The black beat-up Toyota had been abandoned in the middle lane of the crossroads, right behind the pedestrian crossing, hazard lights flashing, no passengers or drivers to be seen. A white police car was parked behind the car with two policemen standing around the rear of the Toyota, looking as chill as two policemen could be at 10:20 am around an abandoned car at the traffic lights in the centre of the city: very chill.
I was hovering around Monique's desk that's closer to the window overlooking the traffic lights:
- How can they be so relaxed? There could be a bomb in it.
- It's so strange.
I walked back to my desk. I wondered if the curtain walls are shatter proof? The blast could definitely shake us. For god's sake they are not even wearing special vests. What is it they wear anyway? Anti-blast vest or is it just called bullet-proof? You spend all these years learning a foreign language and then comes the day when a ticking bomb is about to go off across the road & you can't give the right command because you never learnt the bloody word for those blacks things they wear in English movies. It's just like when you are in the middle of an argument or a really good story & then you just can't think of the bloody word. That thing could go off any second & they have no cordons. People are just sitting in the bus stop across the road. Nothing is serious to these people. Everyone is always so freaking relaxed. Charles sits so close to the window. He could be hit right in the face. He's the best we have. How on earth are we going to get this shit built without him. I have the memory of an ant. He knows all the drawings. I bet the window seats don't seem so appealing now. You wish you had a lowly desk in the unpopular centre of the office like mine. Apart from the aircon leaking through the ceiling a couple of weeks ago and people constantly walking past you, it's a pretty good deal. Who wants the promotion that comes with a view now?
My thoughts are disrupted by Monique's cute French accent talking to Charles: "That's so strange, isn't it? Maybe he had a heart attack or something? Did you see the driver?"
Charles hasn't been at his desk all morning so he won't know but he suggests the car may have broken down & maybe they left to get a mechanic. Really?! what about calling one, Charles? Improbable.
At lunch we hear through Chris from Level 5 that they had caught the driver & the passenger running off to the bottom of the street. Probably some drugs were involved.
I don't share my many theories with the rest of the crowd at the lunch table. Even when I know all the words to my story it's still not one anybody here can understand. No one else sees an abandoned Toyota & thinks of a bomb... The first 3 guesses are: Mechanical issue, Heart attack, Drugs.
I am forever a foreigner.
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