The Story of You and Me by Pamela DuMond Read Free Book Online

grabbed the waistband of my pants with one hand and yanked them. But my jean capris weren’t giving.  
    And neither was I. A wave of anger surged through me. Last night’s assault was unavoidable. Tonight’s didn’t have to be. “Go fuck yourself!” I slammed the back of my head into his face.
    “Ow!” He released his hold on me. “Bitch!” he exclaimed. Which was my opportunity to run.  
    And I did. I raced down the block. I still didn’t know where Lincoln was and at this point I didn’t care. Just needed to make tracks.  
    “You cunt! You broke my nose!”
    I stopped for a heartbeat, swiveled my head and eyed him, panting. He clutched his nose, which was trickling blood. Probably less blood than my face had oozed the night before. “Then maybe, you Pintdick loser , you need to stop attacking women half your size.”  
    His friends stopped in their tracks bent over, clutched their stomachs and laughed out loud.  
    I continued running. Yes, I was an idiot for stopping, let alone delivering fighting words, but my adrenaline was sky-high.  
      “Yo, Oscar! A chick half your size takes you out?” one of his friends said. “Instagrammed it. And I’m sharing it with everyone!”  
    “Pintdick?” another friend snorted. “You ground it against her and she didn’t feel anything? It’s confirmed. Pintdick Oscar it is!”
           
    * * *

    I found my way back to Lincoln Avenue and staggered toward a bus stop a little over a block away. I was sweaty, messy and sensing a pattern here. The stop and go traffic had let up and cars rushed past each other. The occasional jerk cut someone off and horns blared. Tall streetlights overhead sliced through the beach fog casting weird illuminations onto the pavement and people below.  
    I trudged past a crowd of trendy attired twenty-somethings who posed like zombies had bitten them. They stood in a block long line that snaked into the entrance of a two-story brick building.  
    I was so tired, so out-of–it, again, that the midwesterner in me found it comforting to see a brick building in L.A. I stopped for a second to catch my breath and took in the sign on its frontage. It featured a foreign name in large block styled font. “Is this is a local nightclub?” I asked a girl in line.
    She wore too much makeup and huge black sunglasses. She slid them down her nose and regarded me like I was a bug that had splattered onto her windshield. “It’s a sausage restaurant.”
    My eyes widened as I gazed up and down the long line of hipster people. “You’re waiting in line for… sausage?”
    “Thirty minutes. The chef worked at Zertie’s before he opened SpreckenZie. This place has the best sausages in L.A.”  
    I shook my head. “You all need to visit Wisconsin.” I resumed walking.
    “Your face is bleeding, you know.” The girl pushed her glasses back up her face, shrugged her shoulders at her friends who giggled and then ignored me.
    I’d almost made it to the bus stop. My face hurt: especially the part that had been shoved up against the fence. I was outside the pet store. Tall bright security beams fixed close to the top of the building illuminated their parking lot. A tiny light in the store’s interior hovered over the cage of kittens in the window.  
    All that lovely adrenaline was draining from my body, leaving me weak and tired. Or maybe my exhaustion was from going under general anesthesia while they pumped my spine full of stem cells.  
    My second night in L.A. might have been shittier than my first night.  
    But the store with its decent lighting seemed like a safe enough place to stop, catch my breath and rest for a moment. I glanced behind me—no Pintdick or his pals. Thank God. I rested my hand against the store window. I heard a few tiny squeaks. Oh, please, no rats or mice. But the peeps were coming from inside the store.  
    I peered into the window. All the kittens were sleeping with the exception of the longhaired black one