The Swirl
by Jan Adriaans ︎︎︎My head turns to the right. There is a small window, a motorcycle passing, then another window slightly opened. Behind all that there’s the pale delicate face of an older lady. Her eyes are gazing off into a far distance and losing their focus, which is crazy on a highway. We came to a standstill 35 minutes ago, with an occasional moving forward of just meters. Everyone around me starts texting. The world outside should understand that we’re not in control of time anymore. There’s nothing we can do to influence our arrival home, at the meeting, at our second date. I write: ‘I’ll be late for dinner baby, don’t wait for me.’ Suddenly the cars start moving again, very slowly, the way people walk on thin ice. I get the possibility to a turn into a gas station, and I take it. I know it won’t matter much anyway. I’m in not in need of anything, although, a coke would be so good. I get a craving for that metallic taste in moments like these. It feels like a cleansing.
The man behind the counter is drinking a coke out of a big bottle, with a straw. He’s a tall muscular guy holding the coke bottle like he’s holding a tool that needs a mouth to operate it. He could easily suck out that whole bottle in one go, I get from his body language. There’s tension, he’s sweating a little, with no interest for his customers. The line to the counter is eight people long. A little swirl appears in the bottle, like a mini typhoon, from one third of the bottom to where the straw ends. Swirls make liquid move faster, much faster than linear streams. How fast would that coke come out, if there was a swirl moving through that whole bottle? Would the soft drink overflow his mouth? Would it choke the guy?
One person to go. In the reflection of a window, I can see a horserace on a small tv. The window blurs the image slightly and the horses appear like shiny sportscars. They look deadly and close to dying, two things that easily match. Running together in a repeating swirl pushes every animal to go faster. ‘Are you winning?’ I ask the guy? I’m trying to produce the friendliest voice possible, afraid to enter someone’s private space. The guy doesn’t respond, scans my drink and I return with my card on the reader. As turn around to walk back to my car he whispers: “Yes, I did...This is a once in a lifetime”
I walk outside, trying to grasp what he just said. I open my coke, put it on my lips and take a sip. It’s not as good as I remembered.