My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [2]
What do you do next?
a. You smile and shake your head. Ah, the capriciousness of youth!
b. You frown and shake your head. You don’t like it, but you understand this kind of thing happens sometimes when you live in an urban environment.
c. You call the police, knowing full well if they even bother to respond to your call, the hipster pisser will be halfway through his can of Pabst Blue Ribbon at the neighborhood watering hole before they arrive.
d. You throw open the front door and scream profanities at the hipster, causing the stream of urine to soak his skinny jeans. And as he egresses at a brisk pace, you shout, “Doesn’t matter if you run, motherfucker, because I know where you’re going!”
e. You spend the rest of the evening standing by your open front door, shaking your garden shovel at everyone who’s unfortunate enough to park on your street.
f. Answers D and E.
Scoring:
Award yourself zero points for Answers A-C, five points for Answers D-E, and ten points for Answer F.
Give yourself one bonus point if your shovel is rusty.
CHAPTER ONE
The Rat World/Road Rules Challenge
(Three months earlier)
“You are not watching that crap.”
“No, no, I’m not.” My eyes flick back to the screen.
I hear Fletch take a slow, deliberate breath before he says, “From where I’m standing, it would appear that you are.”
Refusing to meet his eye, I counter, “Maybe you have a bad vantage point?”
Fletch is standing in the small hallway between our kitchen and living room, arms akimbo. From what I can see from the corner of my eye, it almost seems like he’s glowering at me. “You’re not watching that crap.”
Breezily, I respond, “Nope, not me.”
He repeats, “You are not watching that crap.”
I peek up at him again. Oh, yes, there’s distinct glowering. I try to hide my smile behind my hand.
“Does emphasizing a different word every time you say it somehow reinforce your message? Or finally make me understand?” I ask mildly.
To the layman, Fletch might seem angry, but I assure you he’s not. My friend Gina says nothing makes Fletch happier than expressing righteous indignation about something trivial. Minor aggravations keep his blood flowing. And since almost nothing makes him more righteously indignant than fine, fine MTV reality programming, I figure I’ll let this play out.
Fletch turns sideways to enter our tiny living room as if navigating between two closely parked cars. A while back I got new couches, and while they’re the perfect size in both height and width, I kind of forgot to think about depth. So unless we want to do the Bump with the television stand, we scuttle in sideways when we enter and leave.4
Fletch eases in beside me on the couch. My odiferous pit bull, Maisy, is taking up most of the space on the other side of me. Fletch starts in again. “Maybe I’m saying this wrong. I guess what I mean is, why are you watching this crap?”
I press PAUSE and turn to face him. “Okay, number one, you sound like my dad, and number two, I’m not watching. I just happened to turn the channel and this was on.”
He wipes his palm across his forehead and runs it down his cheek, his default gesture when he’s frustrated. He’s done it a lot in the fourteen years we’ve been together. But the way I see it, if I get him a little fired up over a nonissue, he’ll sleep better at night. “That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.”
“Why do you care?” I shift away from him and toward Maisy. She returns my display of affection by violently thumping her tail against a pillow. With each stroke, dust motes float in the filtered winter sunlight and little puffs of her stink waft over me. “If there’s something on you want to see, go watch it in the bedroom.”
“That’s not it. I just hate the idea of you wasting a perfectly good Saturday on this garbage.” He turns and begins to scrutinize the action currently frozen on the set. I see a flash of recognition play