Second cup coffee jitters are kicking in as I place the final moves on a wonderful full press gambit to put an end to the second game of chess and even out the win/loss columns between Mark and I when the proprietor from two stores down comes into Eagle's Cafe and asks, "Who has the car with Wisconsin plates?"
I'm thinking I'm getting ticketed or towed even though I know I plugged and should have time remaining on the meter.
"This guy hit it. Come on were holding him down here. He tried to take off. Come on and see."
Mark and I leave the chess board behind. The car looks fine, I'm still about 50 feet away but I can't see anything wrong.
"This stuff here will clean right off," a fossil of a man, stooped over and examining the side of the car facing the road and hidden to me says. What the fuck? I hurry around the car and see the damage is minimal. A scuff really, except for the rearview mirror which seems a little battered and the mirror is spider-web cracked.
"Who hit it?" I ask.
"This guy," the store owner says, fingering a small bald man that seems distracted with something that might be stuck in his teeth. He's not taking any active moods to dislodge any food stuffs in his teeth he just seems peoccupied with something, anything, of vaccuous nature. I don't see a yellow vehicle around. Yellow is the color of the scuffing.
"What did he hit it with?" I ask. "What did you hit it with? How did you hit it?"
"There was no place to park for me," he says and a strong urge rises in me to jab this stupid fucker, quick and hard, in his fat face. That would be satisfaction. Satisfaction! We don't handle things that way though.
"I don't care if there wasn't a place for you to park. How'd you end up hitting my car?"
"There was no place for me to park," he says thickly.
My car starts rocking back and forth, "Dude looked like he thought he was in a monster truck. This thing was rocking hard. Just rocking!" an excited black youth says who is demonstrating the rocking of the car by, well, rocking it.
After too much ado, I end up with the guys name, policy number, work phone number, vehicle I.D. number, driver's license number, bosses name and insurance broker's name. He writes some stuff down about me but reads about as well as he communicates and I become "Richar Halles" with a driver's license number shorter than what is on my i.d. I don't care to correct him. I know he can still get an adequate education if he wants to. I saw them advertising high school equivalency degrees on a commercial during Jerry Springer today. (I wonder if demogrphic surveys show Springer fans are mostly non-high school graduates?)
What now? Right now, I am going to call his boss....

 It was not the employer who I got a hold of, but the insurance agent. I told the story with vim and vigor, causing her a few laughs and ended by saying, "The damage done to the car is so minor that I really don't feel the need to bring the whole bureaucratic machine into this. I see no reason why a private business owner should be financially hurt because of something so small."
She then made a sound like a woman witnessing two cute little kittens engaged in play, "Awwww." Kitten play is of course geared to hone hunting reflexes so they can eviscerate song birds and drop their gutted corpses on your pillow as an offering to acknowledge your dominance in the pride. I take her, "Awwww," to mean that it is a rarity in CA for someone not to want to sue the driver, business owner, witnesses, passersby, insurance agent and her company every time someone lacking knowledge of how the physical universe operates attempts to force two objects to occupy the same space at the same time. Either that or it was the "Awwww," of sorrow for someone who is so stupid as to not want what's coming to them.

 I can't help but feel I'd be more satisfied if I had asked him to stand perfectly still and let me plant a solid one into his teeth. I almost did. I really almost said, "We could consider this whole mess even if you let me punch you in the face."

 Tomorrow I go to a temp. agency for extras casting. On Saturday I might be on the set of "That Seventies Show."

 After the car fiasco we returned to Eagle's and I soundly finished the game. Check Mate.

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