeling the good morning air swirl around my body. I felt remnants of the stress I went to bed with, sighed and lay down a while, patting Xerxes on the head. He looked at me like something was wrong.

'What? It's a beautiful brand new day, isn't it?'

He barked, jumping off the bed and trotting to my wardrobe. He barked some more when he got there, and sat in front of it.

Something in there? I wondered. I got off my bed and walked to where he was. He barked again. What was in there?

'What? What?'

Xerxes dug his snout into my wardrobe, pulling something off a hanger and out gently by the teeth. I took it from him gently too, so it didn't rip by mistake. I held it up: my jogger shorts. I still didn't get the connection. Not until my watch went 'Beep' from the nightstand. Right! It was past time!

'Oh! We missed our workout! We're running late! How did that happen?'

Xerxes barked a You tell me at me as I tossed the shorts on the bed and dashed to the bathroom. He followed right on my heels, the good dog, and still overtook me like he did every morning.

'Ah this guy?' I shouted loudly, 'there isn't enough space! Your car won't fit!' I honked my horn on the minivan just in front of me.

'These tro-tro drivers, this is how they are o! They're not correct!' a driver on my left shouted back in Twi, 'just look, just look at how he's forcing the car to fit in that small space!'

'If he doesn't know and he scratches my car!' I shouted, honking the horn some more on the silly guy, annoyed. Why try so hard to fit into the traffic when there wasn't enough space for his car? It wasn't as if the traffic was flowing, even! The tro-tro in question had cut in right in front of me into the mass of Motorwagen modifications that were stagnated in movement in a traffic jam, and was now halfway in and halfway out, obstructing myself and the driver who had shouted back in agreement to what I'd said. It was a hot Monday morning, and I was already twenty-five minutes late. I wiped the beads of sweat forming on my forehead and huffed.

The taxi driver behind me blared his horn.

'My friend, go and let us also come!' He yelled from behind me, 'what are you standing there for?'

'Fly over me!' I yelled back at him, poking my head through the window, forsaking all decorum, 'if there were space, would I be here?'

I sat back down and tugged at my tie, straightening it. Accra traffic was the most tiring, most annoying, most frustrating and most stressful thing to deal with and the other drivers involved never helped the situation. But that was the price to pay for waking up late. Feeling the need to blame someone, I turned to Xerxes, seated in the front seat, his seatbelt firmly in place. His ears were perked up, and he had an agitated look about him.

'You should have woken me up earlier!' I accused. He gave a little growl and coiled on the seat.

'You also overslept, didn't you?' I continued to blame. He replied with an annoyed bark.