Driver

Part 6

For the next two weeks Idyn drove Taki twice a day, back and forwards from the apartment to the office. Sometimes there were lunches and he would see her in the middle of the day. Sometimes there were dinners and he would drive her at night. Often they would talk and over that time he found out that she was thirty six and single. This news pleased him but the fact that she lived interstate didn’t. He also found out that she was a consultant, contracted at Pacific Steel for a month, working on a specific project. This was how she made her living she said, moving from one short term project to another, from one city to another. It seemed a lonely disjointed life to Idyn and while he wondered why she chose it, he did not ask.

In his turn, when she asked about him he told her. He told her that he too was single and had been a driver for five years. This was true but he didn’t say that for the last three years he had sent his employees out to do the driving while he stayed in the office overseeing the business. 

On one trip home on an evening late in the third week Idyn felt they were at a point where he could ask a question that he had been curious about since that first morning. “Can I ask you something Taki?” he said

“Okay” she said meeting his eyes in the mirror.

“Why don’t you like to be driven?”

She looked away and let her breath out on a sigh “that’s a very long story, too long for this trip” she said. Her tone was flat he noticed and tinged with sadness.

Idyn kept glancing at her but she was looking out the window now and her haunted expression stopped him from asking any further questions. Whatever the story was, he knew it wasn’t good. 

It was only two nights later that something happened that led to him finding out what her secret was. Earlier that evening he had dropped Taki at a hotel where she was having dinner with some work colleagues. She had told him to come back and pick her up at ten but at ten fifteen she texted him to say she would be later but she did not say how long. Already at the venue Idyn had no choice but wait.