“This place is filthy”, she moaned.
He opened his eyes and spoke, “You clean it if you don’t like it as a matter of fact why don’t you take that Taxi that you
were talking about last night”, then pulled the pillow over his head.
She grabbed her purse and he could hear her opening desk drawers in the other room, she found his keys and
headed for the door, he jumped out of bed and chased after her.
The arch of his foot pressed against the curve of her ass and caressed it more beautiful than her back against his
belly, the force of his leg made her neck snap back. She was out the door, he was now drunk, blacked out and alone.
She slammed his car into reverse and punched the throttle. The car wasn’t in reverse but in first, the left head light
shattered and bent the tool rack inside the garage. With vengeance she started slamming through the gears. When
the linkage fell into reverse she popped the clutch and in whiplash her hands flew from the steering wheel, the car
shot out of the garage. She kept slamming through gears. This time it ground into first and the car shot across the
neighbor’s lawn and she flew down the road.
She wouldn’t quit. She went back to the apartment and went in through the back door. He was unconscious laying
with the pillow over his head.
“I fucked up your car,” she said then threw his keys at him. They flew over his head and smashed through the
window. He sat up in his bed and just stared at the ceiling. Now she was screaming, the double Vodka’s were on fire
coming out of her mouth. She ripped off the ring that he had made her and spun it across the room, it connected right
under his nose.
He stood up, “quit screaming. You never gave a fuck about me.” He put his head out the window and could see his
keys laying a story below shinning with the shattered glass.
Her screams got louder and higher in pitch.
The neighbor was used to the arguing, he stood on his porch and listened. “Should I call the cops, is he hitting her,
should I mind my own business?” The neighbor lit a cigarette not knowing that she had just taken out a large part of
his lawn and had ran over his sons tricycle destroying it.
“Fuckin’, ass, you, shit and…” her fury and alcohol made it impossible to speak in recognizable form.
In a calm, slow voice he begged, “Will you please shut up?”
Then her screams broke his calm, he ran up to her and pointed at the broken window.
He whispered through his teeth, “You will wake up the neighbors, just shut your fuckin’ mouth”.
The veins in her neck tightened and she screamed, “Fuck the neighbors!”
With his left hand he grabbed a fist full of hair at the back of her head and his right hand covered her mouth. He
threw her down on the bed and put all his weight on top of her.
“Shut your mouth”, he repeated his lips touching her ear.
Her mouth locked down and bit through the bridge of skin between his thumb and forefinger. He jumped off of her, his
blood dripped down her face.
He knew he had to leave. He walked out of the bedroom and she followed him whispering, “Where are you going?”
He turned back into the bedroom.
She was back to screaming, “what the fuck are you doing?”
He pushed the bedroom door shut, she put all her weight against it on the other side. With his last push the bottom of
the door caught her big toe and ripped the toenail off of her left foot. He turned the lock on the door.
Now insane she pounded on the door, “I’m calling the fucking cops, I’m calling the fucking cops, do you hear me?”
She examined her foot, “You ripped my toenail off, God damn it.”
He opened the bedroom window and crawled out feet first. He fell from the first story. His right leg hit hard and his left
foot almost gripped but his momentum pushed his weight forward and his palms hit the gravel. The sharp rocks pulled
his skin back and embedded themselves into his hands.
He could still hear her screaming up stairs. He walked around the side of the apartment and picked up his keys. He
walked past his smashed up car but didn’t look at it, he walked another mile, crawled into some bushes between two
houses and feel asleep.
She wouldn’t quit, “If you don’t open the door I swear to God I’m calling the cops.”
The neighbor already did.
-Charlie McGovern
October 2005
Soledad, California