Urban Annoyance
Don’t know if this is true, but it is amusing, headline from foxnews.com: “‘The View’ co-host Meghan McCain: I have a better chance of getting shot in DC than contracting COVID.”
Last night I had a dream that inspired a short story/rant, third in the past two months. Here’s the world premiere, second draft of Urban Annoyance, only a few minutes read:
Dom pulled his mail from the box and sorted through the three pieces. When he came to the last his butt puckered as it often did during the anxiety of putting on the golf course. The thin missive was from the DMV. Had he forgotten to renew his registration or license? His broad shoulders sagged as he rode the elevator. Once inside the apartment, he tore the letter open. It was a speeding ticket. He’d been clocked at 36 mph near P.S. 281 at 10:38 AM on 4/11. There were two color pictures, one of his plate, the other of the area. Not a soul was in sight. He muttered profanely.
Hardcore criminal is what you are, he thought ironically.
He’d never had an accident. Since the NYC speed limit had been lowered to 25, he took pains to go no faster than 29. He must have been hustling to catch the light at 24th Avenue. Although incensed, he knew there was nothing to be done. He was guilty. Big Brother had caught him in the act. It was another form of taxation, masked as a public safety measure to help cover the cost of the handouts politicians doled to those who elected them term after term. Just yesterday he’d had to bite his tongue when a traffic officer ticketed the car of a nice woman who worked in a nearby beauty parlor. There’d been only a few minutes left to the alternate side regulation. The street sweeper had passed long ago. He’d learned to wait until expiration ever since one of the creeps tried to nail him with six minutes remaining. While engaged in conversation with a neighborhood he happened to notice the guy reach for his electronic device. He hurried to the spot and asked what the problem was. The giuche smiled and left. Dom understood why some folks attacked the douche bags. He’d imagined putting his fist between the turd’s eyes, absurd, as he was at least 40 years older and no longer in fighting shape. It was exasperating, but he did not want to surrender the independence driving afforded. He was fine even on those rare instances he drove at night, as long as he was careful. His biggest problem was being unable to discern the speed bumps on blocks with which he was unfamiliar.
That night he had a dream that combined the terror of cognitive decline with the travails of auto ownership. Whenever out-of-towners asked what was the worst part of life in the city, he said: “Everything that has to do with owning a car.” He tried to piece the dream together: leaving his car double-parked, which he did only when at the wheel, engine idling; going to the DMV and getting confused; being helped by a woman, Pat Fortunato, who had worked in the human resources department of their employer, for which he’d worked for 25 years. He wondered if she were still alive. She was older than him. And that brought him to thoughts of mortality. Recently he considered leaving the door unlocked whenever he was home so it wouldn’t have to be broken down if he passed away suddenly. He would tell only Luis, the Super, as stand-up a man as there ever was.
My thanks to the kind folks who donated and bought books on this picture perfect day. Here’s what sold: a pictorial on Chinese porcelain, Driven By Eternity: Make Your Life Count Today & Forever by John Bevere, Read It and Weep by Jenn McKinlay, The Street Lawyer by John Grisham, a huge dictionary, Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen, and a YA novel whose title escapes me. Should have written it down.
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