He got into his car, started the engine and thinking about what he had just heard in the toilet, he drove forward.
Meanwhile, not far from the cafe where Jasper was now heading, Everett picked up his suit from the dry washhouse.
"Don't you think the sun is shining brighter today than usual?" asked the elderly woman he'd known almost since he was a child. She had, after all, washed his clothes more than once and not only that, but also carpets and cushions.
Looking out the window and closing his eyes against the blinding daylight, he nodded but said nothing.
"Say hello to your wife and children."
"Yes, I will."
"Good luck with everything," the woman suddenly said, handing him a heart shaped key chain.
"What is it?"
"My daughter has bought too many Valentine's Day gifts and now, I give these keyrings to my regular customers."
As he picked up the little plastic heart, Everett remembered all those Valentine's Days when he had given something like this to his wife. But those memories did not bring with them happiness, only mild disappointment.
"Love, a very important thing in our lives. Even more important than stability".
"Wait a minute. Why did you say that suddenly?" Everett asked, but she didn't have time to answer as the door opened and a whole crowd of people came back to get their clothes.
All he had to do was walk away, pondering what she had just said.
"Why would she say that all of a sudden?" he asked, putting the plastic heart in his trouser pocket, and starting the engine.
The sun was indeed shining brighter than usual this day. Maybe it was the fact that there was not a single cloud in the sky, or maybe it was the fact that the nights had become much darker than usual. Or maybe it was the many buildings and skyscrapers whose windows reflected those rays too much; creating glare and flare every time the car turned a corner.
The sun's rays were hiding behind the buildings, but then they would come back.
Trying to see where he was going, Everett opened his eyes wide and even covered the sun with his hand. But all he could see were houses, people, and finally a traffic light.
Stopping, he glanced angrily up at the sky, hoping to see a single cloud. But it even seemed to him as if the sun's rays were stretching across the sky.
"What is it?" he asked, trying to cover the windscreen with newspaper, leaving enough room to see the road ahead. But as soon as he drove on, that newspaper fell, again allowing the sun to blind him. Now, it was shining directly in front of him.
Continuing to drive and making sure no one was on the road, and everyone was just driving forward, he opened the glove compartment, hoping to find some sunglasses in there. But all he could find were gum, lipstick, candy, and some papers with physics formulas.
Perhaps it was when he found his wife's sunglasses that he didn't notice the appearance of the car.
Grabbing his glasses in the shape of butterfly wings and trying to put them on quickly, he wanted to stop, but it was too late. For the other car that appeared from behind corner, Jasper was also blinded by the sunlight that was reflected by the skyscraper window.
Sunglasses shaped like butterfly wings flew upwards, leaving the car from the window. Small candies and red lipstick flew straight into his face, hovering in the air for a moment. And those sunbeams continued to reflect in all the windows like never before, like a bunny bouncing from one building to another.
Two cars crashed into each other. There was a loud sound, to which death with a scythe immediately came running and it was followed by other loud sounds of a police car and an ambulance.
Picking up those sunglasses from the ground, the little girl in the red dress held them out to her mother, who stared in horror at the two cars that seemed to embrace each other.
"Mama are they dead?" the little girl asked as the car door opened and two ambulance men tried to get a man, or maybe just the semblance of a man, out of there.
"Don't look."
Closing her eyes, the girl's mother continued to stand and stare until two men were pulled out of both cars, who fortunately were unharmed.
"What happened?"
"An accident. Two cars crashed into each other."
"That's terrible. Are they alive?"
"No one seems to have survived. Look at the state of their cars."
"Too bad about the car. But the drivers aren't. They must have been drinking and driving. It's because of irresponsible people like that that all our children are in danger."
"Tell me, are they alive?"
"They are alive!"
"Please step away. The cars could explode. Move away! Get the children out of here! And stop filming everything!"
But the more the police tried to stop the flood of surprised people, the more they wanted to see the bodies of dead people and get the whole thing on camera.
"Did you see the head lying there!" someone shouted, and the whole crowd raised their hands that were holding their telephones.
"There's no head there!"
"Put the phones down!"
"Officer, tell me, are they dead?"
"They're alive. Stop standing there."
Trying to stop people, the police officers cordoned off the scene with nothing more than tape, which to everyone's surprise managed to stop surprised people with cameras.
"I saw one of them get his head blown off! I'm not lying!" someone said again, trying to prove a point to everyone.
"That's enough. They've already been taken away in an ambulance. They're alive."
"What do you mean, they're alive? You wanted them dead? What kind of people are these? Where's your compassion? It could have happened to any of you. All you think about is social media. Go away! Nothing to see here," the man with the big dog muttered.
"It's none of your business! It's not for you to judge us!"
"Do you think it's OK to film everything on camera like this? They could die!"
"Officer, what happened?"
But despite the displeasure of the police officers and the man, more and more people gathered around the two wrecked cars, and nothing could stop them. Meanwhile, an ambulance had already taken the two victims to hospital.