A problem with a ticket June 11, 1985

 

Mary Jane came around yesterday complaining about her bank job where she got in trouble for supposedly giving one of their customers a hard time.

She is working for some bank in New York as well as putting shifts in at Fotomat.

Banks don’t like when their customers get offended. But it’s so easy to get on the wrong side of those penny-pinching bastards who come up to the teller’s window demanding an accounting of their interest.

Bank management claims Mary Jane mumbled some curse words, which sounds just like her.

While Mary Jane was leaning in talking to me, a cop car pulled up. Cops and Mary Jane are like bears to honey. In the next few fluttering minutes, Mary Jane made it clear how unhappy she was about the ticket she’d gotten a few weeks earlier.

“Just because I parked in a handicap space,” she said. “Fifty bucks and the creep who gave it to me was really nasty.”

The cop told her to go find the ticket so he could see who signed off on it.

She smiled her best smile and floated away and when she returned, she handed him the ticket.

The cop took off his sunglasses, looked her up and down, his stare saying everything that needed to be said about what he’d like to do with her if given the chance. Then he looked down at the ticket.

“Nasty, you say?” he said. “I know this guy. Normally he’s the nicest guy in the world.”

“Well, he wasn’t nice to me,” Mary Jane said.

The cop only smiled and gave her yet one more flirtatious glance.

Mary looked at me, then at the cop, and a strange look came over her.

“My God! You’re the one who wrote this ticket,” she said.

“Yep,” he said. “Maybe you should come over to my car behind the building and we can talk about this a little more.

Mary Jane actually blushed, then glanced at me and shrugged.

“Fifty bucks is more than I can afford,” she said, then went with the cop to his car.

I’m glad Safire didn’t see any of this.

She still thinks Mary Jane was responsible for the break-in last week.

I made a mistake with Safire, refusing to get involved sexually with her, knowing that she didn’t just want to have sex, but wanted me to replace her husband in her life.

When I refused, she found herself another boy toy. She keeps plugging in new partners the way people do Christmas tree lights, hoping they’re not all burned out.

She is very manipulative, and each time she plots something new she creates a civil war in the Fotomat booths.

Pauly can’t stand her. But Pauly has pissed off so many people he has not right to talk. Somehow he managed to peeve off Virginia. She claims he’s rude to customers, and they complain to her.
At home, among his friends, Pauly pushes people too far, alienating me and Alf.

It’s all so crazy. I sometimes just want to hide in my apartment and never come out.  But then I get lonely, too. But my apartment is such a mess, I dare not bring anybody home with me – even Safire.

It reinforces my sense of worthlessness.

If everybody else is going through this, It’s no wonder human kind is on a path to self-destruction

 

 

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