When thirty seconds had passed without anything happening,

Ove put the car into neutral, opened the door, and stepped out of the Saab with the engine still running.

Stood in the road and peered ahead with his hands on his hips, filled with a kind of Herculean irritation:

the way Superman might have stood if he’d got stuck in a traffic jam.

The man in the Mercedes gave a blast on his horn. Idiot, thought Ove. In the same moment the traffic started moving.

The cars in front of Ove moved off. The car behind him, a Volkswagen, beeped at him.

The driver waved impatiently at Ove. Ove glared back. He got back into the Saab and leisurely closed the door.

“Amazing what a rush we’re in,” he scoffed into the rearview mirror and drove on.

At the next red light he ended up behind the Mercedes again. Another line. Ove checked his watch and took a left turn down a smaller, quiet road.

This entailed a longer route to the shopping center, but there were fewer traffic lights.

Not that Ove was mean. But as anyone who knows anything knows, cars use less fuel if they keep moving rather than stopping all the time.

And, as Ove’s wife often says: “If there’s one thing you could write in Ove’s obituary, it’s ‘At least he was economical with gas.’”