t’s not like it’s anything to write home about, we’re just backed up at the light is all.”

“And how long have we been sitting here?”

“I don’t know, how long has it been?”

“Three years.”

“Oh.” Aria honked her horn three times, once for each year that she and Munoz had been waiting there, watching the back of the tan Chevy Metro in front of them. The Metro had a bumper sticker that read, “Honk if you love Bonnie Tyler.” They must think we’re real fans back here, thought Aria.

“But you don’t think that it’s odd at all, us having been here for three years,” said Munoz, from the back seat. Aria had sent him back there a year and a half ago, after he had spent three weeks asking her if she could let him drive for a change. He just didn’t understand: sometimes you’ve got to let a woman have control of her own car.

“I’m sure we’ll get through in the next cycle,” said Aria. Some days she wished that Munoz would just shut up, but luckily today wasn’t one of those days. When you got used to hearing someone’s voice every day there were times when it felt comforting just to let it drone on. Munoz was good for that.

The fight over who should drive had been one of their biggest, but not their only fight. Once they had bickered over the correct setting of the air conditioning for about a week and a half. It had culminated with Munoz saying that he felt stifled in this relationship, and then rolling down his window a crack. Exhaust fumes wafted in through the window, along with the sound of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ playing from the Chevy Metro. Aria had rolled his window back up and locked the controls. She had revoked Munoz’s window privileges, and didn’t give them back until a month later.

“I mean, us being here, in this intersection, stuck, with however many other cars. That doesn’t strike you as a little odd?”

“Mmhmm,” said Aria. Peter Bjorn and John had just come on the radio, and she was letting the drone of the music and the whine of Munoz’s speaking voice wistfully merge. Aria liked this song.

Outside the window, a bicyclist sped past them, weaving between the stationary cars and not sparing a glance. The cars in the intersection had become a fixture, a sort of monument to something, though nobody inside them or out knew just what.

“Maybe we can just make a right turn,” said Munoz. Though he didn’t know it, that was the nine hundred and seventy fourth time that he had made the exact same suggestion. Aria had ignored him entirely for one hundred and thirteen of the last one hundred and sixteen times he had said it.

“Or we could cut into the opposite lane,” said Munoz, his voice getting quieter by ten decibels at least. He stroked his downy mustache and peered out the window to the left. They both knew that what he was saying was ridiculous. No one could drive on the left hand side: that was where the tanker truck that sold them a fill-up every second week came through. And what if someone suddenly ran the red light and sped through the intersection, hitting and killing them both? Admittedly nothing like that had happened at this intersection for over a year, but from Aria’s perspective, saying that something wasn’t very likely to happen just made it that much more unpleasant when it did.

Aria rubbed her belly and patted her head as she sang along with the song on the radio. It was a good day to be alive, she thought, whatever the circumstances. Some days she wanted to climb out the window and marine-crawl her way across the road, to freedom, just to escape Munoz’s shrill voice, or the way his hair looked when he didn’t comb it, or the way he sometimes picked his nose as if no one could see him through the windows. Luckily, today was not one of those days.

“Well,” said Munoz, “I guess there’s no use.” He paused. “It looks like it might be clearing up soon, anyhow.”

They were both quiet. The radio hummed good-naturedly, then cut to a traffic report that informed them of congestion at the intersection of 7^th and Main, the same as yesterday and the day before, for the past four and a half years. “I think we know that,” said Aria. Traffic reports made her cross. “I think we know that already. Stupid radio. Stupid light just won’t change.”

In the back seat, Munoz began to roll down his window. He put a few fingers out it, then, tentatively, his whole arm. He swung his arm around, feeling the real air on his skin, waving it about.

Aria flicked the controls for the back windows, and smiled as she heard a half-scream of fear gargle in Munoz’s throat as he pulled his arm back in just before the rising glass crushed it. “Keep your hand inside, Munoz,” she said. “If we drove past a stop sign, it could get lopped right off. And then we’d have to pull over and walk back along the shoulder looking for your hand, you with a bleeding stump all the while.”

Munoz pulled at the door handle, but Aria had turned the child safety lock on three months ago. He tugged fruitlessly for five minutes before giving up.

“Aria,” Munoz whined, “I should be able to go outside if I want to.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, I’m your boyfriend. And that’s supposed to mean that you do what I say. And I can say when I want to go outside, I don’t have to wait for your permission. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m the boyfriend, remember?”

“Hmm,” said Aria. It was true, he was the boyfriend.

“But we’ll see how long that lasts,” she said to herself, in a quiet under-breath. “We’ll see how long that lasts once we get home.” Aria flicked the hazard lights on, then off, then each of the turn signals, listening to the staccato clicks and waiting for the light to change.