Alcohol Ad Lib • I stayed up a little late last night watching episodes of the second season of The Shield, the just-ended FX cops-and-gangs drama about an experimental police unit set up in a fictional L.A. neighborhood. So I awoke slowly and creakily this morning, after numerous Shield-related nightmares, and was a couple minutes late getting out the door.
Now, my commute is not a long one by any means—getting from my apartment to Brentwood Boulevard takes about 7 minutes. But the next leg of the journey, the mile-long stretch of Brentwood past the Galleria, can sometimes double that time. The trick to getting down Brentwood in the morning is to gun it straight out of the intersection at Clayton Road—if I'm close enough to the front of the line, and the traffic cones at 64/40 align in my favor, I may just make it straight through all four lights between Clayton and Rose Avenue. Maybe. If I time the entire thing right, I can pull into the Center 40 parking lot a mere 10 minutes after leaving home.
So I arrived at the intersection at Clayton this morning on the lookout for slow-moving drivers. Noticing the car in front of me coming v e r y s l o w l y to a stop, I quickly changed lanes. Something wasn't right with that driver—as is the case with a large percentage of Brentwood motorists each morning—and I didn't have time to worry about what it might be.
But as I pulled up next to the other car, a black Dodge Charger, the woman in the passenger seat gave me a baleful look through her open window—and then the driver started yelling. Suddenly, I was back into the world of The Shield, as the dreadlocked, overalls-wearing driver flung open his door, stepped out and started walking around the front of his car. "You made me late for work!" he screamed. Was he yelling at me for pulling around him? No—he kept walking, down the center line between the lanes, directing his fury forward. A few yards ahead of our cars he stopped, both fists above his head, shouting.
"You made me late for work! You made me late for work! You made me late for work, you stupid %$&#!"
He stood there for a moment, enraged, then threw his arms down at his sides in frustration. He stalked back to his car and slammed the door. The light changed—and the cars in his lane still didn't move. The cars in mine did. I gunned it down Brentwood, my mind clouded by thoughts of workplace point systems and firings. —Margaret Bauer, Assistant Editor
