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For a while we drive in silence because while IlikeTiff and don’t think she dislikes me as much as she sometimes pretends to, we do have a bit of a gigantic age gap that makes conversation a bit tricky like.
“How’s the course going?” I ask by way of an opening gambit.
She makes a noncommittal noise.
“Getting harder?” I try, increasingly suspecting that I’ll be on my own at this end of the conversation.
“Just not feeling it.”
“Oh.” I drum my hands on the steering wheel for a moment. “Well, maybe it’ll sort out once things settle a bit.”
“Maybe.”
We’re silent again. I think about sticking the radio on, but if there’s anybody who’d immediately judge me for my music preferences it’s Tiff and besides, I’m not totally convinced I’m in a Heart FM mood.
It’s starting to rain now, and the drumming against the windscreen at least gives us a bit of percussion to go with our no conversation.
“Actually,” she says eventually, “I’m thinking of jacking it in.”
“Oh yeah?” I try to sound neutral. I get you’re meant to encourage people to stick with stuff, but me and Tiff aren’t close—not really—so for all I know she’s the worst hair and beauty technician to ever try to make somebody beautiful and hairy.
“Yeah.”
We just let the raindrops do their staccato thing and I give her space to talk or not as she wants.
“Just wasn’t feeling it,” she repeats.
“You said,” I say.
“Oh. Right.”
The windscreen wipers swish through what’s gradually turning into a storm. Finally I try: “Not thinking of going full time into bathrooms I hope?”
“No.” She sounds shocked.
“Okay, okay, no need to sound quite that offended. There’s decent money to be made in bathrooms.”
“Yeah, if you own the showroom.”
Some deeply uncool part of me feels compelled to tell her that she can achieve anything if she tries, even though that’s not true outside Disney movies. So I follow up with a more noncommittal, “Well, y’know, work hard and maybe one day.”
“Maybe one day I’ll be the one threatening to sack teenagers so I can make a few extra quid?”
“Yeah,” I say, only sixty percent sheepishly.
“Y’see”—now she’s drumming her nails on the dashboard, tapping along with the rain—“that’s the problem with modern, late-stage capitalist society. It denies people the conceptual framework to imagine an alternative, so even people who are excluded or disenfranchised by it can’t imagine an alternative system, only an alternative version of the same system where they have a larger share of the wealth.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure what to say to that. “That’s very political of you.”
“Don’t worry, I can’t vote. And by the time I can I’ll be worn down enough to settle for the second-worst option like the rest of you.”
We fall quiet again.
“Actually,” she says. Then stops.
“Actually what?”
“Nothing.”
