“No, goddamit, this isn’t correct.”

Belligerence before 7 o’clock in the morning should be a crime.  The money lender in the overpriced power suit does not share this sentiment however and the pay-by-the-hour aspiring painter/actress/writer is brought to tears for misunderstanding what money buys one beyond the material, it affords one the right to belittle and berate all those of a station deemed only as, ‘below.’   She shall now pay for her crimes in tears.

“I am so sorry sir.  I prepared the order as it was given to me.”

Honest though this answer may be it will not avail her.

“So you’re telling me that the incompetent one is that bitch over there?  The one that took the order?  She fucked it up first and now you are just the bearer of bad news?  Is that the story?”

He is shouting with such vehemence that the veins in his temple throb like a woofer.  The song might have been, “Another one bites the dust.”

“I don’t care which one of you cunts was the originator of this mess I just want to know what you are going to do to make it right?”

The girl is timid.  She has learned by now that speaking will only incite him to further anger.  She has tried unsuccessfully now three times to derail him with kindness and honesty only to fuel the fire.  At a loss for what avenue to pursue next her hesitance only brings about the next volley before she can make a choice.

“It’s beyond me how such a simple fucking job could be so easy to fuck up.  I mean, for chrissake, this is fucking coffee.  Is it really that hard to understand?”

The girl stares back, still searching.  Her limp blonde hair hangs from her like her now beaten spirit.  Her whimsical attire has lost its flair and the playful makeup running down her face has transformed her into a kind of drunken circus clown, one who has been wandering the streets giving out hand jobs after the last show went south.

“It isn’t that, I just…”

The stammering definitely does not help.

“Do you know what this costs me, you ignorant bitch?”

She opened her mouth to speak but he was not actually looking for her to answer.

“It costs me time.  Do you know what my time is worth?  Ten minutes in my life could mean the difference between hundreds and hundreds of thousands.  I could have bought a small fucking country in the time it took you to stick your head up your ass and fuck up a drink order.  I could have purchased your entire backwater family and sold them into prostitution in Thailand and then bought fucking Thailand with the profit by now.  But no.  I have to stand here and get a stupid look from a cunt wearing a hippie bandana with yin yang tattoos who doesn’t realise that the worst thing about the drug addled sixties was that every last one of those hippie fuckers were dirt fucking poor.

“Oh yeah,” he gesticulates like the enormous raging hard on that he is, “free love and drugs.  That’s the ticket.  Then maybe you’ll write a screenplay and tell everyone about your feelings and it will sell a million copies and you can buy fucking flowers with it you dopey bitch.  Sounds like a real winner.”

The girl is crying uncontrollably now.  The tears that fall are not from the pain of being exposed but of being so woefully misunderstood.  They were the tears of bearing labels that were not hers to bear.  The scarf was her mothers and the tattoo was not a ying yang.  It was a picture of two intertwined women that represented the love of her life.  What did that matter to this man though?

“I’ve got some advice for you,”  he whispers.  “You want to sell that screenplay?  Write that book?  Be in the big film?  The place to start is right here.”  The man places his hand on his crotch.  “Sucking my dick would finally give you a story to tell that someone might want to listen to it, mind you up the word count on the details of my cock and tone down the bits about your second hand ass.”

“Sir,” in steps the manager.  It took him this long because his spine was left somewhere in the stock room and he needed his balls to find it and those were also MIA.  “We are going to have to ask you to leave this establishment.  You are not welcome here anymore.”

Tough words.  If only he had managed to say them whist standing in front of the girl, rather than behind her.  A full five feet behind her.

The man in the suit laughs.  Expulsion at this point is the perfect finale to his tirade.  It could not have fit his agenda more perfectly.

“You want me to leave?  Fine.  I’ll leave.  You just wait till I get back to my office and light this shit hole up on social media.  Twitter.  Facebook.  Tumblr.  Instagram.  Your ass is about to be mud.  You have no idea who you are fucking with.”

The girl mumbles something under her breath.  She is attacking back but the fear gets the better of her.  She cannot fling her arrows as straight and true as this man.  She simply lacks the hate that he is capable of.

“What was that you dike bitch?”

That last one does it.  Attacking her mother pushed her further than she had ever been pushed.  Mocking the tattoo brought her to the line.  The last insult finished it for her.

“I said I am surprised that someone who claims that their time is so valuable would waste it playing around on sites like those.  Aren’t you afraid someone will buy up Thailand while you are updating your statuses?”

The entire coffee house erupts in applause and the man claps along.  His hubris is bulletproof. He strides out through a rain of jeering patrons into a torrential downpour.  He grabs an umbrella from the rack near the door, not one belonging to him but that is irrelevant, and strides out into the city streets.  He is thinking of nothing but what the rest of the day will hold for him.  The applause got him going and the fight in that girl’s eyes when she finally got the nerve up to say something.  He liked that.  It got him hard.  He would have to find out where that little hippie lives and pay her a visit.

He steps up to a crowded intersection and the light is red.  He pushes his way to the front and glares at the light.

Damn lights in this city are never ending. 

He looks down the street and sees a delivery truck speeding toward the intersection. Just then he feels someone nudge into him.  The last thing he remembers in life is a soft voice whispering into his ear.

“Rudeness is an intolerable defect.”

As the throng of people scream, panic ensues.  Several people would recall later to the police seeing a man in black with a dark umbrella turning from the scene just as the man fell before the speeding truck.

Not a soul could remember a thing about his face.  The only thing they seemed to recall was the umbrella.