I've been walking for about three hours, an afternoon stroll in the neighborhood somehow turned into trek to the center of the city and back. I'm thinking about how faces change as darkness sets in, the slightly curious amusement of people on a late Saturday afternoon shifts, becomes a guarded question: "am I safe with you around?" From the color of my own thoughts, my face must be the same.
I keep saying to myself "life is supposed to be an epic."
I am passing yet another of the grungy bars in Fishtown, broken glass and grates and buckled concrete ground. A car honks from a block or two away, and I hear a woman yelling "get the fuck out of my car!"
It doesn't register as significant right away, but then she it again. And a third time. I look around to see if anyone is responding, there is a very large, dirty woman in a grey sweat-suit on the corner, and another two older guys bathed in white florescent light, but they all seem to be engrossed in ... nothing.
So I follow the voice. One and a half blocks, row-homes and chain link fences. Maroon car. Guy with short cropped dark hair, greased to his head. Jeans, some kind of "tribal" design print on a light grey hoodie. He's climbing into the passenger seat and the woman is yelling at him "get the fuck out of my car!" as she climbs out of the driver side.
"I just want to talk to you!" he counters.
He scoots across the seats and climbs out after her. She goes around the other side, keeping the car between them, gets back in the car and locks the passenger door as he runs around trying to catch up. She gets out again.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
They are still yelling back and forth. She telling him to get his shit and leave, him wanting to talk. Drama.
There's a guy standing in a doorway behind me, and another pulls up in a truck, walks up to him, they pass something to one another. The guy in the door makes eye contact with me, I gesture toward the fight, "you want to go talk to this guy?" He looks at me like I'm an idiot.
I turn back toward the woman "you want me to stick around?" She shrugs.
I wait a couple more minutes, there is no sign of them letting up. I cross the street toward the guy, who is pulling on the door handle "Let me get my stuff!"
I put my hands up, open, showing I'm not armed. "Dude, I don't want to start shit but you need to give her a break."
"Yeah." He sighs. Collects a plastic bag from the ground, snarls something at her. The woman gets back in the car, pulls away.
"Bitch."
He walks off in the other direction.
I am very tired when I get home.