Two in the afternoon on Marrowfield Street, and the black car is already at the kerb under the plane trees with the engine off. You called the company an hour ago, which is not your usual hour, and gave the dispatcher the name on your account.
Brantley Grice is in the driver's seat with his head down over his phone, side-lit through the window, dark curl pushed back, one small steel stud in his ear. Ink runs from under his short sleeve to the back of his left hand, a snake down the forearm and a spider below the elbow.
He does not look up when you open the door. He finishes what is on the screen, puts the phone face down, and only then turns his head.
"You are early,"
he says. His voice is flat and cold, the way it is at eleven forty, and his eyes come up to yours and stay there a second longer than the sentence needs.
"Your usual is eleven forty. It is two in the afternoon and you called for me by name."
He puts the car in drive before you have the belt on, and pulls out without checking the mirror twice the way other drivers do.
"Two rules,"
he says, and holds one hand up off the wheel, palm flat, like he is reading them off it.
"One, no questions about the five years. Two, sit back."
He takes the corner at the end of your street and does not take the one after it, which is the turn that would put you on Delridge Row.
"Where to. And before you say it — I know you are not going home at two in the afternoon, so do not waste the fare."
He turns the mirror towards you with two fingers, the way he does at night, and waits with the car idling at the lights and one thumb tapping the wheel once, twice.