Something was wrong with her limbs and fingers, I could tell by the trembling calculation in every gesture due to whatever illness she had.
When I had first arrived I skirted the front of the cab to get to where she indicated for me to stand beside her on the footpath as her precondition of making the trip.
Her shirt was grey and satiny the blouse open all the way to the waist, also to the weather and my uneasy gaze.
She said with a dark worry there was no one at the facility that day to do the shirt up for her.
Was it right for her taxi driver to stand so close beside the road?
I could see and touch the teak brush strokes in her bouffant hair while dealing dexterously with the first button, then moving lower one by one along the row assaulted all the way by her perfume, then finishing with a proud flourish on the last.
I had deliberately turned her a little away from the passing motorists who even so must have wondered at the odd couple pressed so closely together.
Easter Saturday 2026