[heck of a title coming from a Delawarian eh?] 

via: first magazine

‘WHO
Lisa Davis – ‘Nail Technician to the Stars’.

WHERE
Outside Ruggie’s salon at Clock Tower Plaza, Halfway Tree.

TRADEMARK
Free-hand design, putting stripes on people’s nails – swishy-swishy.

HOW MUCH TO HAVE NAILS LIKE YOUR’S?
$1,200.

WHATS’ SPECIAL ABOUT YOUR JOB?
I can’t live without people, and they’re always passing through my workstation.

YOU LIKE PINK?
No, it reminds me of my boyfriend’s people, they live in a bubble.

DO YOU GO OUT?
All the time but not uptown.’

this is not like ‘mob’ faux fam who just lewis and clark everything — give credit where credit is due right?

tell them due a feature on Lisa Davis .

‘Bredrin, yuh know mi motto when mi a drive,’ he dismissed. ‘100 pon di straight, 120 roun’ di bend. Stop bawl.’ Couton continued to redline along poorly lit roads in dire need of rehabilitation while loud bangs intermittently rattled the car’s structure as we smashed through potholes. ‘Better yuh slow down yah man,’ said his brother from the back seat. ‘Him ‘fraid of the hard driving.’

As if he wasn’t. Tired of my complaints, Couton abruptly screeched to a halt the other side of Old Harbour. ‘Jah know, mi lose offa yuh bredrin,’ he cackled. ‘Mi ‘ave you as big badman and you a bawl bout mi driving. Gwan inna di back of di car,’ instructing his brother to swap places with me.

Sitting in the passenger seat was like being in the front car of the scariest white-knuckle rollercoaster on the planet, but sitting in the back provided little respite. From there I tried to employ all types of diversionary tactics conversation, questions, arguments, but quickly decided against talking altogether, as it only caused Couton to turn round when he wanted to emphasise a point.

A spliff I thought, let me roll him a spliff, maybe that will slow him down a little. I soon discovered it an impossible task to crush out the weed without spillage, harder still to load the Rizzla. Determined not to go out without a fight I decided to improvise with the two rear seat belts, wrapping them both around my body and positioned myself horizontally on the back seat, bracing myself for impact.

100 per cent convinced the car was to crash that night, and having exhausted all means of trying to avert disaster (including praying for God to dispatch an angel to lodge itself under the gas pedal), an eerie calm washed over me. My thoughts fell on my family and friends. Speeding through the Clarendon countryside the car seemed to be operating in separate halves with the front wheels kept on the road for the most part, while the back two were busy trying not to give up as they slid across dirt and gravel on either side of the road beneath me every time we cornered.

I wanted to vomit.

Somehow we managed to reach Spur Tree Hill. I could just see Couton’s widening eyes in the rearview mirror, a devilish grin spreading across his face. He began to regale me with stories of how dangerous the corners were on the downside of the hill, how many people had crashed and died there. As we hurtled down towards a particularly acute hairpin, Couton, true to his MO, still hadn’t applied the brakes.

‘COOOOOUTON!!’ I bawled out as the car shot into the corner and began to lift off the ground as he pulled hard on the steering wheel. With the rubber of only one wheel still clinging to the road, we miraculously rounded it, before the car slammed back down onto the other 3 tires, aftershocks tossing the car violently from side to side.

‘BUMBOCLOOOOOOOOOTH’ I screamed at him. He laughed.

Slowing to get last minute directions to the venue, I began to see light at the end of the tunnel we were nearing the venue, we were going to make it. Entering the showground I was leaping joyously from the car before it had come to a halt. Thankful for divine intervention, I knelt and kissed terra firma.

As Couton made his way to the stage, all I wanted to see was the Nissan Sunny trundle through the gates, which it duly did around 45 minutes later. Leaning in through the window I plucked the key from the ignition, and placed it firmly in my pocket.

‘A dis mi a drive go back a Town,’ I said to my second with measurable conviction.

As soon as Couton uttered his last line on stage, I was pulling out the entrance, heading for Kingston, gleefully in charge of my own speed. I chugged, at a leisurely pace, back up Spur Tree hill, glancing every few seconds into my rearview mirror, expecting to see Couton rocketing up the hill doing the one-wheel-wheelie. No sign of him.

We stopped next somewhere in Manchester, but all we could see were piles of produce and crocus bags stuffed with coconuts, bundles of cane atop and tired faces of country people waiting for the bus to market. No sign of Couton.

Fatigue peaked in me and I continued on to Town, concluding Couton must have stopped for refreshment or a spot of female companionship. Shortly after daybreak I pulled up on Upper Mall Road and fell asleep. 20 minutes later I was awoken from slumber by a loud knock on the driver’s window.

‘Desmond dem crash!’ announced his sister, ‘Dem deh a Mandeville hospital.’ In the aftermath, a CVM news crew reported live from the hospital. Couton’s brother’s leg was broken and his nephew, who took my seat, took the brunt of the accident, with some of the front of his head dropping out, along with a broken limb or two.

Couton, of course, came out the least injured, with just a minor injury to his knee. In the words of my grandfather he could fall in a pile of horse shit and come up smelling of roses. A Gleaner photographer snapped the crash site a roundabout on the Winston Jones Highway, the one with the gully in the middle, which is precisely where the car rolled to a stop.

It resembled a can of sardines. ‘Ungle dead people alone fi come outta that car,’ observed a bystander, clearly forgetting that only a Ninja can kill a Ninja.