You can see that the guy in the car next to you is avoiding turning in your direction. He faces forward with such rigidity, it seems unnatural. You're not sure why it bothers you or why you take it as a challenge, but you notice that he's sitting very still as he waits in the lane next to you, waiting for the red light to change.
You and your friends don't hide the fact that you are all staring because his discomfort empowers you all, and it's funny. It grows hilarious by the second. It grows five times funnier because you start to debate peripheral vision. It grows ten times funnier because he reaches for his phone to talk into it, and, even if he is truly talking to someone, you all decide that he's bluffing. He's a big bluffer with his bluffer hair and his bluffer Jeep and his bluffer way of avoiding you. You decide that he uses all Apple products and judge him for it (never mind that you do).
So by the time, Judy suggests that you make funny faces, a suggestion you jokingly posed early on, you take it, because you yourself are not a bluffer.
You do the basics. You put open palmed hands near your temples similar to a moose with antlers. You swing them to and fro. You stick out your tongue. You make a mask out of upside down A-okay hands. You all laugh at the possibility of him looking over, and in the back of your mind, you wonder at how long this red light is.
It's when you start to do cartoon eyes with fake binoculars--okay, your hands cupped around your eyes as your drag them away from your face and bring them back, in the similar fashion when cartoon males see a set of gams they like--that he suddenly turns to you, and you make eye contact suddenly. You're a deer in headlights.
And you hit the deck, laughing.
You wait a moment, lying on your side, hidden away from the window. You wait either for the light to change or for someone to say something. The latter happens, and Judy assures you that he's laughing too. You all laugh about that, but, a thought strikes you. He's not allowed to have the last word.
You sit up and start over. You decide on a dance motif: jazz hands, chicken dance, Macarena, raising roofs. He catches you again swinging your arms, before looking forward. You can tell that he doesn't want to smile. He's back to his rigidity and bluffing.
When the light turns green, he drives away, way ahead of your car. He doesn't leave you a chance, but that's pretty okay, because he's doing it out of fear, because you've won this round.
Photo by Thomas Saliot via Saatchi Online Artist