COINCIDENCE

“There’s a rundown joint named Gama at the forty-first kilometer between Osmaniye and Islahiye,” the man on the phone said.

“I know it,” Ugay replied. “I had to stop there years ago.”

“The infamous breakdown story?” The voice on the phone laughed.

“Hmm…” the old man cut him off shortly.

“Bring it there, we’ll finalize the deal there,” the man said, his tone turning abruptly serious. He knew the man on the other end was not one to be trifled with. Ugay rarely laughed, and he went to every job with his young wife. He wasn’t the only man working the underworld alongside his wife, of course, but this was different. Consumed by an intense, suffocating jealousy, the woman never left Ugay’s side for a single moment, choosing instead to watch him constantly.

I.

Mayda felt she could no longer endure the sleeplessness, the leaden sky heavy with grey clouds, or the absurdity of the last few hours. Suddenly, she jerked the steering wheel to the left, pulling into the rest stop across the road. Lightning flashed. Mayda began to count in her mind: one-two-three-four-fi… Thunder rumbled. “About seventeen hundred meters…” she thought. This calculation was nothing more than a habit inherited from her father during childhood—measuring the distance to where lightning struck. “As if it’ll ever be of any use,” she muttered to herself. She paused to think; her father hadn’t really taught her anything else. Still, she remembered that her obsession with mathematics had begun with this useless piece of trivia. The desire to calculate everything—absolutely everything—had taken over her soul over time. Yet, a tiny mathematical error she had made at some point in her life was now sleeping soundly, completely passed out, in the passenger seat next to her. A deep gloom washed over her.

Feeling the urge to smoke for the very first time in her life, Mayda looked mournfully at the steam rising from the hood of the ’96 Audi A4 Quattro. With a sudden decision, she pushed the car’s cigarette lighter in, gently slid the silver case out of the upper pocket of Ugay’s military jacket, and took a cigarette.

“Mayda!” Ugay murmured in a deep, sleepy voice. Opening one eye slightly, he added, “The cigarette you’re about to smoke isn’t just tobacco.”

“Whatever the hell it is, I want it. Am I not allowed to smoke?” Mayda replied. She had never understood, nor had she ever grown accustomed to, how Ugay managed to watch her even when his eyes were closed.

“I was just warning you,” Ugay said, straightening up in his seat. “Are you still angry?”

“What do you think?” she snapped. “We got scammed in Mardin and lost all our money. We barely escaped those drug dealers with our lives. I had to give away all my jewelry just to get the police off our backs. Right now, we’re in Osmaniye, the fuel gauge is flashing red, we don’t even have a credit card, and I’m trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to get to Istanbul.” Exploding with rage, Mayda refused to let the tears welling up in her eyes fall. “OF COURSE I’M ANGRY, YOU IDIOT! I’M HERE BECAUSE OF YOU!” She began throwing wild, frantic punches and slaps at Ugay sitting beside her. Ugay sat motionless, taking the blows from the young woman in her mid-twenties. For a split second, he thought about defending himself, but then thought better of it.

His lip split and bleeding, Ugay knew Mayda was right. For over forty years, his life had been shaped by things going wrong. He believed God had a personal grievance against him, and he was well-accustomed to paying heavy prices for everything he did. Every single bit of it had happened because his plans collapsed, one by one. Ugay was the living sum of forty years of collapsed plans. The idea of buying cheap hashish from a war zone and selling it at a premium in a safe zone had seemed perfectly logical at first. He was supposed to strike a deal with a few special forces operatives and give them their cut. Now, he had hit rock bottom. He wiped the blood from his lip with the inside of his thumb.

“I’ll fix it. I won’t leave you here. I won’t leave you anywhere,” Ugay said. As he brought a cigarette to his mouth, the paper became stained with his own blood.

With a sharp click, the lighter popped out. Mayda took it, lit her cigarette, and after a few puffs, adjusted to inhaling without coughing. Ugay took the lighter from her hand, ignited the tip of his own cigarette until it glowed red, and filled the car’s interior with a thick cloud of smoke in a single breath. Mayda’s head was spinning. Another flash of lightning struck, followed by thunder before she could even count to one. Through the smoke inside the car and the steam rising from the hood, she thought she saw a crimson rift open across the sky alongside the lightning. The phrase “The womb of God!” flashed through her mind. She immediately repented, silently reciting three Ikhlas and one Fatiha prayers. As she opened the door to step out of the car, a white 2018 Passat 1.6 Highline pulled up right beside them.

II.

“The cliché about the killer returning to the scene of the crime has finally come true,” Mayda said. She was watching Ugay, who sat in the driver’s seat in his suit, his eyes fixed on the steam rising from the hood. The rattling of rain against the car’s roof was growing increasingly violent.

“Should we get something to eat?” Ugay asked. He tried to sound nonchalant, but he was gripping the steering wheel of the Passat so tightly his knuckles were white, as if he might rip it right out of the dashboard.

“No,” Mayda answered. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible. Please, hurry up.”

“Let’s finish our business here and head over to Antep. We can rest there for a few days.”

“So you can look at other women again?”

“Mayda, shut up!” Ugay snapped. Grabbing the briefcase from the back seat, he stepped out of the car in one swift motion, his attention instantly locked on the woman leaning against the front left door of the ’96 Audi next to them. As he turned up the collar of his overcoat and adjusted his clothes to shield himself from the downpour, he couldn’t take his eyes off the drenched woman. Even though the young woman looked strikingly familiar, he didn’t linger; wary of his wife, he hurried toward the facility, noticing with a chill that the place was entirely deserted.

III.

Ugay told Mayda, who was getting soaked outside, to get into the car, start the engine, and be ready to flee. Then, he tucked the pistol he had hidden in the seat upholstery into his waistband.

“I don’t think I’m in any condition to drive, Ugay.”

“We’ll be out of this in a minute. The adrenaline rushing through you then will give you enough juice to fly a plane,” Ugay said with his habitual, icy calmness.

Ugay’s eyes remained fixed on the man stepping out of the adjacent car. “If you’re walking into a closed, deserted place in this weather, leaving your wife in the car with a briefcase that valuable, there is absolutely a transaction taking place,” Ugay thought to himself. “I just hope this guy is the seller. Otherwise, we’re going to have to hunt for a buyer for a briefcase full of god-knows-what.”

Seeing the old man emerge from the door carrying a different briefcase, Ugay watched for a brief moment to see if anyone was following him. Turning to Mayda, he said, “Get ready! We’re getting out of this.” He stepped out of the car and quickly approached the old man. The young man and the old man, who had turned up the collar of his beige overcoat, stood beneath the crimson rift bleeding across the sky. Ugay muttered to himself, “There’s something deeply bizarre about this,” as he pulled the trigger. The bullet entered through the old man’s beard into his neck, causing a plume of smoke to escape from his mouth.

Stepping out of the Passat in absolute shock, the old woman began to shriek and scream, frantically trying to bring back her husband murdered before her eyes, crying out to the empty night for help.

Neither the sound of the gunshot nor the woman’s desperate cries could be heard over the roaring downpour. After killing the man, Ugay snatched the briefcase, threw himself into the Audi, and managed to utter a single word to the young woman beside him: “Drive.”

3 days later…

The funeral was held with the attendance of many figures from the underworld.

“I saw the person who killed him,” Mayda was saying, completely catatonic. “The one who killed him was Ugay’s youth… and the one who drove him away was my own youth…”

“Mrs. Mayda, you are exhausted. Please, take these medications. They will help you sleep,” said the young nurse in the white lab coat. Mayda softly stroked the girl’s face, and without protest, placed the pills on her tongue.

Years later…