Etiquette On The Sidewalk

ETIQUETTE ON THE SIDEWALK by Barbara J. Olexer Mallory Hix stood at the intersection of Connecticut and Rhode Island Avenues and M Street and glared after the bike messenger with hate. She was surprised at how much she hated bike messengers. When she'd first moved to Washington, D.C., or "the District," as the cognoscenti call it, she had been an easy-going middle-aged lady. She had smilingly made way for elderly people on the street and cheerfully given her seat on buses to young women carrying infants. But ten years of the incredible rudeness of the District had soured her as a pedestrian and user of public transportation. When she came down the escalator into the metro station in the morning on her way to work, she felt a profound disdain for her fellows. They scurried like vermin. They made her think of that Disney film of lemmings rushing to the brink of the cliff to hurl themselves over and swim out to sea until they were exhausted and drowned. She thought that the people in the metro stations not only acted like lemmings, they

appeared to have about the same intelligence and understanding. Swarming, jostling, pushing and shoving to get to their destinations ten minutes earlier than if they took their turns like civilized people and behaved like sentient beings instead of rodents driven by an instinct for destruction. Mallory stood on the sidewalk, her new mint green suit plastered with birthday cake and the cake itself a broken ruin at her feet. She hated the bike messenger with the accumulated hatred of ten years of victimization. Bike messengers were the most selfish, arrogant, rude, and despicable of all the District denizens. Tourists were a nuisance. She disliked them on principle, especially those who had no better sense than to ride the metro during rush hour. Little knots of secretaries were annoying -- they walked three or four abreast on the sidewalk, shrieking with laughter or shrilling with indignation, and giving not the smallest damn how they assaulted your eardrums. Drivers of cars, taxis, and buses were an abomination. They all drove as if pedestrians either didn't have corporeal bodies or as if pedestrians were amusing targets, on whom to count coup, especially by splashing in wet weather. Yes, she had grown to detest most of her fellow humans in the District. But the only ones she truly hated were bike messengers. Nearly every day she suffered some rudeness from bike messengers and often she was threatened with bodily harm. A friend of hers had once been knocked down by bike messenger and had her arm broken. Bike messengers pedaled furiously up and down the sidewalks, swooping among the pedestrians, yelling obscenities at people who didn't get out of their way quickly enough. Mallory stood in the middle of the sidewalk, these thoughts flashing through her mind. She glanced down at the birthday cake. She'd baked it herself, decorated it with pink icing and colored sugar crystals. She'd carefully covered it with plastic film and carried it tenderly from her apartment down the escalator to the metro and up the escalator to Connecticut Avenue. Within two blocks of her office building the bike 2

messenger had ruined everything. And, to add insult to injury, he'd yelled at her. "Get your fat ass out of the way, granny!" he'd hollered as he flew past. He hadn't run into her. Thinking it over, Mallory came to believe he had deliberately reached out and knocked the cake from her hands. A wave of fierce anger shook her. She turned and went back to the Farragut North Metro Station. Down the escalator, into the train, back home again. Mallory called in sick to work. She explained to Virginia Stephens, the office manager, that she'd been victimized by a bike messenger and was really too shaken to come to work. Virginia expressed concern and said they'd miss her at Becky's birthday party. Mallory asked her to tell the others what had happened and that she was sorry she couldn't deliver the cake she'd promised. That taken care of, she took off the suit and drew a hot bath. It was while she was soaking in the tub, trying to forget how much she hated bike messengers, that the idea came to her. At first she tried to put it out of her mind. Impishly, it refused to leave. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed feasible. Not only feasible, sensible and right. She would like to kill the bike messenger. It would serve him right. How dare he run people down and yell at them! Strewing ruin and mayhem behind him wherever he went. Damn him to hell! The bath hadn't relaxed her. She was still so angry that waves of hatred actually shook her as she dressed. She sat in her recliner but she didn't turn the TV on. Neither did she pick up her crossword book nor the vegetarian magazine that had come in the mail the day before. She sat there and deliberately planned to murder the bike messenger. The biggest obstacle, and one that seemed at first to stymie the whole idea, was that she wasn't sure she could recognize that bike messenger again. Gradually, as she brooded, she realized that it didn't matter. All bike messengers were tarred with the same brush -- it didn't matter which bike messenger she killed. All of them were rude and dangerous; any of 3

them might have run into her. Therefore, all were equally guilty and her vengeance could be visited on any of them. Mallory set her mind to think of how to kill a bike messenger. It would be satisfying to stand in the middle of the sidewalk with a .44 magnum and let a bike messenger ride toward her, toward death. To see the look on his face as he realized that she was squeezing the trigger and he would be dead in an instant. Yes, that would be very satisfying. It would also leave her open to pay the penalty of the law. That wouldn't do. Knives, clubs, bombs. All the weapons she thought of were too risky. She needed a weapon that didn't look like a weapon. Something that an elderly woman would look perfectly natural carrying on the streets of the District. Something like an umbrella. An umbrella could be thrust in the spokes of a bike wheel, causing the rider to take a toss. As she thought about it, Mallory saw that, properly set up and directed, a very nice little "accident" could be staged. Moreover, under the right circumstances an automobile driver could be made the actual instrument of death, thus killing two birds with one umbrella, so to speak. Drivers ignored crosswalks as often as not at stoplights, forcing pedestrians to walk around them. And many of them let their cars creep as they waited for the lights to change, making pedestrians wonder if their legs were about to be crushed between bumpers. Then, too, drivers often jumped red lights, rabbit-starting a few seconds before the light turned green. Even more often they ran red lights, speeding up to get through the intersection before the cross traffic reacted to the green light. Bike messengers generally ignored all lights, weaving in and out of pedestrian and vehicular traffic as they pleased. They took incredible chances, turning in front of cars, darting from lane to lane, shooting across intersections against the lights, causing drivers to slam on their brakes or swerve to miss them. In the right combination of weather, traffic, and bike messenger, Mallory was convinced that she could pull off a perfect murder. Mallory was actually very competent and on the inside she was calm and confident but she knew that she appeared to be a trifle flighty. Most 4

people seemed to expect all elderly ladies to be disorganized and to become hysterical in an emergency. She thought that if she behaved in a hysterical manner at the "accident," no one would dream that she had actually planned and caused it. Having visualized the whole scenario, especially the bike messenger lying on the pavement, broken like her cake, Mallory picked up her magazine and began to read about the nutritive values of arugula and radicchio. For several weeks afterwards Mallory carried her umbrella whenever it looked even remotely like it might rain. She bought a new purse, one that she could carry by a shoulder strap so both hands would be free to use the umbrella. She watched bike messengers with an almost indulgent eye, knowing what was coming to one of them, exulting in the foretaste of vengeance. Then it happened. Just as she'd imagined it. It wasn't actually raining as she walked from her office to the metro station but the sky was dark with the downpour that was expected momentarily. Traffic was in a hurry to get as far as possible before the storm hit. As she was coming up Rhode Island Avenue to cross M Street, a bike messenger came pelting up the avenue, the wrong way, against the traffic. A car on M Street, traveling too fast, swung into the little lane that connected to Rhode Island. Mallory would never have a better chance. She thrust her umbrella into the spokes of the rear wheel of the messenger's bike. The bike messenger fell smack into the path of the speeding car. The driver hit the horn and the brakes, the car swerved but it was too late. The bike messenger was flung into the air and landed on his back near the monument to nursing nuns. Mallory screamed and screamed. Police cars roared up, lights flashing, sirens screeching. Rain began to fall in torrents. The driver of the car stood in the rain and babbled incoherently about it not being his fault. The police sent for an ambulance for the bike messenger and another for Mallory. They took the bike messenger to the morgue and Mallory to the emergency room. The doctors and nurses were kind to her there, after they got her 5

insurance information. They gave her a sedative and made her rest in a high white bed for a couple of hours. Then they let her go home in a taxi. A month or so later, Virginia and a couple of the women from the office came to Mallory's apartment. They met now and then for an evening of bridge at someone's home or a meal in a restaurant. It was pleasant without being too demanding of time or resources. Virginia went over to a new plaque on the wall. It was a newspaper article laminated to a piece of walnut shaped like a shield. The headline read: "Bike Messenger Dies in Accident." There was a somewhat blurry picture of his body by the monument to nursing nuns with the car's driver and the police in the foreground. Virginia thought it was softhearted Mallory's memorial for the dead bike messenger. Mallory never told anyone that it was a trophy of her perfect murder.

copyright © 2004

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