My Other Karma

My Other Karma


         “Listen asshole,” Tammy growled into her cell phone, “I want as much as I can get out of him.” The tiny response couldn’t be heard over the roar of the wind coming in her convertible. “I don’t give a fuck if you think he owes me or not. I want his ass.” Again the voice couldn’t quite be made out. Tammy checked her rearview mirror as she neared a pair of red lights, scanning for cars behind her that looked as if they wouldn’t stop quickly enough. She didn’t want her new yellow BMW convertible to get rear ended by some drunk who wasn’t paying attention. As she looked into the mirror she caught a glimpse of her own face. Tammy was a beautiful woman with long blonde hair, a perfect face, and bright blue eyes. She was a true Californian dream come to life, but she noticed her reflected expression was an ugly one. Her perfectly smooth brow was furrowed in anger, her model lips were wrinkled in a grimace, her ‘to die for eyes’ were hard and mean. “One last time Gerry, sue his ass off. No one dumps me like that. Understand? What the fuck am I paying you for if you’re not going to do what I tell you to?”

         There were four lanes along this stretch of sunny California Costal Highway One and traffic lights appeared every few miles, and marked where Sunset Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, and a hundred other beaches existed. Tammy stopped her car in the right hand lane. Now that her car was still, and the wind’s rush had quieted, her lawyer’s voice could be heard to say, “Ms. Traupman, there’s nothing to sue him for. There’s not a court in the country that will buy into your ‘defamation of character’ just because he dumped you on a date. Your first date I might add. If I went to a judge with this he’d laugh me right out of the building!”

         “What the fuck good are you? I knew I should have hired a lawyer with some guts. Ok Gerry, you’re fired. You hear me? I’m going to go find a lawyer with some balls to sue that asshole, and then I’m going to have him sue you too!” Tammy snapped her cell phone shut. “Worthless pricks, every one of them,” she said waiting for the light to change.

         An old station wagon pulled up and stopped to her left. An ancient East Indian woman with long white wild and wind blown hair was driving it. As was the custom of the woman’s country she had a tika, a dot, on her forehead painted in bright red. Tammy looked at the dusty beat-up car and wrinkled old woman and thought, dot headed loser. The old woman returned Tammy’s glance with a toothy smile.

         Not far behind them, Alan was driving and talking on his cell phone too. He knew that he shouldn’t be doing it but he loved talking to his sister and it was so infrequently that he got the chance, that he just couldn’t help himself. “Aw Sis, now don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll find somebody someday; it’s just hard with work and all.” His sister’s voice was impossible to hear over the growl of his sports car’s engine. “I promise, no more gold diggers. I’ll only date funny looking country bumpkins like us from now on.” He laughed at his sister’s reply. “I can’t help it! The women out here are so beautiful!” Alan braked to a stop behind the old station wagon. He laughed at its bumper sticker which read, ‘My other Carma is a Cadillac’. “Everything out here is beautiful. You should see my new car,” he said, then added with a touch of melancholy, “It sure isn’t my old pick-up truck.”

         The lights turned green, and Tammy in a fit of disgust spun her tires as she pulled out. She glanced in her side mirror and made sure she was ahead of the old station wagon, when she noticed that a bright red Ferrari was driving just behind it. She took her foot off the gas peddle and checked her face. She smoothed the lines from her brow and the corners of her mouth, turning from the mean, little person she was, back into the incredibly beautiful woman everyone saw her as. Ferrari’s equaled money and she wanted to look her best.

         The station wagon pulled slowly past her. Hurry up jerkoff, Tammy thought. She pretended to fumble in her purse, so as to seem to have reason for driving so far under the speed limit. She definitely wanted to give the driver of the little red sports car plenty of time to admire her covertly, but didn’t want to appear to be doing just that. She imagined what Mr. Ferrari would look like. He’d be handsome and rugged with dark hair and piercing eyes. He’d be built like a lumberjack but with smooth hands and a smooth body. But most of all he’d be rich. Tammy had spent time with fat ugly men before and knew she would do it again. As long as they showed proper awe at her blinding beauty and bought things for her, like this car, she was satisfied. But she could dream.

         Tammy glanced in her side-view mirror and her breath was caught short. Mr. Ferrari was indeed a hottie, just exactly as she had imagined. “Two for the price of one,” she purred to herself. With her outer beauty shining brighter than the California sun, she read the bumper sticker on the rusty station wagon as it pulled ahead. New Age freak, she thought. Then the bumper sticker bounced, just a little jolt, as if the car had hit something on the road. The red sports car pulled up smoothly beside her. She turned her full radiance on the mesmerized Mr. Ferrari and saw his reaction to her beauty written in his goofy smile and star struck stare. Gotcha, she thought. Then something wet hit her from above. Something vile rained down on her. Something dead and gone a long time sailed into her open car.

         Alan saw the yellow BMW as he and the station wagon with the funny bumper sticker passed it. He also beheld the most beautiful woman he thought he had ever seen in his life driving it. His heart skipped a beat and for a moment and he forget about his sister still on the phone. She couldn’t be a gold digger with a car like that, he thought. She obviously already had money of her own. And with that face she was even too beautiful for the likes of him. But she looked so nice! Maybe this time…, he started thinking when the station wagon hit a small dead lump of something on the road. A squirrel, he wondered? But there was enough gore exploding from under station wagon’s tire for it to have been a bear. Whatever it had been, it splashed all over his vision of loveliness driving the BMW. Dead rotting meat and guts flew over and into the yellow car; covering the blonde, ruining her beautiful face and hair. Then the smell hit Alan and it was all he could do to keep from throwing up himself. A skunk the size of a horse, he wondered. The woman in the yellow car also looked sick. He began thinking, poor lady, when the blonde started screaming. From her mouth came the most vile string of words Alan had every heard in his life. She covered every evil filthy bigoted description of the station wagon driver imaginable. She covered every curse and swear word in the dictionary and then she came up with a few new ones no one had ever heard. She ranted at life, the other driver, and even Alan himself! As he passed her she looked at him as if he had something to do with the whole mess. Looking at her now, he saw something that again took his breath away, the California beauty queen looked natural in her spoiled entrails hair-do. She looked as if the blood and gore and stink somehow fit her. Her eyes were black pools of the most intense hate he had ever seen. Her mouth was curved in a snarl and he could almost imagine fangs somewhere hidden behind rows of perfectly white teeth.

         Alan’s sister could hear the screaming and asked him what was going on. “Oh, just a close call honey. I’m Ok though. So, how’s dad doing? Does he need a new car?” Allen sped up to get out of the wake of stink left behind by the BMW and its enraged driver.

         The old lady in the station wagon, smiling, turned right at the next light. The old car always turned right, going around and around the block in an endless circle.


This story was originally submitted as my first ever contest entrant. The rules were that the story could contain no more than 1500 words.