Hell, Juliet would have talked this guy into buying her dinner in addition to the ride.
‘One second,’ she said, and strode to the back of the car. She dug into her bag and pulled out her phone, and as she snapped a picture she saw the man adjust the mirror.
She came back around to the driver’s side where he waited with a smirk and started to type on her phone. ‘I’m sending this to my sister. If I end up floating in the harbour, they’ll know who to look for.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said, and she heard the click of his power locks. He gestured to the trunk. ‘There’s an emergency kit in the back with a poncho inside. Lay it on the seat before you sit down. I’m trying to be chivalrous, but this car has less than twenty thousand kilometres on it and I’d rather you not fuck-up my upholstery.’
She’d accepted his ride, but she wasn’t about to dissolve into graciousness just yet. She plucked the plastic wrapper from the emergency kit, and once she was at the passenger side she didn’t drape the poncho over the seat but stripped off her wet denim jacket and covered herself with the poncho before getting inside.
‘I’m a little impressed,’ he said as she placed her plastic-wrapped ass on the seat. ‘I never thought of asking you to put it on.’
‘I already look hideous with my mascara running down my face, I might as well look pathetic dressed like a gas-station sandwich.’
He handed over the towelettes and locked them in. ‘Where to?’
‘Agricola Street, just before you get to the brewery,’ she told him as she pulled down her visor and saw what he had seen.
He hadn’t been kidding about scaring small children and old people. She looked like the monster from a Japanese horror movie.
‘Is that in the South End?’
‘No,’ she said with a laugh and pulled out a towelette.
He glanced at her. ‘Isn’t that where all the students live?’
‘Yeah, but I’m not a student and I haven’t been for about five years. OK, you know where the grocery store is on Young Street?’
‘Nope.’
‘The television station?’
‘Sorry.’ He grinned at her as they neared the exit of the parking garage, but this time he looked sheepish. ‘I’ve only lived here for about a month. I know how to get to the office and I know how to get to the highway. Otherwise I have to Google everything.’
Her face less frightening, she crumpled the towelette in her hand and her gaze slid to the GPS device on the dash.
He laughed. ‘Broken. I ordered a new one but it hasn’t arrived yet.’
‘What are you, some kind of dinosaur?’
She grabbed his iPhone, docked next to the GPS. A few taps and a female voice announced that he should turn left onto Cogswell Street.
‘I never even thought of that,’ he admitted as she returned the phone to its cradle, then held out the hand closest to her. ‘Simon.’
‘Miranda,’ she replied, and gave him her clammy hand.
His was so warm that she wanted to take possession of it and tuck it against her, but instead she slipped her feet out of her flats and wriggled her toes under the heat coming from the vent.
‘So, Simon, I’m not one to ignore the white elephant in the room, but about getting sucked off in the bathroom …’
He let out a bark of laughter and followed the voice instructions to go straight through the intersection. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘What’s a grown man doing getting his dick sucked in a public washroom? I thought that was something a man grows out of once he gets over the bar scene.’
‘Getting sucked off is never something a man grows out of, and he’ll take his cock out wherever he can. When he’s in a nursing home pissing in a bag he’s still hoping some hot nurse will come along and wrap her lips around him.’
‘That’s really gross.’
‘It’s true. Look, I’m sorry you walked in on it and I’m even more sorry I was an asshole to you about it. It’ll never happen again, at least not in that bathroom.’
‘So, you do it often.’
‘You know, for someone who made it pretty clear she’s not interested in my dick, you’re doing a lot of talking about it.’
Miranda shrugged, the plastic around her shoulders crackling as she moved. ‘Like I said, I’m not one for ignoring the white elephant in the room. It just so happens that your dick is the white elephant in the room.’
‘Thank you for the comparison.’
He kept his eyes on the road as they reached the star-shaped intersection at the base of the hill that dominated the downtown, then shook his head.
‘What the fuck? Who designed these roads?’
‘You’re in the wrong lane,’ she said. He cursed with his merger and made a left. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Toronto.’ He shot her a sly look. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Go ahead and what?’
‘Make some comment about my being from Toronto. Everyone does it. You might as well get it out of your system.’
‘I don’t have anything against Toronto. Great shopping and great music scene.’
‘Unfortunately I didn’t get to do much of either. I travelled around a lot with my last job. I grew up in Montreal, though. Talk about a great music scene. Am I on the right street?’
‘Just keep going straight until you get to the bridge. Why are you here? Kind of a downgrade, isn’t it?’
He shook his head. ‘I needed the change. My last job was hell, and I’m too old to keep running across the country at the drop of a hat.’
‘Let me guess: you were a Bay Street trader falsely accused of white-collar crime, and now you’ve come out East to fulfil your dream of building a boathouse and retiring from the grind of daily life.’
Simon laughed. ‘That’s pretty good. About as far off the mark as you can get, but pretty creative. No, I work for Michael Roe. You know who he is?’
‘The MLA with his office on the top floor?’
‘That’s the one. What about you? Let me guess this time – you’re a graphic designer.’
‘What makes you think I’m a graphic designer?’ she asked, surprised that while he was off the mark in terms of her career, he had somehow intuited her creative streak.
‘You’ve got that way about you?’ He met her scowl with a grin. ‘Artistic types who spend all day in front of a computer have a thin filter when it comes to speaking their minds.’
‘Is that your way of calling me an asshole?’
‘No, not at all. I like it. I wouldn’t have asked if you wanted a ride if I didn’t think you’d be good company.’
Miranda hated to admit it, but she was enjoying his company as well. She liked that she could dish it and he’d dish it right back at her. And she liked that they’d been in the car together for almost ten minutes and he hadn’t tried anything funny.
‘I’m not a graphic designer. I work at the call centre on the fourth floor, but I am an “artistic type” – I paint in my own time. I had a stall at the farmers’ market when I was just out of high school, but now I sell my stuff on the Internet.’
‘Good money in