Melna had a huge afro that barely fit in the car next to me. We drove up the street in silence. “That’s the one,” she said suddenly. I looked over and saw a few teenagers standing by a liquor store. They didn’t look wholesome but still, they were teenagers. She looked at me. “So stop the car!” she demanded. I brought the car to an abrupt stop, kind of at an angle in the middle of the street and jumped out, running over to where the kids stood. One took off running but the other one, the one I assumed she meant, looked up and braced himself. I took him out with one punch. Melna shouted something over to me from the car. “What?” I shouted back.

“Keep hitting him!” she shouted over, leaning out the car window. I looked back at the kid and was glad to see him try to scramble to his feet because that gave me more of an excuse to pummel him again, this time knocking him out for good.

When I got back in the car I pulled out a cigarette and headed uptown. “Wait, there’s more!” she said. “More what?” I asked, pretending not to understand.

“More guys. We gotta find ‘em!” she answered.

“Maybe after a burrito,” I stated, angling over to the lane that lead to the expressway. “No, they’ll be gone then!” she told me. Angrily I whipped the car around, barely missing a parked SUV.

“Okay. Where the fuck are they?” I said.

“Listen Ronnie, you don’t have to help me if you don’t want to. I’ll just do it myself,” she said and turned to the window.

“I said, where are these guys?” I asked her, taking a rewarding drag on my cigarette. She smiled. “There’s one, for starters.” She pointed at a middle-aged guy carrying some groceries.

“That’s not one of them,” I said. ‘Yeah it is,” she said, looking hurt again, or maybe fake-hurt, I wasn’t sure. I stared at the guy. “That was the ring-leader,” she said. “He said he was going to rape me.”

“All right, if you say so,” I said. I jumped out of the car, throwing down my cigarette. I went over and hit this guy in the back of the head with a tire-iron, which turned out to be a pretty effective weapon. The groceries went everywhere, and I helped myself to one of the peaches that rolled on the sidewalk. “You want one?” I called back. “No, come on!” she said. “Let’s go!”

I took my time walking back to the car, eating the peach. “Come on, you idiot!” she said. This actually changed things for me, because no one calls me that. I got in and reached over and opened her door. “What they hell are you doing?” she demanded but then I quite literally kicked her out of the car. She landed hard on the asphalt. Then I pulled away and drove a little before reaching over and shutting her door. She shouted things after me but I really didn’t care what she was saying at that point. In fact the more of a scene she made the faster away I drove. That was when I heard the sirens. I didn’t care about them either. Hell, I’d been through this drill before. I just ate my peach and ran the red light, singing a song to myself as I went. Time to go, it went, although actually it was in German. Zeit zu geh’n, zu geh’n, zu geh’n, zu geh’n, I sang, and cheered up instantly. In fact, that was the happiest I’d felt all day.

Copyright © 2008. All Rights Reserved.