Cities

            An old Cadillac sputtered past Eric as he sat on a bench, waiting for a bus to take him somewhere, anywhere, hopefully out of this goddamn town.  The car had a different style of wheel for each tire, and looked like it had once been black, but had faded to some indescribable mesh of grey and a dirty reddish-brown after the driver had failed to care for it over the decades.  The dents and scrapes only served to accentuate the apparent distaste the owner had for his/her own car.  The only things that had managed to stay in some sort of decent condition were the windows, which didn’t have a scratch on them, somehow.  They were tinted beyond belief, and Eric wondered how anyone could see out of them, as he certainly couldn’t see inside. 

            It kept on going, sputtering, lurching down the road, and suddenly stopped about a block away from Eric.  He thought it had died on the road, and got up to see if he could help the stranded strangers in the car.  Before he even got off of the bench, though, two oddly average-looking men in suits leapt of the car.  The driver slammed his door shut and stomped over to his associate on the passenger’s side.  The conversation they shouted at each other lead Eric to believe that the car was not something to be worried about today.  The driver kicked things off.

            “Where do we turn, Todd? Where the FUCK do we turn now? Do you even know where we are, because I don’t!  ‘Take this split off the interstate.’ I remember you saying that very fucking clearly, Todd, and look where the fuck we are now! The middle of the fucking inner city, and I don’t think we need to be here! No, we’re supposed to be across motherfucking STATE LINES by now, Todd!” 

            Todd wiped some spit from his shades as he replied. “Oh, really? I’m wrong? That’s how we’re going to play this one, eh? Blame Todd, again! Just like the last three times we’ve gotten lost.  If you’re the master of directions, why did we start this trip with me driving and you on the map, huh? Why exactly is that? Did we switch because you didn’t know how to read this shitpile of a map? I think that’s the case, yeah.  You gave up, said you would drive and I would handle the directions, remember?!  How old is this map, anyhow? These street signs don’t eve-“

            “Dodging responsibilities, yeah, that’s how we’re gonna get shit done! Well done, Todd, I don’t think anyone avoids things quite like you do.  That’s why you can’t drive anymore, dipshit! Remember Tortuga? Your driving got you in the shit can for three months, that’s why I didn’t want you to drive!  If they actually saw you in the driver’s seat, they’d chew my ass, too!  Do I want that to happen? No, so I took the wheel. Guess that’s what I get for trusting you.”

            “Wait a minute, though.  Look at these signs, none of this matches… You got the wrong fucking map, asshole! Look at the top, it says “Shit Kickin’ Dallas, Texas”. We aren’t even in that fuck-nugget state!  Why did you buy a map from a state we weren’t going to be in?! Texas doesn’t even BORDER Kentucky, dumbass!”

            “Wait, what? Let me see this, are you shitting me?” Not-Todd said, as he snatched the map away from Todd.  He scrutinized it for a minute, and loudly proclaimed “FUCK! They gave us the wrong map!  Ok, ok… We’ll deal with that later.  Wing it for now, we just need to get out of here.”  They smoothed their hair back into place, got back in the car, and coughed down the road as fast as their rickshaw car would take them.

            This wound up not affecting Eric in the least, but at least he had something to contemplate as he continued waiting for the bus.