The Unfortunate Resolution of Thing One

Because I tend to be assaulted by aggressive female drivers every twelve years or so, it all played out exactly as I had foretold: the more serious charge against me was dropped...I dropped the lesser charge against her...I was left with the lesser charge against me, about which I lied when I pleaded “Guilty, your Honor,” for I am, of course, Innocent.

After Veronica Peoria-Neilssen (not her real name) ran me off the road with her Suburban Assault Vehicle, she cut across my path like a marauding banshee. I veered to my right, and then swerved back onto the road. And continued on my way. As I left the banshee to her wiles, assuming she’d engaged her tachyon drive and streaked across the sky to taunt her next pathetic human victim, I congratulated myself for not feeling enraged. I’d avoided conflict. And continued on my way. Tra La. The Days of Road Rage seemed a relic of the late-Nineties and early-Aughts, before I became an almost daily train commuter. Sadly, I did not realize that when I’d swerved to avoid the hull of the mammoth vehicle that filled my windshield view, there had been contact. Alloy on alloy. Her keel had quietly run roughshod across my fender. There had been no screech or jolt. Only instant deceleration and the frame shift in the heat of sudden avoidance. I knew about the contact only after the police called me to tell me that I’d been involved in a hit and run accident, and that I had fled the scene. Hm, I thought. That doesn't sound like me. Swiftly and stealthily, Veronica had doubled back through the maze of side streets (an astonishing feat unless you’re a frequent passenger in, oh, I don’t know, Uncle’s or Lover's squad car), caught up to me, and secretly called in my license number to her friends and family at Borough Hall. Turned out she was the daughter of The Beadle, or The Prosecutor, or The Sahjhan. Whichever, the deck was stacked against me. The truth is that Veronica lied about her aggressive driving, and crushed me under the weight of her connections. Now she will be mailed a check to have the nominal scrape her Behemoth sustained replaced with a brand new hunk of whatever those things are made from. And, in the end, I’m stuck taking food out of the mouth of my family to pay for it.

I can only comfort myself by suspending my healthy skepticism and turning to a belief in kharma.

But you know me.