He phoned her just after her class let out. “I won’t be able to pick you up,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m at home. I just walked through the door,” he said. “I ran into some trouble on the way home from dropping you off.”
“That was over two hours ago,” she said. “What kind of trouble?”
“Well,” he said, “I had just left campus, had made it back on the freeway, then had headed north to the off-ramp. Then some son-of-a-bitch in front of me slammed on his brakes and—”
“Did you crash my car?”
“No, let me finish. This guy hit the brakes, I swerved, honked the horn and yelled out the window, ‘Hey—What the fuck are you doing?!’ The guy flipped me off and he began swerving towards me. So I swerved back, got a little closer to him than he had me, down the street there.”
“What, on Bay Ave?”
“Yes,” he said, “On Bay Ave. Then we were running through stop signs, I was ready to call the motherfucker out; have him pull over and stomp the guts out of his soul. I‘m telling you, the guy just had it in for me, then he flipped it around, pissed me off something awful. I wanted his blood. So there we were, racing down the street, down Bay Ave, fucking leading, giving chase, eyeballing each other, warming up to something, and I happened to be in the lane of oncoming traffic.”
“Did you fucking crash my car?!”
“No,” he said, “I already told you that. But I was ready to kill this guy, I was rabid.”
“Why did you get in the other lane?” she asked, “What if a cop had seen you?”
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “We sped by a police cruiser that was parked down a side street. He threw the lights on, the sirens, and before I knew it he was all over me. He pulled me over instead of the asshole who started all of this.”
“Well,” she said, “You were in the other lane! What the fuck were you thinking? What if there had been an oncoming car? You could have crashed!”
“Relax,” he said. “There was no crash, no harm, no foul.”
“But you said he pulled you over.”
“Well, yeah, he did pull me over.”
“You don’t have a fucking license!” she was nearly in hysterics, “What did you do?”
“That’s where the real trouble comes in,” he said.
“Oh, great,” she said, “What fucking happened?”
“The officer took the keys,” he said, “Threw them on the roof of the car. ‘Step out of the car, slow,’ he said. Officer Schipper, was his name. He had me go through a list of field sobriety tests.”
“You weren’t drinking, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t, you know that, but he thought I had been and I was all fired up from that fucker getting a rise out of me. So Officer Schipper ran every test on me—everything from walking a straight line with my head aimed up to reciting the alphabet—odd letters first, then even letters, then had me hold my foot twelve inches from the ground and close my eyes, count to thirty—”
“I get it,” she said, “I get it. What happened to my car?”
“I’m getting there,” he said. “Officer Schipper started writing me all kinds of citations—driving without a license, no insurance, the car being registered to someone who isn’t me . . . I‘m telling you, he was pulling the cuffs out, ready to slap all kinds of shit on me, take me away.”
“He didn’t take my car, did he?”
“Well, see that’s where it gets interesting. I remembered I had that cash in my pocket . . . “
“The five hundred I gave you to cover the rent?!” she screamed. “You didn’t do what I think you did, did you?!”
“I paid him off!” he said. “I dropped the five hundred, and he let me go, off the record, Scot-free babe, you should have seen me in action, a real pro I was at it. I tell you, he even started making up a story I could give another officer if I were pulled over again! Something about a medical emergency code that only the cops know about. He flipped a one-eighty! He just smiled there, counting the cash, he just let me go! I think it worked out—”
“You fucking idiot!” she shouted, “How are we going to pay for this months rent now?! Always pulling shit like this! You never think anything through! I’m so fucking sick of you!”
“Babe, wait,” he said. “I could figure something out. I can sell some of my DVD’s online, then a couple books, maybe drop some clothes off over at Injected Styles for a few extra bucks. We still have another week before the rent’s due. Even then, they always give us another week, a grace-period. Don’t be upset doll, on the bright side your car—”
She hung up. Furious.
“—wasn’t impounded . . .” He looked at the phone, then closed it. He listened to the sounds of the building around him. The other apartments were quiet. He unclenched his teeth, scratched his head. He walked into the kitchen, pulled the scotch from the cupboard, poured a drink, watched the afternoon sun bleeding in from between the blinds, and waited until the bus dropped her off.
Author: Lawrence Goodwin
