The Great Paper Chase

Her itchy trigger typer finger depressed the automatic window button. In the calm, still silence of just-past midnight in downtown L.A., the mechanical whir of the window seemed louder than it should be, like Deniro's Taxi Driver Alka-Seltzer bubbles. Then again, it was the still of the night in the prop-like city, she was idling at a needless red light with no one else around, just next to the aluminum baked Alaska that doubles as the Walt Disney Hall, and successive lack of sleep and excessive caffeine usually did amplify her sounds and sensitivity.

It was a pisser of a day, the kind when the feeling the fight rose up hard enough way past inspiration to expose a high level of unrest; unrest with what, it was never quite clear. She took it as a sign of the times. All she knew was she was idling, and some dude was not paying attention to her frivolous charity.

"Hey!" she yelled out her car window. "Hey!"

He was the only guy around for miles, it seemed. The red light kept its stolid Rumsfeld gaze; evil, but accepted, though totally unnecessary.

He was oblivious to her; he was a man on a mission.

He was a black man, about 40-ish, pushing a shopping cart. She could see at the bottom, beneath reused plastic trash bags and a blanket, that he had a collection of bottles.

"Hey!" she yelled again, to no avail.

He kept going past her car, now just clearing it behind her.

She stuck her arm straight out her window and looked backward. In her hand was an empty Crystal Geiser bottle.

"Hey! I have a bottle for you!"

He didn't respond.

She thought to herself, "God damn it, I'm trying to be nice. Let me do one nice thing before the end of today." It was the little gestures that made her feel better; one nice thing a day usually lessened the feeling of being a total useless piece of the corporate button pushers' society."

She waved her arm wildly. She wouldn't do her one nice thing today, and not because of her choice. Was it the city that made her feel so selfish, or was it another emptiness inside, she wondered.