The BMW was sleek, white, and snappy, and it was nose to
butt with my car like a greyhound sniffing a portly black lab. There was about a half inch of space between
the two, and there appeared to be paint-bare patches on my bumper. Rats.
Leaving Dave under a streetlamp at the curb with the cars, I
returned to the warmth and light of the pub where we’d just had dinner to ask our
friend Aaron, the bartender, to see if one of the patrons owned the BMW. At his announcement, a slender woman, age
thirty or so, raised her hand.
I approached her and said, “Your car is parked right behind
mine, and I think you scratched my bumper.”
In my mental re-enactment, my demeanor was sheepish, maybe even
apologetic.
With her pale face set in indignation beneath a mane of
flowing white-blond hair, she rose from her stool, adjusted her short, tight
skirt, and teetered behind me on shimmery scarlet pumps with four-inch
heels. Sputtering at her side was her
similarly attired friend, an exotic, statuesque brunette. “Seriously?” the brunette fumed, “We literally walked in ten minutes ago.”
With arms flailing as if to dismiss me, a fly most annoying,
the blond spewed denials as we walked past dark storefronts down the city sidewalk
to Dave and the cars. “My car, it was
very expensive and has cameras and sensors everywhere. I did not hit your car. Impossible.”
When she spotted my cozy C-Max, she erupted. “My car did not hit your piece-of-shit car.” Ouch.
Having moved the C-Max forward, Dave crouched between the
two vehicles so he could inspect the front bumper of the BMW.
While I could not place the women’s accents, they raged with
an abundance of Mediterranean passion as their fury mounted. The brunette stood square before me, the nail
of her raised middle finger as fiery red as her painted lips. “You f*@*ing bitch,” she said, drawing out
the vowel to a scornful beetch and nailing the “f” hard through white
teeth and lower lip, the “ing” resonating in the back of her throat. “You totally ruined our night. It’s my friend’s birthday, you beetch. We literally just sat down.”
And I, literally, just spoke to them. How could they be so angry so quickly?
“Relax, ladies, relax,” Dave said. “Maybe it wasn’t
your car,” for the hood of the BMW was pristine. Not a mark.
But in this brief span of minutes, the ladies were past hearing, way
past relaxing.
“You ugly, old, f*@*ing
beetch,” Blondie screeched, giving me
a close-up look at the exquisite quality of the manicure on her middle finger. Her voice menacing, she warned, “I am
calling my husband! You have no idea who
we are. He is going to kill you.”
I hoped this was hyperbole, but given her ire, I wasn’t sure. I pitied the husband at the end of the line
as she screamed into the phone. “These
two f*@*ing, ugly, old people say I hit their piece-of-shit car, which I did
not!” The poor man heard this score in a
thundering, repetitious tirade that rose in volume accompanied by a spontaneous
choreography of waving arms and tossing hair.
No doubt, he was familiar with it.
“It wasn’t your car!”
Dave repeated as she stabbed her phone to end the call.
“I want you dead,” she yelled, “But the baby’s sleeping, and
my husband can’t come.”
Dave and I shared a quick look. Omigod. This woman had a child. That poor baby. Where did this anger come from? What had happened in these women’s lives to build
this repertoire of invective? How can that baby thrive in an unpredictable
environment where a minor annoyance triggers such rage?
“Please. Get out of
the road," I entreated. “You’re gonna
get hit.”
“Don’t talk to me, you f*@*ing, ugly, old beetch,” she snarled.
Despite my blessed lack of exposure to anything like this
before, ever, I was oddly impervious
to their insults. They bounced off like
arrows stopped by a force field, and I just wanted it to end. But the ladies, apparently, did not.
Finally Dave succeeded in penetrating Blondie’s
wrath-induced deafness and she stood triumphant before her car. “You see?
You see! Not a mark! I did not hit your piece-of-shit car! Call the police! You ruined my birthday for nothing, you f*@*ing…….”
Wearily, I chimed in on the chorus, “ugly, old beetch… I know… but your birthday doesn’t have to be
ruined. Go finish your drinks…”
So. Whoever tapped my
car was gone, leaving the space open for the BMW. Had they wished, the ladies could have fixed
us with baleful looks and flounced back inside with as much flourish and sass
as those tippy heels would allow. But their wrath was whirling around us and
could not be restrained. Against their
cutting cacophony, as he has with
countless angry children at school, Dave kept saying calmly and quietly, “Tell
me when you’re ready to listen. Just tell
me when you’re ready to listen...”
Unlike those children, however, the ladies were not.
The brunette was in my face, her middle finger erect, teeth
bared. Too easily, I could imagine those
red nails raking across my cheek, so I stepped back as she snapped, “Apologize,
you beetch! You interrupted us! Literally, we had just sat down!”
Yes. Yes.
Literally. I know.
She glared into my eyes and bit off her words, “F*@*ing beetch!
You were so mean, so nasty…”
Wait, what? I was mean? We had entered an alternate universe in which
venom was ample and words were limited, the same ones circling round and round,
and I just wanted to go home. But I also needed confirmation and a reality
check.
Somehow, I slipped away and scampered down the sidewalk and
into the pub, abandoning poor Dave to the harridans. I knew the men who were sitting at the bar next to the
two glasses and empty stools vacated by the ladies. I said, “Just checking guys. Did you see me tell those women about the
scratches on my car? Was I nasty?”
They looked at me like I was crazy and said yes, they’d seen
the exchange, and no, I wasn’t nasty.
Aaron, the bartender asked, “Are they still railing on out there?”
“Oh yeah. It’s bad. The blond called her husband so he would come
kill us, but he’s too busy babysitting.”
Aaron rolled his eyes and said, “Sorry this is happening to
you. Bridgeport can be crazy. I’m calling the police.”
When I returned to my beleaguered husband, he was telling
the women that since there was no problem with the car, they could return to
the bar to enjoy each other’s delightful company and their drinks. The blond
was shrieking at him while the brunette tried to convince her that Dave was handsome
and nice; it was the f*@*ing beetch that was the problem. Blondie was of the mind that his choice of
vile girlfriend tainted him as well.
“She’s my wife,
actually,” he said with a fond smile, perhaps hoping to raise me in their
esteem. “My wife of 42 years.”
“Whatever. Beetch…” sneered Blondie. The good news is, words lose meaning when endlessly
repeated.
“Look,” I said. “Your
drinks are still on the bar. Go in and
enjoy them.”
The brunette cocked her head and wagged her index finger in
my face, giving her middle finger a brief rest.
“No! You ruined it! We literally
walked in….”
Good God! Again? “Yes, I know. Literally. Ten minutes before I interrupted you.” She did not think me clever in joining her
chorus and launched into such a litany of foul language and abuse that Dave
whipped out his phone to record it.
Blondie flew at him and shoved him against a pathetic sapling struggling
to survive in its bed of asphalt. Dave’s cell tumbled, and Blondie’s sequined
purse sailed to the sidewalk. “You can’t record her without permission!” she
howled. “She’s a model!” Dave, a paragon
of patience, spun around, finally pushed too far. Was he going to throttle her? I stepped in front of him, unsure, and he
backed away.
Relieved to have even a hint of respite from the head-on hatred,
I turned and bent to retrieve Dave’s phone, happily intact, as well as
Blondie’s purse. When I moved to hand it
to her, she snatched it back and snapped, “Beetch! Don’t touch me!”
Sigh. I’d had
enough. “Dave? Honey? Give it up.
I’m gonna sit on the curb. Come with me.”
“Your girlfriend?” said Blondie. “She’s a beetch….”
“My wife of 42 years,” again Dave tried. “Well, almost 42
years. Our anniversary’s in June. The 14th.”
“Whatever, she is such a….”
F*@*ing bitch. I know.
Ugly and old too. Tired as well. Omigod…
let this stop.
I will belabor here no more, although they did. It went on and on until a man I had just met
in the pub – a blessed soul – emerged to entice the ladies back inside. At his intervention, their anger melted miraculously
to damsels-in-distress tears. As the man
took the brunette’s arm to guide her back to the bar, she whimpered, “We are so
upset. That beetch was so nasty. She ruined my friend’s birthday! We had literally walked in ten minutes
before…. “
Deep breath. Lengthy
exhalation.
After they departed, Dave and I retreated with relief to the
refuge of my much-maligned C-Max and slumped into our seats to wait for the
police. “If they’d been men, I would’ve
smacked ‘em,” he said. We looked at each
other and shook our heads, so grateful that their burden of anger was not part
of our lives.
