A Tale of Two Trucks by Thea Nishimori Read Free Book Online

and boxers. (The mental discipline it required was almost too much for me!)
    He stepped out onto the front porch to pick up the paper, and a moment later I heard it drop to the ground. I looked up to see Joe standing in the doorway, transfixed, staring at something.
    “What is it?” I asked. When he didn’t answer immediately, I got up and went over to see what it was.
    “It” was his truck, parked in my driveway. Which was now spattered and smeared all over with raw eggs and tomatoes. With something spray-painted underneath the mess, in bright red paint.
    “The hell ?” he exploded, finally getting over his shock enough to verbalize his outrage. I was still working through the process, but I followed him out, zombie-like, as he walked over to survey the damage.
    As we got closer, the smell told us the eggs and tomatoes had been rotten before they’d been hurled at his truck—at his beautiful, almost-brand-new truck! And up close, we could read the graffiti scrawled on the side:
    CraZY BiTCH
    The same message had been sprayed on the other side as well and, on the tailgate, it was simply F and U on either side of the logo. As the reality of the defilement sank in, I was assaulted with a barrage of emotions—fury, hatred, guilt, helplessness, frustration, anger—and cleared my throat, knowing I owed Joe an explanation.
    “I’m so sorry,” I told him, fighting back tears. “This… this was Brandon’s doing.”
    “Your ex?” he exclaimed incredulously.

Chapter 8
     
     
    “Y EAH . It has to be my ex!” I said with conviction, ready to strangle Brandon if the opportunity presented itself. “Well, either him or the boy toy he was cheating on me with… but I just saw him with a different boy at the store, and since he saw me in my new truck —”
    “—that looks exactly like mine,” Joe finished, filling in the blanks, “he did this thinking it was your truck!”
    “Yeah,” I agreed, miserably. “I’m so sorry, Joe! This should’ve been my truck!”
    Joe looked long and hard at the mess, sighed deeply, then said—in as comforting a tone as he could manage, under the circumstances—“Yeah, but don’t apologize, Mike. It’s not your fault!”
    I groaned aloud, startling him, but the worst was yet to come.
    “That’s just it, Joe—it is my fault! This was payback for what I did to him….”
    Now I had to confess, to a shocked and astounded Joe, what I’d done when I found Brandon in bed ( my bed, which I’ve since replaced) with another man. His jaw hung open when I told him I’d chased them out of the house—both naked—and pelted the boy’s car with eggs and tomatoes. It was no coincidence that Joe’s truck was now covered in eggs and tomatoes too.
    “If I hadn’t gone ballistic on them,” I concluded, “he, or they, wouldn’t have come back and done this. When he saw me driving my new truck the other day, he probably thought it would be a good way of getting back at me!”
    “Yeah… I can see that,” Joe said, contemplating the mess before us. “But just smell this, Mike. This stuff had to be rotten! What you did was in the heat of the moment, and totally understandable considering what he’d done to you. But this… this was premeditated . You can’t just go to the store and ask for a pack of rotten eggs, or a bag of rotten tomatoes—he had to buy this stuff and let it sit out in the sun for days before using it!”
    Put in that light, it was even more heinous. Although our first impulse was to wash it off, we decided to call the police and file a report, and also (my idea) take photos of it. I contemplated seeking out some of Brandon’s friends—even going to Cocktales if I had to—and showing them these pictures as proof he was a vindictive piece of shit!
    Some of my neighbors came over to offer their condolences, but nobody had seen the crime being committed, so when the police arrived, we had no evidence to offer except the damage itself. When I insisted that it