Portrait of a Lady 5

So, Lance Armstronglike, I mount my trusty metallic steed and wheel through the lazy summer heat.

I come to an intersection, a 4-way stop. I am the first vehicle there, the only other candidate is a small red car, with Mass plates, approaching from my right, still twenty feet away from its stop sign.

So I proceed, thinking idly about Eleanor of Aquitaine, for some reason.

Thank god for peripheral vision. And animal reflexes.

The red car guns it, sails through the stop. I slide to a violent halt, fall onto the pavement.

The woman in the car whizzes past, two feet away from me. The window is down. She yells.

“Fuckhead!”

Then drives on.