from the top of his head – the thinning hair slightly shining with wax, the smooth shave, the expensive untucked button down shirt in a greyish pink – and then stopped at his feet. James, too, looked down then at the dumb, dog snouted, shoeless appendages and thought: Disadvantage.
But oh well, he was in it now, hot with rage. Up close, James was surprised by Chuckles’s face. He had seen him in his mind’s eye as a kid, a know-nothing just out of trade school. Yet up close, the face was lined and browned, as if from some stain, like the hands of a leather dyer. And the guy was bigger, too, than James had supposed, as often seemed to be the case at moments like this, he noted to himself. And also, Chuckles looked angry. This anger, located mostly in the sneer of Chuckles’s lips, snuffed any small hope in James that this might go a different way (a surprise friendship from across the divide? a human interest story in the local news?). No, Chuckles did not like to have his paper shuffling interrupted, or his cigarette. This much was clear.
But what else? What next? James was now upon his enemy empty-handed, without a plan. His entire body tingled. He would, then, improvise.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said, a phrase that he knew did not match the previous furious shoeless strut across the street, the door slamming and knuckle rapping. James’s voice, too, wasn’t quite as loud or manly as he’d anticipated, but instead sounded, even to his own blood-rushed ears, like a little French schoolgirl buying a croissant from a friendly baker. It was in this dulcet tone that James delivered his kicker: “You’re taking up two parking spots. Do you think you could move up?”
Now James waited. The truck leaked a prickly odour of cigarette and rust. Chuckles took one final drag and James waited for the Bazooka Joe finale, the stream of smoke blown in his face. Instead, Chuckles turned and exhaled on the passenger seat.
Then he turned back to James and said: “You the guy who left the note?” His voice was firm, with a vaguely Godfather-ish tinge that many second generation Portuguese in the neighbourhood had adopted, to James’s consternation.
Did he? Did he leave it? James hurried through his thoughts. If he answered yes, then that door might open and James might get picked up by his belt loop and hung from the branches of the nearby oak tree. If no, then James had officially slapped down his admission to an amusement park only for pussies, where the rides were slow and low to the ground and the seatbelts thick and castrating. He made a quick decision.
“Yeah, that was me,” said James.
Chuckles’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you sign it?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you sign it?”
James considered this question and how it firmly located him on the wrong side of reason. If he had signed the note, he would not be here now. The whole thing could have been resolved at the kitchen island over one of Ana’s perfect espressos. But no, he had not put his name on it, had, in fact hidden, once again, behind his little pen and his paper, his tiny ideas, his life of distant reportage.
James elected not to answer the question.
“The point is, you have a garage, and we don’t. Why don’t you use it?” His squeak grew fuller, if not deeper, and the little French girl in him whined: “Show some respect for your neighbours! Show it! Show it!” The last words sputtered and landed on a face, one that was suddenly up against James’s, a large hamburger face attached to a larger neck and a body that had exited the car so swiftly, James had barely seen it happen. Chuckles was wearing steel-toed work boots as tall as downhill ski boots, and one of them was on James’s right argyle foot, grinding down.
“Respect this, cocksucker,” said Chuckles, not living up to his nickname, grinding James’s right foot like it was an unsnuffable cigarette butt. James closed his eyes and let the heat pour over his toes, smelling Chuckles’s meaty breath, waiting it out.
His work done, Chuckles stepped back and slammed his door shut. He leaned against the car, crossing his arms as James limped slowly into the road, backing away.
“It’s—” he squeaked—“about … courtesy!”
Chuckles barked a laugh and shouted:
“This is what you have to worry about? Don’t you have a fucking family, cocksucker? Go worry about your family!”
“The social