Rip Your Heart Out

by Jeanne Glidewell

  I shook my head at her. "You big dummy. He needs an actual address. How's he supposed to know where the bookie is?" I glanced in the mirror to give the driver an apologetic smile.

  "I don't know the exact address. I just know how to get there," she replied. She then tapped the driver on the shoulder again. "Can't you just drive down to the Pike Place Market and turn right?"

  "Did you say you had plenty of money to–" the driver started to say, but I cut in.

  "Yes, yes. Don't worry. You'll be taken care of, along with a handsome tip." I answered for Itsy because I hadn't had a chance to tell her Regina was planning to have our fare charged to her account. Reggie hadn't told me the company's tipping policy. But I knew you could draw more flies with honey, and I had a couple of dollar bills I was willing to part with if the man could get us safely to our destination.

  The driver turned to face us with a gap-toothed grin. He not only lacked adequate clothing, but was also in dire need of some dental work. In comparison, he made Tasman Combs look like a viable candidate for a Pepsodent commercial.

  "Whatever you say, ladies." He turned back around, reached down, and pushed a button on his door. I was relieved to hear the doors lock securely. I certainly didn't want to take a tumble onto the street should my seatbelt fail and my door accidently swing open.

  I sat back in my seat as the car pulled away from the curb. While our driver was maneuvering wildly in and out of traffic, I kept my displeasure to myself and prayed for a quick arrival at Itsy's bookie's place. I couldn't help gasping after he yelled, "It's the pedal on the right!" out his open window to an old woman who looked as if she should have had her license pulled a decade ago. She was in danger of being passed on the passenger side by a young mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. I understood the driver's frustration at being unable to pass her due to oncoming traffic, as the elderly lady drove fifteen miles an hour in a forty-five miles-an-hour zone. But there was no call for using his left hand to flash an obscene gesture.

  "We're not in that big of hurry, sir. I'm sure the woman is doing the best she can under the circumstances." I couldn't contain my disapproval any longer and didn't want the thirty-something driver to think we were in such a rush we'd condone him running the poor old lady off the road. Itsy's bookie would just have to cool his jets until we got there.

  As if he hadn't heard me, the driver laid on his horn, scaring not only the older woman in the station wagon ahead of us, but also the two passengers in his back seat. I inhaled so sharply, I swallowed the entire peppermint lozenge I'd just put in my mouth to freshen my breath. As I tried to dislodge the lozenge by hacking harshly, I saw the elderly woman look into her mirror to see our driver waving his fist at her.

  Suddenly, the mint shot out of my mouth, hitting our driver in the right temple just as the woman pulled off the road, ever so slowly and cautiously, into a tattoo parlor's parking lot. I'd have done the exact same thing, wanting no further interaction with the incensed driver making intimidating gestures.

  With the slower vehicle out of his way, our driver sped up. I knew we had to have been exceeding the speed limit by at least twenty miles per hour. So far, I wasn't very impressed with the new taxi service, even though my daughter swore by it and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

  Just then my phone pinged. I looked down to see I'd received a text from Regina. It said, DID YOUR RIDE ARRIVE ALL RIGHT?

  I texted back to let her know it had and we were headed toward downtown Seattle. As I was typing my message, Itsy whispered, "I think he went the wrong direction."

  "He probably knows a quicker way to get there," I whispered in response. I then sent another text to Regina.

  NOT ONLY DID OUR RIDE ARRIVE QUICKLY, THE DRIVER APPEARS TO BE TAKING A SHORT CUT TO THE BOOKIE'S. ISN'T THAT NICE?

  —–

  YES, Regina texted back. THEY SAID THEY DIDN'T HAVE A CAR NEARBY BUT WOULD HAVE ONE THERE WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES, SO I'M GLAD YOU DIDN'T HAVE TOO LONG OF A WAIT.

  —–

  NOT EVEN A FULL MINUTE, I replied. BUT THE DRIVER SURE IS A BAD-TEMPERED YOUNG MAN.

  —–

  REALLY? THAT QUICKLY? Regina's next text read.

  —–

  YES. WE WERE IMPRESSED WITH HIS PROMTNESS.

  —–

  YOU ARE IN THE VEHICLE LISTED ON THE SCREEN SHOT I E-MAILED YOU, AREN'T YOU?

  —–

  I went to the mail app on my phone and opened up her message. On the screen shot photo it showed that a Carlos Medina would be picking us up in a white Toyota Rav-4, and there was a photo of a handsome Hispanic man, twice the age of the man in the front seat who was driving the blue Chevy Cruze. I hadn't had enough time to look at Regina's message earlier. However, now that I did, I didn't think our skinny white driver looked anything like Carlos, and he most certainly wasn't driving a white SUV. We had just assumed he was our ride because he'd been slowing down as if he were searching for someone as we spotted him coming down South Hart Street.

  "Uh-oh," I said under my breath. I showed the information on the screen to Itsy. Her eyes opened wide in fear. I turned my palms up and shrugged in a "what do we do now" gesture. Before I could even ask the driver for his credentials, Itsy let out a loud groan and bent over, clutching her chest.

  "What's wrong?" I asked her in alarm.

  "Pull over, driver!" She hollered between dramatic moans. "I think I'm having a heart attack."

  "Say what?" The driver asked in a panicky tone.

  "We need to pull over so I can call for emergency medical assistance. My friend's having a heart attack!" I answered, a bit hysterically, now that my companion was writhing in agony.

  "Are you sure?" He turned around in his seat to see what was happening in the back seat of his car. He looked at Itsy as if an alien being with two heads had just popped out of her belly button.

  I thought the company he drove for should have covered that potentiality in their training manual, because it was clear our driver had no idea how to respond to an emergency in his vehicle. I guess it was just as clear I wasn't thinking straight at the time or it would have occurred to me that the man didn't work for the taxi-service company to begin with.

  Itsy groaned again. It was so loud and terrifying, one would've suspected that both her kidneys were trying to pass two-pound stones at the same time. I yelled at the now frantic driver, who'd just missed clipping a parked ice cream truck by inches. "Of course, I'm sure. My husband just recently had a similar cardiac issue, so I know exactly what's going on with my friend."

  The driver pulled over in the first gap between parked cars he came to. He pointed to the sidewalk and screamed, "Get out!" His order for us to vacate his car was even more infuriating than Goofus's constant demands for me to leave the kitchen. But with my friend in dire straits, there was no time to give him a piece of my mind. I helped Itsy out of the car. Her feet had barely cleared the back seat when the vehicle pulled away. When the driver gunned the engine, the back door slammed shut of its own accord.

  Within seconds, the Chevy was a block away. I screamed pointlessly at the departing vehicle, unleashing my fury at its driver. "You have some nerve, you stinking creep! I hope you have a heart attack in the back of some ass-wipe's car some day and he drives off and leaves you on the side—"

  "He can't hear you, Rapella!" Itsy said, interrupting my incensed tirade.

  "I know, but it felt good to say it anyway. Now, lay your head on my thigh and don't try to talk. I'll have help here as soon as I can." I pulled my phone out of my pocket and began to dial 9-1-1.

  Itsy, who'd stopped moaning the second the Chevy pulled away, slapped the phone out of my hand and asked, "What in the Sam Hill are you doing?"

  "Calling for help. We need to get you to the hospital as soon as possible." I stopped when I noticed she was laughing. "Oh. You're not really having a heart attack, are you?"

  "Of course not, you moron," she replied. "I did the first thing I could think of to get us
out of his car. Having to jump from a moving vehicle can mess up a person's whole day, you know. Besides, I tried the door, and he had the child locks activated."

  "How did you know he'd pull over and let us out?"

  "Did you really think he was going to drive us to a hospital or call the police to come assist us? Whatever his intentions were, they weren't to help us. I was correct in thinking he'd want us gone immediately if he thought some old lady he was hoping to rob was about to kick the bucket in the back seat of his car."

  "You're right, Itsy," I said. I was shaking from the thought of what might have happened to us if not for Itsy's faked medical crisis. I owed her big time. Her quick thinking reminded me of my friend, Lexie Starr, who could always come up with a workable ruse at a moment's notice. "Oh, my goodness. He might have been planning to rape us."

  "No. He wasn't planning to rape us. Trust me on this one, Rapella. It was the money we told him we had plenty of that the creep was interested in, not our smoking hot bodies."

  "Oh, well. I suppose you're right." I felt a sense of dejection at her comment and I probably came across as disappointed that the man would turn his nose up at us that way.

  "Seriously, Rapella?" Itsy stared at me as if I'd just told her I was going to pee on the fire hydrant next to us so I could mark my territory. "You're actually upset the man didn't think we were worthy of raping?"

  "Don't be ridiculous." I shook my head in disgust. "I'd better text my daughter back before she begins to worry."

  ALL'S GOOD, my message read.

  "What's so freaking good about it?" Itsy asked, reading the text over my shoulder. "We're sitting here on a curb with no clue where we're at, and no idea how to get where we're going. You should have asked your daughter to hook us up with another ride. This time we'd promise to check out the driver's credentials before crawling into the back seat of his car."

  "Never! For one thing, I don't want my daughter to think I'm a nut job. Her ringtone already indicates she thinks I'm crazy. Nor do I ever want to get a ride with that company again."

  "But that weirdo doesn't even work for the company, Rapella. We're the idiots who flagged the dude down and hopped into his back seat without verifying he was the driver assigned to pick us up. Worse yet, we told him we had plenty of money and insisted he drive us somewhere."

  Itsy was smarter than I'd given her credit for. She'd impressed me as a gal who'd be perfectly at home in the backwoods of the Ozark Hills, smoking a corn cob pipe and running a moonshine still. Yet here she was, showing a lot more sense than I was.

  "Yeah, I guess you're right. As much as I hate to, I'll have to give her a call. Let's walk down to the bridge so I can get an address off a building."

  Itsy stood up and looked in the direction I was pointing. She exclaimed, "Hey! That's the Desimone Bridge!"

  "So?"

  "I know where we're at now. That bridge is by Pike Place Market. The bookie is only a couple of blocks from there, on East Pike Street. It's not but a ten-minute walk from here. Let's get that taken care of, and then we'll worry about how to get home."

  I tagged along beside Itsy as we walked to her bookie's place. I hadn't wanted to appear meddlesome and ask her what she needed to see her bookie about. I wasn't sure I even wanted to know. Oh, who am I kidding? You and I both know I was itching to ask about it. Somehow, I managed to remain silent.

  In lieu of me asking nosy questions, we talked about how lucky we were that Regina texted me when she did. If she hadn't, we might have found ourselves in deep doo-doo. We could easily have become victims, or worse, statistics!

  Suddenly, Itsy stopped. "Well, here we are."

  I looked up to see a metal sign over the doorway of a small hole-in-the-wall type store. The sign read, "Book-E", and below the name of the store was their facetious slogan. "Used Books at like-new Prices."

  "Used book store?" I asked in astonishment. I'm not sure what this says about me, but I felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment. "Book-E? I thought you said we were going to see your bookie. As in gambling, like on horses or something."

  "Gambling?" Itsy replied. "Do I seem like the betting type to you? Good grief. I can't believe you'd think I was anything but a normal, run of the mill, retired senior citizen. I ain't got the resources to gamble even if I wanted to. You didn't see any money trees growing in my yard, did you?"

  "Well, I can't honestly say I'd ever consider you normal or run of the mill, Itsy. But I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I suppose the 'E' stands for the fact it's located on 'East' Pike Street. So what's so important that you had to come here today?"

  Itsy pulled a hardback out of her oversized satchel. The book had to do with the identification of common North American bird species. She explained her desire to borrow it. "I was curious about this orange-beaked critter that frequents one of my backyard feeders. This place lets you borrow books free, but if you're late in returning them, you're assessed a fine. It operates just like a library, except you can buy the books if you feel like wasting perfectly good money. Their clever slogan is not far off the mark. So I prefer to borrow them and save my dough for more important things. This was due three days ago and they only allow a four-day grace period."

  I was so flabbergasted, you could have knocked me over with one of those orange-beaked critter's feathers. I couldn't believe we'd put our necks on the line only to prevent my abnormal, and hardly run-of-the-mill, neighbor from having to pay some measly penalty for a used book that was a day or two overdue. "How much would the fine have been?"

  "It's a quarter to begin with. But it accrues another dime with each week that it's late. That can add up fairly quickly. Don't you see?" Itsy asked in earnest.

  "The only thing I see is possibly the only person in the world who's a bigger cheapskate than I am. No telling what my daughter's going to be charged after the real driver pulled up in front of your house only to find we'd bailed on our end of the rider-driver arrangement. And all to save a measly quarter! You could've waited until fall and only owed a couple of dollars on the stupid book. Or probably bought the blasted thing for a buck. To think I was just admiring you for the common sense you exhibited when you faked the heart attack. And we still have to figure out how to get home from here. I can't call Rip to come get us because I took our only phone."

  "You can use my phone to call him," Itsy said after we'd left the book store. She didn't even have the courtesy to look embarrassed for putting us both through such a traumatic event over something so trivial.

  I was practically screaming when I replied. "I have our only phone, Itsy! Our only phone! I don't have a clue what the landline number is for Mabel's house phone because I've never had a need to ask about it. If I used your phone to call Rip, our only phone, which is in my back pocket, would ring and what good is that gonna do us?"

  "Okay, okay. I get it! You don't have to make a production out of it. After all, I know Mabel's landline number," Itsy said. Her tone was a mixture of annoyance and guilt. I guess I should have realized she'd know Mabel's number. She probably dialed it on her Jitterbug a dozen times a day while Mabel was alive.

  I didn't want to call Regina to arrange another ride for us. I was even more opposed to the idea of asking Rip to come rescue us, especially when it was the first day he'd been released to drive. I wasn't looking forward to the lecture I'd get from him either.

  I was weighing my options when Itsy spoke up. "Well, I guess if you'd rather, we can always take the mass transit bus. It picks up passengers every half-hour at the bus stop a block down the street and will drop us off at the hospital, which, as you know, is only a couple of blocks from home."

  "Are you freaking kidding me?" I screeched. It was all I could do to resist the urge to shove Itsy off the curb into the path of an approaching three-wheeled meter maid buggy. I gave myself a few seconds to collect myself, and said, "Fine! Let's go!"

  I stomped down the sidewalk ahead of Itsy. I was so ticked off at her I couldn't see straight. I'd have aske
d why we didn't just take the stupid bus to Book-E in the first place but I already knew the answer. Itsy had hoped to avoid the cost of the transit fare. She followed me down the street to the bus stop, wisely keeping her pie-hole shut.

  It didn't help my anger decrease any when I read the sign next to the bench that read, "King County Metro Transit, ORCA bus stop. Adult fares $2.50 to $3.25, depending on zone. Seniors $1.00, all zones."

  I could feel steam coming out of my ears. My exasperating next-door neighbor had inconvenienced me when I had more important things I could've been doing, so she could save a grand total of two bucks on round-trip bus fare. I was beginning to wonder how exasperating Mabel Trumbo must've been if Itsy Warman found her to be annoying. Could anyone be more aggravating than Itsy herself?

  Chapter 24

  I could tell Itsy felt bad about the incident when she insisted on paying for my bus fare. The fare was nominal, but I noticed when it was her turn to pay, she opened up a small coin purse and began to count out a fistful of small change. I began to wonder if her penny-pinching behavior wasn't more a matter of being strapped for cash than merely being a tightwad.

  Rip and I were on a fixed budget, like many retirees, but we never worried about where our next meal was coming from. We always had an emergency fund to fall back on should the need arise. I felt a sense of shame for assuming Itsy was in the same financial condition as we were. She lived alone, and having never been married, she didn't have a husband's social security or retirement pension to help subsidize her expenses.

  I stepped in front of Itsy and handed the attendant two dollar bills. "Let me get it, Itsy. I promised I'd get you to town and back and feel obliged to stand by my word."

  "But–"

  "No, Itsy. I've got this. Let's get on the bus and find a seat."

  I followed Itsy to the third row from the rear. We relaxed in relative silence as the shuttle bus made its rounds.