splat chapter fifteen

The next day was a work day for crusaders everywhere. Suzie's crime-fighting costume was, by early July, down to only the ragged Superman t-shirt and a pair of cutoffs, and she was considering a further rework. Without regard to fashion. Someone had spotted her the last time she was out dealing vigilante justice.

It was a little black woman in her car going home to Marietta on 75 North. Suzie saw her get all surprised when she spotted the paintgun, and saw her reach for her cellphone and start talking, looking over at Suzie pointedly, giving her description to the dispatcher. And now she was worried. Panicky, actually.

She'd been running down a miscreant on 75, an idiot responsible for making a trucker slam on his brakes and nearly jackknife a few miles back. She witnessed this suspect in the act of several violations of the speed limit; weaving in and out of traffic; reckless endangerment. It was an ancient Ford Escort, falling apart, driven by a girl not much older than Suzie was; a white girl dressed in black with short dark hair, smoking a cigarette and driving along with her windows down. The cigarette was the main difference between her and Suzie the cars were simply different makes and models of the same basic POS style popular in the early '90s. The girl was driving in and out of lanes at will, running five miles an hour faster than anyone else, and only looking ahead to spot cops by the side of the road. She never checked her mirrors. She never signaled. She never looked. So Suzie was out to get her.

But her heart wasn't in it. It seemed somehow too simple to just pick someone and unleash her rage at them. More of an excuse to go off on someone than an idealistic crusade for justice. After all, people were just trying to get home. They were minding their own business, thinking their own thoughts, having their own conversations on the cellphone. They were almost innocent.

Except for the few who stuck out because they were intolerable assholes.

Most drivers in Atlanta go by the rules when there's traffic, and when there's traffic, it's stupid to drive recklessly. This girl seemed to think that it was okay to make others take evasive action. And that was wrong. So Suzie was in hot pursuit, her paintgun in her lap ready to go.

But she got caught behind a Sunbeam bread truck, and an old Lincoln was taking its time passing on the left, and there was an eighteen-wheeler next to her on the right, and so she sat boxed in while the perp got farther and farther ahead of her. And then she edged past the big rig, and looked to her right to see a little black woman in the car in front of the big rig, staring at her gun, her mouth in an O, fumbling for her cellphone.

In panic, Suzie put on her brakes and let the lady get ahead. The car behind her honked and moved to pass on her left. Traffic rippled out behind her sudden deceleration. The black lady started to slow for another look at Suzie. Suzie slowed further. Space began to open up in front of her. The cars piled up behind.

The black lady got through at last. '911...My location? I'm on 75 just where 285...North. I'm going to Marietta...There's a girl with a gun in the car next to me...Yes...White...Red...'

The lady was having trouble holding the phone to her ear and driving with a single hand, and was a little distracted. The dispatcher was asking the wrong questions. 'I don't know if she's Spanish. She's got a gun across her lap, and she's aiming it at people... No, I didn't see her shooting...Young, maybe let's see early twenties...She's driving? let's see, a little blue car...I have no idea what kind...I can't see the license plates...Yes. I'm just at Delk Road now, and I'm going up to get off at the South Loop...I've got to get over or my exit...Maybe she'll pass me...She's going past me now...Yes m'am, my exit....Her license is...430-HLT...Georgia plates...Yes, well, she's gone now. I really must get over now. Yes, thank you. Goodbye.'

The black lady carefully folded her phone, put her signal on, checked her mirrors, and changed lanes to her right. She was way too close to the exit for comfort. A pickup full of Latino construction guys accelerated in the right lane. They pulled into her, and went into a skid, and suddenly the air was full of projectiles.

The 911 dispatcher scribbled down on the comments section that the caller was black, confused, and had given an obviously incorrect license number. When the report went out, officers were told to be on the lookout for a twenty year-old black woman in a blue car making alleged terroristic threats. Police stopped thirty-eight-year old Sarah Freeman a mile before the exit to the North Loop. She missed her prayer meeting.

But Suzie didn't know this. She'd seen herself recognized and her face committed to memory. She'd seen a law abiding citizen catch someone in a criminal act. The lady could be a school teacher, was undoubtedly a churchgoing Christian, probably a Republican. Right this minute she could be working with police on a composite sketch. Suzie was in agonized anticipation of seeing her face on the news when she got home.

This made her think. A little. She wasn't ready to reconsider her foolish ideas of vengeance. She was getting too much emotional mileage out of them. But she was growing leery of putting herself at risk to punish a two-bit traffic offender. Maybe she was starting to grow out of her road rage.

Not a chance. Perhaps a stocking mask, she thought, back at her hideout. She fished through her stuff and found the sparkly tights she wore just that once and then cut the toes off. Suzie got to thinking. Pulling the leg over her head, she turned to the mirror to have a good look at a face with squashed, stretched out black streaks for eyes, a squashed, wide nose with gaping nostrils, a pink worm of a mouth stretched out toward the ears. Not very human looking. But what if? Suzie the fashion designer.

Suzie got out her black magic marker and drew eyebrows on the tights. And drew eyes with eyelashes. And a nose. And a mouth. The reflection showed a clownlike caricature of a face, with a Picasso nose and a wide-lipped grin. Could use some improvements, but maybe we've got something here, she thought cheerfully.

However, July is not the time to start wearing panty hose over your head. It's sticky. It's smelly. It was making her head itch. Sweat was running down the back of her neck. She was breathing hot, filtered air through previously worn nylon mesh; bits of ex skin growing humid and putting out roots. She pulled it off. Gross. Her face was streaked with magic marker. Wonderful.

But she simply had to solve the identifiability issue. If she was going to be a modern urban crime fighter, then - more than a costume - she needed a disguise. She had to be anonymous, indistinguishable from ordinary humans. Invisible. Okay, maybe not. But nondescript, ordinary, run of the mill.

She thought for a moment. If there's a typical look for white women in this town, it's dyed blond. So she went to Junkman's Daughter in Little Five Points, and went through the costumes and accessories. But they were out of Marilyn Monroe wigs, so she headed for a party store in Decatur.

She passed the L5P Zesto's and had an attack of longing for a nut brown crown cone. But then she said Nah and kept going. She decided that what she really wanted was another Krispy Kreme, but when she got to the Zesto's on Ponce she had another attack, and this time nothing could keep her from pulling in and going through the drivethru. She sat in the parking lot demolishing the dipped chocolate crown; looking out the window, gauging the traffic and weather and considering the time of day. She finally resolved to take Ponce.

Sitting there, she could see up to the light at Boulevard. A blonde, white, skinny hooker in hot pants and a sports bra jounced down the street flouncing her arms as she walked. Pretending to be out for a power walk. A black dude in a knee-length white t-shirt and a cap idly watched her watching him, turning away to notice potential customers in the gas station parking lot.

A bunch of homeless guys were collected in front of the Open Door Community as she drove down Ponce. They looked wary and tired. They usually looked like guys with nothing else to do, standing around in the shade, waiting to be fed. But these men were slinking into the bushes and lingering around the corner so they wouldn't attract notice. A pair of cop cars sat in a parking lot across the street. Suzie wondered if they were going to round them up. Would there be news coverage? A protest? Would this become a nightly scene? Or would it just be quieter on the streets?

The guy behind her had to stand on his brakes when she pulled up to the light at Ponce and Monroe and decided to stop on the yellow rather than running it as usual,. Oops. They sat there at the light and she forgot about it, watching assorted pedestrians and cars crossing the street, chomping down on the end of the cone, her fingers slick from melted ice cream.

The guy started honking his horn, insistently, repeatedly. She looked in the rearview mirror. The guy was whacking the horn with his fist. Sunglasses. Short hair. White guy. Black car. She glanced at the light. It was still red. Maybe he needed to turn right and wanted her to push out into traffic so he could have his chance. Maybe he was on speaker phone having an argument. Maybe he didn't like her car. All sorts of variables. Anything'll set off someone on a hair-trigger. You can never tell.

He kept on blowing his horn as she sat there and ate. He was growing more angry every moment. She could faintly hear him shouting through his closed windows. She was unconcerned, and somewhat amused at his animation.

The left turn light turned green, and lines of cars heading north or south crossed in front of her. Then all the lights went green, and traffic surged slowly forward.

The guy and his horn didn't turn down Highland like she'd hoped, but stayed heading toward Decatur. He continued honking his horn behind her. They pulled up to the red light at Springdale, and he continued to make noise the whole time they were stopped.

Then they were off, with a ways to go before the next set of lights at Oakdale, at the corner of Fernbank's rose garden. The madman was right behind her, inches from her bumper, still blowing his horn as they cruised around a gentle curve at 35 miles an hour, past a wooden sign that said 'Leaving Atlanta' .

The car next to her was only a few feet past her, doing thirty-six. Suzie looked around to see if the guy behind her was honking at someone else, but everyone was just driving along minding their own business. The guy kept honking wildly, shaking his fist and flipping fingers. At her. Only at her.

The car next to her pulled away as they went through the light at Oakdale, and the guy swung his car suddenly into the left lane and pulled up beside her. He was driving with his left hand on the steering wheel, his face red, features contorted, shaking his fist at her through his passenger side window. She could hear him yelling. 'Bitch. Stupid. Asshole. Fucking moron. Where'd you ever learn how to drive? Eat shit and die. Fucking. Goddamn. Motherfucking. Idiot.'

Woah. Suzie was taken aback, shocked. Where's this guy coming from? she wondered. I didn't do anything to him. She looked over at him and met his eyes. This set him off on a fresh round of cursing. He was driving even with her car, weaving close and away, coming within coats of paint of her driver's side door. She could see his eyes glinting behind his sunglasses.

The light at Lullwater was turning yellow as they approached. She wasn't first in line, so she had no choice but to stop. She left a lot of room between her and the car in front, just in case, but the guy slowed down with her and stopped beside her, screaming. He was reaching his body into the passenger side trying to get his face closer to hers. His left arm was stretched out holding on to the wheel and his left foot was braced against the wheel well propelling him forward. He lunged at her, making the car bounce sharply, screaming hurls of insults.

Then the light changed, and the cars in front of them slowly started moving. He stayed even with her, only inches away. Down the hill, cars gained speed and got over to the right. The guy stayed with her for another long moment, and then he pulled away with black smoke pouring out of his tailpipe; contemptuous to the last, rolling his window down to shove his finger out and wave it fiercely until she lost sight of him over the next ridge.

She hadn't really had time to react, or to think about how to react. A guy like that might get out of his car and start ripping pieces off her car if she flipped him off or yelled back. And if she'd pulled out her paintgun, he would have run her off the road.

Suzie continued on down the road doing thirty-five, staying to the right, trying to enjoy the park. It was stately and beautiful, and the trees were far above her head, and it felt mild and cool even in July. Mostly.

It took another seven minutes to get over to North Decatur Road. Suzie thought about the guy who'd assaulted her, chuckling at the color of his face and repeating certain phrases. She was only a little bothered by the intensity of his anger. She felt completely detached from it, innocent. She had no clue that he'd spilled coffee on his nuts when she decided to stop on the yellow.

You'd think Suzie would recognize the similarities between his irrationality and hers and accept it as maybe something she'd want to get help with. But, no, Suzie looked at the guy as a particular species of lunatic, and never once examined how she must look to the idiots she tried to cream.

You'll notice that Suzie didn't get mad at the guy and get into an escalating aggressive confabulation on the road to Decatur. Her button hadn't been pressed, she was immune to whatever set the guy off, and the disconnect was large enough that she couldn't imagine his reality and couldn't understand his position.

She arrived at the party store, some chain featuring rows and rows of cheap things from China. Gaudy colors, crackling with electricity from the millions of cellophane bags rubbing together on the shelves and racks. She found the mask section. It was July, there were few masks. And they were expensive. The costumes were pitiful anyway, which is why she'd originally gone to the thrift store just down the street and got her cool Superman t-shirt for $1.95.

The only masks they had were Pinhead and Spiderman. And she was looking for something more like a fairy princess or a really haggard witch. She needed different hair. She needed a different face. She was planning to sit on phonebooks to give her a different height. She wanted a whole-body disguise so nobody could stare into her face and see her naked soul. But there was nothing in the way of masks for Suzie.

They had no normal looking masks in the store. Only grotesques. Of course there wouldn't be an ordinary mask. Nobody wants to look normal except criminals, and they had other ways. There's no market for Handsome Middle Manager masks or Zanaxed Housewife masks.

So she looked at the wigs. There were few that weren't black or pink. '60s Flip Wig Blonde, Starlet Wig Blonde. Jumbo Afro Wig Blonde. The flip wig made her look like a blonde Mary Tyler Moore with curlers in her hair. The starlet wig made her look like an end-stage cancer patient. She considered the blonde afro. It looked like a beige fright wig. She thought about it. Maybe she could accessorize it. At the counter, she noticed big huge twelve-inch joke sunglasses with sparkles and got them too.

She paid for the stuff with crumpled dollars and loose change she found at the bottom of her bag, and went back to the hideout. It was midmorning, and traffic was picking up for lunch hour, so she whipped out the map and had a look.

From Decatur, she could go back down Ponce the way she came until she hit Monroe, and that was probably going to be the quickest. But she'd already come that way once, and she preferred round robins. She could cut sideways thru Decatur until she got to the back of Auntie Mae's. That'd be the scenic route, but going through Decatur at lunch, whooo. She could sort of skirt the middle of Decatur and get to the railroad tracks and just parallel them all the way home, and go to Auntie Mae's from there. There'd be more traffic, but she wouldn't have to pay as much attention. Aight.

She passed a billboard going down Monroe.

She smelled the landfill on the breeze as she passed the Starlight Drive-In and slowed for her left onto Hillcrest. Auntie Mae wasn't home, so she waved to the old white guy with the shotgun next door, exchanged a few words about the weather, and ducked down to the trail leading to her hideout.

She had recently gone through the underbrush again with her hacksaw and taken out new vines and branches and stout little woodland plants that wanted to have some of that dirt and sunshine she was walking on. But the path was getting overgrown again, and she looked at it cross-eyed with annoyance, because she wasn't about to do any work on it. It was too hot out. Maybe later, right after a hurricane or something when the ground was soft and she could pry the roots out. Except there'd be more mosquitoes after a hurricane. She seemed to have tolerated the bugs and the dirt and the heat a lot better when she was in high school. And the poison ivy.

When she got to the clearing, she unpacked and set her pocket mirror at the edge of the lean-to. Then she tore the packaging off the wig and shook it out. It was big, loose, floppy, the strands of hair made of shiny frizzed-up plastic. It screamed Fake Hair. I can fix that, she thought. One hundred and one ways with spraypaint.

She held the wig out away from her on the end of a stick, and sprayed black paint lightly over it, just a dusting to dull the sheen. It was a little better. More mousy. Then she turned it inside out and sprayed more paint on the scalp, which made something resembling black roots. She dug around in her bag for the piece of torn purple sleeper curtain she kept her dad's picture in, regarding his face for a moment. They were looking more alike every day. Maybe he was even starting to look kind of younger.

She made a headband out of the cloth and wrapped it around the excess wig, and checked again. Now it fit snug against her head, and would keep her short red hair from showing from underneath and ruining things. Much better. The fake hair made her head look bigger, and puffed out beyond the purple wrap in great volumes of kinky ponytail. She looked like a crazed in-town matron, her politics slightly left of aging hippy.

She looked at her face. Even with a blond wig on, it was still her eyes, and her little mouth, and her pixie features. Her expression when chasing a criminal was probly set in iron determination. So, okay; with this wig on, her hand-chopped red hair didn't say L5P punk chick. A frizzy blonde wig was a completely misleading look for her. But it was still her face. And that's what that black lady saw. And that's what Suzie had to hide. She definitely didn't want to show her face any more, so that was the end of her crusading until she could disguise her features.

Where are those glasses? she wondered. What if I used makeup on my face? Lots of it, like a mask. Like a geisha. Like Queen Elizabeth the First. Like Tammy Faye. Hmm. That would require actually getting hold of lots of makeup. So Suzie got back in her car and went to a Dollar General store back up Moreland toward Little Five Points and looked through the makeup section until she found foundation, mascara, eye liner, fake eyelashes, blush, eye shadow, lipstick. She forgot to get makeup remover, however, or tissues, because she wasn't thinking.

Back at the hideout, she sat hunched over on the stool, staring into the mirror held up between her knees as she struggled to put eye liner on without poking herself in the eye, which she'd already done several of times. Her left eye was red and weepy, and had a little lump of black gook floating on the surface. The side of her right hand was marked with streaky black where she'd rubbed off mistakes.

With time, she got it all on her face without churning the grease paint to mud. With the wig in place, she looked like a Southern blonde bombshell. Eyebrows visible from thirty paces. Rosy red cheeks the size of apples. Ruby red lipstick on Betty Boop lips. Big hair tied back with a glittery head band.

Only being able to see a few square inches of her face, Suzie was unaware that at fifty feet, she looked like a lovely, attractive, done up, perfectly ordinary Buckhead Babe. Except she wasn't driving a BMW.

At twenty feet she looked like a Decatur soccer mom. Except she wasn't driving a Volvo station wagon.

At ten feet she looked like a circus clown, which was totally appropriate to her faded blue Dodge Doohickey.

Perhaps this wouldn't work, after all, because Suzie was already touching her face out of habit, scratching her cheek and rubbing her eyebrows. She could feel her pores fill with greasy dust. The skin at her hairline was hot, itchy, sweaty, and starting to drip down her forehead. She rubbed and scratched.

She still had to reconfigure the gun. When this occurred to her, she threw all the makeup crap aside and turned her attention to the important stuff. She couldn't have someone spotting the gun. It couldn't look like a gun. She could wrap it in a T-shirt. That might help. But it would still be gun shaped. Then she had a stroke of genius. Disguise it by making it look like what people expect to see. A bag of fast food. Or a box of Krispy Kremes. Or a monster size coke cup. She looked at the gun. She could get a dark one, cut holes in both sides of the cup, and slide the barrel through the bottom of it. Then it would just look like she was taking a drink when she was really blasting some motherfucker.

The makeup continued dripping. Suzie began to itch and steam, and the greasepaint turned rancid and oily in the heat. And it attracted mosquitoes. She grabbed a costume part she'd never liked from the bag and rubbed her face raw with it, then packed up, and went off to see Nelson. And then she found the sunglasses. They'd fallen out of the bag when she was coming back from the party store and slipped under the seat.

 

* * *

next, define the term 'dishonest mechanic'