the cheese stands alone

You Want Fried With That?

This week's Friday Five has stirred up a car memory.
Settle down, children, and I'll tell you the story about how Auntie LeeAnn almost killed a man.

A long long time ago, in a place called Appalachia, there lived a lady who was at the end of her rope, having just divorced her second loser husband, an impulse buy who turned out to be a violent alcoholic with a psychotic family.
The lady needed a job. And the lady, being the idiot she was, thought she needed a boyfriend.
In a series of negotiations that are too lenghty to go into now, let's just cut to the chase and say the lady found a boyfriend, married him, went into business with him, and discovered that he too was a raving alky.
Obviously, that idiot lady grew up to be me.

I decided a few years into things to leave the business and go back to college. One of the few benefits of being married to a black-out drunk is a lot of promises get made in the heat of babble. Most often, I could get Artie to make good on whatever he'd promised.
This time, it was the promise to get me a car.

After a few shopping trips, he found a nearly-new Renault Fuego. At the time, it was the hottest car I'd ever had. It was turbo! I didn't have a clue at the time as to what "turbo" meant, but it sounded good. It also had the best sound system I'd had in a car. My previous way was to jury-rig a boombox to the car speakers. I was more in love with the car than I was with Artie.

One evening, I went on a Girls Night Out with some friends. When they dropped me off, it was late and I was tired and I went straight up to bed. I dragged myself out of the sack the next morning, planning to load up darling Fuego with the laundry and hit the washateria.
When I went out to the curb, I noticed Fuego was sitting kind of funny. I tiptoed with dread around to the driver's side and discovered why. The entire side, from front bumper to rear, was indented about a foot and a half. The tires were gone- shredded completely off. The rims were sitting bent on the ground.
It was an ex-parrot.

After I picked up the laundry off the street, I stormed back into the house.
Artie was lying in the bathtub, washcloth over his eyes, soaking away his hangover.
"Art?" I said calmly. "Did you have any...uh, car trouble last night?"
"Mmm" he grunted. "Running a little rough. You might wanna get that checked."
"I did check" I said through gritted teeth. "You killed my car."
"Mmm?"
I picked up the hairdryer from the vanity and turned it on. I dangled it by one finger over the tub and Artie's bald spot.
"You.... killed..... my.... CAR!!" I howled.
Art peeked out from under the washcloth.
"Hey, you pissed?"
I waggled the hair dryer. "You killed my car. And now I'm going to kill you."
I've never seen testicles retract so fast. It was like a pair of wet groundhogs diving into a burrow.
I stood there for half an hour, wailing and detailing the damage to the car and the damage I was going to do to him. Finally I wound down, turned off the hairdryer, and stomped off. We never metioned the incident again, but I noticed he began locking the door when he'd bathe.

Eventually the Fuego was repossessed, because Artie had the notion that if you couldn't drive it, you didn't have to pay for it. I was young and dumb and didn't know any better.
I learned fast.

Artie's gone now. I heard after we split up that he lost his driver's license and had to hitchhike everywhere.
Carma.

Posted by LeeAnn at October 6, 2003 05:00 AM