Ed. Mac had a definitely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant set to her jaws. He knew what that meant. It meant that the rude bitch’s transgression was not merely bad manners. It was a sinful act.
Ed could feel his heart kicking into higher gear. He was not by nature one for physical confrontations and public exhibitions of anger. Besides that, he was the editor of the Herald, the Loop Syndicate’s man in Miami. Whatever he got involved in out in public would be magnified a hundred times.
“Whattaya gonna do?” He was aware that his voice was suddenly terribly hoarse. “I’m not sure she’s worth all—” He couldn’t figure out how to complete the sentence.
Mac wasn’t paying any attention to him anyway. Her eyes were pinned on the rude bitch, who was just getting out of the convertible. They could see only her back. But as soon as she started to turn around, Mac hit the button that opened the passenger-side window and leaned across Ed and lowered her head so she could look the woman squarely in the face.
As soon as the woman turned about fully she took a couple of steps and stopped when she realized the Elf was all but penning her in the wall of cars. And then Mac let her have it:
“YOU SAW ME WAITING FOR THAT SPACE, AND DON’T YOU STAND THERE LYING AND SAYING YOU DIDN’T! WHERE DID YOU—”
Ed had heard Mac yell before but never this loud or with such fury. It frightened him. The way she leaned over toward the window, her face was only inches from his. The Big Girl had gone into the full WASP righteous attack mode, and there would be hell to pay for one and all.
“—LEARN YOUR MANNERS FROM, THE HURRICANE GIRLS?”
The Hurricane Girls were a notorious gang of mostly black girls, formed in a tent city for refugees from Hurricane Fiona, who had gone on a rampage of assaults and robberies two years ago. That was all he needed. “Herald Editor’s Wife in Racist Rant”—he could write the whole thing himself—and in that same moment he realized the rude bitch hadn’t come from a girls’ gang or anything close to it. She was a beautiful young woman, and not just beautiful but stylish, chic, and rich, if Ed knew anything about it. She had shiny black hair parted in the middle… miles of it… cascading straight down before going wild in great wavy spumes where it hit her shoulders… and a bit of a fine gold chain about her neck… whose teardrop pendant brought Ed’s eyes right down into the cleavage of two young breasts yearning to burst free from the little sleeveless white silk dress that constrained them, up to a point, and then gave up and ended halfway down her thigh and didn’t even try to inhibit a pair of perfectly formed, perfectly suntanned legs looking a lubricious mile long atop a pair of white crocodile pumps whose to-the-max heels lifted her heavenly while Venus moaned and sighed. She was carrying a small ostrich leather clutch. Ed couldn’t have given any of this stuff a name, but he knew from the magazines that it was all à la mode right now and very expensive.
“—OR HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT A CHEAP LITTLE THIEF YOU ARE?”
Ed said, sotto voce, “Come on, Mac. Let’s just forget about it. It’s not worth the trouble.” What he meant was “Somebody might realize who I am.” As far as Mac was concerned, however, he wasn’t even there. There was only herself and the rude bitch who had wronged her.
Under Mac’s onslaught the beautiful rude bitch didn’t recoil an inch or show so much as a twitch of intimidation. She stood there with her hips cocked, the knuckles of one hand resting on the higher hip and her cocked elbow flung out as far as it would go, plus a suggestion of a smile on her lips, a condescending stance that as much as said, “Look, I’m in a hurry and you’re in my way. Kindly bring your little tsunami in a teacup to an end—now.”
“—JUST GIVE ME ONE REASON—”
Far from shrinking from Mac’s attack, the beautiful rude bitch came two steps closer to the Green Elf, leaned over to look Mac in the eye, and said, in English without raising her voice, “Why you speet when you talk?”
“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?”
The rude bitch took yet another step forward. Now she was within three feet of the Elf—and Ed’s passenger seat. In a