Page 77 of My Boss

“Because I don’t like something buzzing when I’m driving.”

Buzzing, damn him. I think his hearing is messed up. It’sSummerby Calvin Harris, one of my favorite tracks, but I’m not going to argue. Perhaps Jan’saristocraticeardrums prefer different music while he rides his pimped-up Beemer like a highway king.

“What would you rather listen to then?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? Don’t you have a favorite song?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe you. Surely there is a piece you like. Maybe something from the classics?” I look through my list. “Here’s Chopin.” I press play, and when the mazurka sounds, I shift my gaze to Jan. He makes a face as if I’ve locked him in a garage with a group of freaks playing alternative rock.

“Turn it off, Maria,” he hisses through his teeth.

“But it is, after all, calm music, even relaxing.”

“I don’t listen to music while driving or talking or doing anything else.”

“None?”

“None. Turn it off. Please,” he adds.

“I will switch it off if you explain your quirk to me.” Undeniably, the reluctance to listen to music is quite quirky.

The mazurka accelerates, and the sounds become progressively louder and livelier, filling the car’s space.

Jan tightens his hands on the steering wheel. His breathing speeds up.

“Turn it off,” he snaps.

“Why?”

Without warning, he pulls over to the side of the road, snatches the cell phone out of my hand, turns off the player, hides the phone in the inside pocket of his coat and gets back on the road.

Is he a preschooler? God help me.

“Bravo, quite a mature performance.”

He doesn’t answer. He keeps watching the road, his face taking on an icy expression so familiar to me that I cringe. The old Jan is back. I turn up the heating of both seats. Not that I’m particularly chilly, I’m doing it to spite that damn block of ice. May you melt and drown in the waters of your own pond of vanity, you narcissist.

I’m all wet when we pull up in front of the hospital. And that’s because, firstly, the temperature of the heated seat is aboutfifty degrees Celsius (Jan, of course, turned off his seat after a minute, so he’s still a fucking lump of ice) and, secondly, my brain can’t stand idle silence, so it is filled with a hurricane of catastrophic visions starring my mother, which led to excessive body sweating.

Jan parks in reverse; success on the first try, of course, and perfectly, as if he had a ruler in his eyes. As soon as he turns off the engine, I unbuckle my seatbelt and notice four people leaving the hospital. Two women and two men. Although it’s dark all around, I immediately recognize familiar faces in the light of the streetlamps, especially this one. I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Mom!” I hastily open the door and start running toward her.

My legs run by themselves, and I can’t stop! Just as if I were… skating?

I glance down. Holy crap. I’m not running at all. My feet are gliding across the hospital skating rink of a parking lot. I want to stop. My arms are flailing, and I’m bending back and forth. I’m like a curling stone rushing across the ice straight to the goal—nothing and no one can stop me. Except for the dumpster standing in my way. Holy shit! I can already see myself in a cast from the waist up, with my legs hanging in a trapeze above the hospital bed. Let’s hope they have an excellent orthopedist in the ER.

“Fuck!!!”

I skid head-on toward the dumpster. A shrill countdown echoes in my head: five, four, three… I hold my breath, close my eyes, my heart stands still… and suddenly I feel a tug at my waist. My feet go flying beneath me, and I fall down like a sack of potatoes on something that is neither hard like a dumpster nor cold like a dumpster and definitely does not smell like a dumpster. Quite the contrary, it is quite soft, emanating warmth, and smells just like…

I open my eyes and encounter a steel-gray gaze. My heart starts beating again, and very fast.

“Jan?”

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