Chapter 2

Unhinged

“You know, I thought I heard camels this morning,” Fred says, holding lightly to the steering wheel of his old Volvo. Abdul squints at him and a concerned look comes down over his face like a metal grate. This is the French Riviera, not a circus. He glances at Maya over the seat. She shrugs, half asleep. The traffic slows to a crawl.

“Not again,” Abdul complains. “If we leave at 7:45 we avoid this mess.” The three commuters sit inside the square box of a car while Fred drives slowly, deliberately toward Sophia Antipolis Hi-Tech Park, the French Silicon Valley.

“It’s her fault,” Fred says jabbing his thumb over the seat at Maya who sits straddled over the hump in the backseat. Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror and a pout curls out on her lips.

“Mais non,” she says. “The curling iron overheated and blew a fuse in the house. Nothing worked. Not even the espresso machine. I couldn’t leave without coffee.”

“So she made me stop at McDonalds before picking you up.” Fred speaks with a British accent, and fingers his counterfeit Omega watch that he picked up in San Remo.

“Ehh. McDonalds serves juice from dirty socks, not coffee,” Abdul spouts.

Maya holds both of her hands wrapped around the paper cup and peers out the window. “Ohmon dieu! My God,” she says with a heavy French accent so that the words sound likemy got. “Look at that.”

Fred downshifts and his eyes dart over to a man walking along the roadside. The man wears a crisp, dry-cleaned suit and silk tie. He grips a brown leather briefcase in his right hand. His eyes stare straight ahead and he moves forward with determined strides.

“He only has on one shoe,” Fred says and stiffens.

“It makes him limp,” Abdul says.