Trash talk

One of our most fascinating skills, as a people, is the ability to delegate responsibility. I suppose we’re justified every so often; the power failures are the government’s problem, the patchwork roads entirely the municipality’s fault, water shortages? How could we possibly help those?

Trash on the road, for instance, is definitely somebody else’s problem.

Enter the Ferrari, screaming through the streets of Broummana and breaking every moral driving code invented, for lack of legal ones. By the time they’d moved from my rear-view and into a happy collision path I had learned to hate hot rubber, young drivers and the summer hotrod season in general. But rather than ruin a beautiful day, I over-clocked my air-conditioner and blasted some heavy metal.

The blond in front of me clearly did not care to self-medicate.

It would’ve been tolerable too, had we not gotten stuck in traffic together; the louder their bass got the more creatively I wanted to hurt them. This was a sentiment the blond did share, but like me she didn’t bother moving, even when the kids barked at women walking by. Actually barked. Wuff.

Then they tossed out a small garbage bag.

She smiled, the way women smile when they’re about to skewer you, the way the barbarians of old smiled at dead boars, slowly roasting over the pit.

They turned down their music as she approached the car: ‘Can I help you gorgeous?’

‘Probably not, but please help yourself to the road.’

‘I’m sorry?’

She opened the trash bag and dumped its contents onto the driver’s lap; whatever was in there seemed splashy, and caused him a great deal of distress; he loudly took his liberty in describing her mother.

‘I just wanted to tell you,’ she continued, ‘every woman in the country understands that a green license plate means you could never afford this car; we’re smart like that. So smart in fact that we can tell the size of your penis from said car, and Ferraris rank way, way lower than, say, Hondas.’

Mildly concerned about her, but more interested in seeing the boys’ full expressions, I got out of my car and stood by its door.

She kept going: ‘I live in Broummana, and I will make it my mission to describe you to every girl I know and mention how horrible you are in bed; please, feel free to drive around and bark at more of them, maybe you’ll get lucky. But if I ever catch you littering again, I will rip off the ear your mother should’ve pulled when you hit puberty, and make you pick it off the floor with your teeth; do you understand?’

I suspect they’ve never in their lives understood anything quite as clearly. Visibly more relaxed but still smelling of brimstone she turned towards her car, and stopped to glare at me.

‘I never litter, I swear!’ I told her, ‘and I drive a Honda.’