Her name was Mia, she said, or sometimes Gia, depending. She laughed. “Gia’s a slut.”
She’d picked me up in her Jeep Cherokee after my old VW had given up the ghost near Heathrow, and I was hitching a ride back to the city. She wore a tiny black dress and wide-brimmed, black hat. Her car had an earthy smell.
She’d just broken up with her boyfriend, and mentioned two other breakups she’d had before this one. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Sounds like a pattern, right? Well, what the fuck do you know?”
The look she gave, I thought she was about to bite off my face.
We drove on, then she turned with a half-smile, like she’d remembered a beloved pet dog who’d died. “Sorry, that was harsh,” she said. “I haven’t taken my meds today. You want to do something?”
Barely six months into the divorce, I considered what I had to offer. “Cocktails at the Voodoo Lounge?” I said.
She squinted, said no, she couldn’t do that, and anyway, she craved open spaces, somewhere she could take the shirt off her back. “Let’s go to Primrose Hill,” she said, “sleep out all night, under the stars.”
She flipped the door of the glove compartment. Inside, she had this stash of grade A plus, Afghan Kush, behind the seven-inch, high-carbon, combat knife she liked to keep handy.
The Jeep picked up speed. I leaned back in my seat. Johnny Cash was powering out “Ring of Fire” on the radio, and by the time he got to the “burns, burns, burns” part, the two of us were singing along with him.
is a writer, editor, and blogger based in England. He has made a living as a nonfiction author for many years, with numerous publications. His short stories and flash fiction have appeared widely, most recently in Bartleby Snopes, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Camroc Press Review, Change Seven Magazine, Flash Frontier, Jellyfish Review, 100-Word Story, Cosmonauts Avenue, Olentangy Review, and Rkvry Quarterly. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology.
