Chapter Twenty One
Prominently displayed in front of G.O.D.’s main entrance is a large warning: No Spitting, Bird Feeding, or Gum Chewing. Without the proper context, visitors are often confused on the signage, naïve to its origins in G.O.D.’s famous parking war. The class struggle which drove the parking war culminated in the staff’s defeat at the hands of upper management, but the war raged on, transformed into an ongoing, daily battle between Cuddy and Mary.
The war began when upper management, tired of the unpredictable nature of parking and drunk on power, assigned themselves the spaces closest the building’s entrance. This did not bode well with the staff, which was typically at work long before the execs arrived and long after they departed. Pissed off at having their faces rubbed in upper management’s wealth, as they walked past a stable of expensive automobiles, the staff retaliated and defaced the cars by spitting on their windshields and littering the ground with bird seed. The employees took great satisfaction in their insurgency and cheered loudly whenever flocks of pigeons, drawn to the seed, circled above and shat mercilessly.
From upper management’s perspective, it was unfortunate these acts of treason were too surreptitious to capture on the grainy, black and white surveillance video, and no retribution could be meted out to employee or bird. As could have been predicted, Doug and company quickly tired of walking across bird shit laden blacktop to find their cars fouled, and retaliated. To even the score, and secure a safe harbor, Doug shook the Magic 8 Ball and confirmed his God given right of eminent domain. He declared the entire western parking lot for the exclusive use of the executives.
With the western lot now serving the executive minority, the eastern lot did not hold enough spaces for the staff. Inspired by both the airlines and his Separate Orders program, Cuddy solved this quandary by ordering Wayne to halve the size of the spots, thereby doubling the number of spaces. This immediately created two problems. First, employees arriving late to work were forced to circle the lot in an endless loop hoping to find the last of the open spaces. Second, those that drove station wagons and SUV’s typically needed to exit through the tailgate or sunroof; the spaces too tightly packed to allow the doors to open on these larger vehicles. Viewed from on high, the morning rush hour was reminiscent of a scene from a classic zombie movie as cars circled aimlessly, and the staff crawled from their car’s windows and walked stiffly to the building.
Uprising squelched, and masses duly humbled, the execs then reveled in their victory by spending shareholder money to refurbish their lot in a manner befitting an English lord. To begin, they removed the blacktop and bricked the lot in an eye-catching herringboned pattern. Next, still concerned the staff might continue to harass their beloved autos, they built a large earthen embankment to separate the lots. In an effort to mask its moat like function, the embankment was landscaped with wildflowers, fountain grass, boulders, and flowering shrubbery. Lastly, a large covered bridge was constructed to ensure safe passage from the executive lot to the main entrance. The bridge was well received by the executives, given the company’s history of things flying out of windows. Of equal importance, the covered bridge mitigated unnecessary interaction with the staff and provided a comfortable place of respite during the frequent fire alarms.
Upon its completion, the executives parked in a tranquil garden oasis secured with its own private entrance. Hints of pine and lavender scented the air, and the carefully landscaped grounds offered seasonal blooms. Only one spot in the executive parking lot was assigned for the exclusive use of an individual: Doug’s parking spot. The remainder of the spots, none more than a few feet from the base of the bridge, were available on a first come basis. Each spot, by design, was wide enough to accommodate the hurried parking of the management team without risk of a door ding.
Initially overjoyed at their imperial parking, but now feeling contempt for the familiar, Cuddy and Mary began to fight amongst themselves for the spot nearest Doug’s. Both believed that parking next to Doug’s car was an important step in their selection as next CEO, and competed daily for the perceived advantage it offered.
On his way to work, a little after eight in the morning, Cuddy felt the persuasive growl of his stomach. He’d eaten breakfast, but, not his second breakfast, and he was certain he was seeing big dividends from his fitness routine. Real or perceived, he was convinced his appetite was in high gear due to the effort needed to change fat into muscle. “Fuel for the fire baby!” he shouted over the deafening country music that pumped from his SUV’s speakers. Seeing the golden arches of the Promised Land, Cuddy cut a hard right turn into the parking lot to pick up a little something to tide him over the few hours until lunch. He planned to work out when he got to work and didn’t want to shake on an empty stomach.
Cuddy left the McDonald’s drive-thru with a large paper bag in one hand and supersized milkshake in the other. Not normally offered as breakfast items Cuddy and Irene held enough sway that the store manager agreed to modify the menu. Pulling from the drive thru window, Cuddy drove with his belly. His attention wholly fixated on opening a catsup packet. The packet proved more difficult to open than expected, and with the extra effort Cuddy lost track of the distance to the main thoroughfare, and overshot the stop sign that marked the end of the McDonald’s parking lot. Looking up, at the last minute, he realized his car was part way in the busy street and now blocked the right lane.
Car horns wailed and brakes squealed as oncoming traffic scattered and missed Cuddy by inches. As he fumbled to regain control, hands slicked in McDonald’s grease, he cut the steering wheel hard right and floored the accelerator. The violent turn caused the rear right tire to clip the curb. At the unexpected jolt the supersized milkshake, which he still held in his left hand, sloshed from the top of the straw and onto his pant leg. As he fumbled to wipe the milkshake from his leg, he dropped his Big Mac. It bounced down his front and came to rest against the passenger door. Special sauce, lettuce, and cheese, lay strewn about the passenger’s floor mat. Sauce stained his shirt. “Horse’s ass,” he mumbled, now covered in McDonald’s.
Fully in the road now, Cuddy’s SUV raced forward absent its driver as he bent below the dashboard and began to reassemble the Big Mac. He leaned fully into the passenger’s space to put the pickles back on the all beef patties, and reinsert them inside the sesame seed bun. He then wiped the inside of the bun off his shirt to recapture as much of the secret sauce as possible.
Coming up ridiculously fast on the Escalade that pulled directly into her path, Mary cut sharply left and wailed on the horn. “Asshole!” As she passed, she gave the driverless truck the finger. Mary was an excellent multi-tasker. Looking through her rearview mirror, as she broke hard for the red light, Mary realized it was Cuddy she’d nearly rear ended.
Cuddy popped back up just after she passed, and immediately recognized Mary’s car.
At the light, Cuddy pulled up next to Mary. Mary sat in the left lane, while Cuddy sat in the right. Two hundred yards ahead, and to the right, sat the entrance to the expressway. From there it was ten miles to the exit for the office, two hundred yards on a city street, across the employee lot, and finally into the executive lot that held the storied spot. With their attention wholly focused on the stop light, neither driver acknowledged the other. The race was about to commence.
As he waited the green light, Cuddy bit his Big Mac cleanly in half. He didn’t like to race on an empty stomach anymore than he liked to workout on one.
As Cuddy chewed, Mary sat in her charcoal M6 BMW revving the engine. The tachometer spiked and fell with no noticeable change, and her piping hot cup of black coffee, with steam rising, sat ripple free. Classical music filled the cabin. Mary didn’t need consumer reports to know German was the way to go for the everyday commute. Any country with balls enough to start two world wars leads in mechanical engineering by necessity. Mary couldn’t afford a Ferrari or Lamborghini and compromised
on the charcoal colored M6. Capable of speeds over two hundred miles per hour, the car is as aesthetically pleasing as it is powerful. Long and shark-like, the car rides inches above the ground.
She’d bought the M6 a couple of months after taking the job at G.O.D. It was a serious drain on her already strained finances, but she wanted to reward herself for both becoming a vice president and getting married. Ownership included a series of high performance driving schools. In the morning rush hour, Mary’s new racing skills, paired with her high performance auto and sense of entitlement, made her a formidable contender. Her vanity plate told it all: KLASSY. CLASSY, spelled with a C, was already taken.
Cuddy sat to Mary’s right in his white Escalade on oversized aftermarket wheels, with a one thousand watt sub woofer in the back. Country music vibrated the vehicle and loosened union tightened bolts to the point where they could be removed by hand, if the bolts hadn’t already fallen off of their own volition. The car was oversized and obscene, with unimpressive acceleration and average top end. All in it was no match for Mary’s BMW on an open course. Luckily for Cuddy, the rush hour commute into G.O.D. was no open course and Cuddy’s driving was honed on the roads of central Nebraska.
Unlike Mary’s formal schooling at the hands of former Formula One race car drivers, Cuddy learned to drive every go cart, mini bike, tractor, and farm implement, he could fit in. If it had an engine, and you could slide the back end on a snowy turn or gravel road, Cuddy had probably spent ten thousand hours doing so. Filling out his driving portfolio were the years spent slogging farm equipment on Nebraska’s interstate highway system. Driving large vehicles, with thirty five mile per hour top ends, on crowded highways creates the type of learning environment that leads to a sixth sense of traffic patterns and other drivers’ behaviors.
Likely, the only commonality between Mary and Cuddy in the realm of automobiles and driving was the vanity plate. Cuddy too felt the need for a vanity plate. Unfortunately, his fat fingers were unable to fill out the requisite form accurately, and his intended BIGMAN became PIGMAN when his chubby thumb smudged the ink and changed a B to a P. Cuddy finished his Big Mac in a single bite, and then reached into the bag for the supersized fries.
The light turned green. Mary floored the accelerator and left two large black strips on the cement road. She handily beat Cuddy to the entrance ramp, then blew past the stop light at the bottom of the ramp intended to manage traffic flow.
Cuddy burped loudly and watched her race away, resigned to having lost the pole position.
Coming onto the highway, Mary accelerated to ninety miles per hour, wherein she braked hard, scrubbed her speed, and cut left onto the highway’s far right and slowest lane. Looking in her rear view, but appearing to look straight ahead to give no insight into her strategy, she saw Cuddy’s Escalade merge into the lane she drove in several hundred yards back. “Loser,” she spoke aloud, as she watched Cuddy through her mirror. Pointing at Cuddy, her finger bumped the mirror at each word, “You, are, a, fucking, loser. Loser!”
In front of Mary a woman drove a modest Camry with two toddlers in the back seat. Mary pulled up a couple inches from the rear bumper. The lady easily had fifty feet of open space before the car in front of her. Mary yelled at the woman, “Focus. Use your mental toughness.” Mary flashed her lights and then honked her horn. Normally, Mary would have tapped the women’s rear bumper to alert her to the fact that it was rush hour, but she didn’t want to deal with getting the inevitable scuff buffed out of her front bumper. Finally, a football field ahead and to the right, was another entrance ramp with a dedicated lane for traffic merging onto the highway.
Mary pulled hard right into the ramp’s entrance lane and cut off a couple cars trying to merge onto the highway. Horns wailed. She floored the accelerator and sped around the right side of the young mother in the Toyota. “Asshole!” she mouthed as she looked at the mother. Then, seeing the kids in the back seat, she corrected herself, “Assholes!”
With the ramp’s entrance lane closing out, Mary decided to floor it and race down the right shoulder. As she ran out of lane, and entered the shoulder, the back end of the car broke right. Mary expertly steered into the skid and returned the vehicle to its intended path. Her car continued to increase its speed. On the shoulder, a couple hundred feet ahead, sat a car with its hood up. Mary skimmed inches from the broken down car, forcing the driver examining his front left wheel to jump out of the way to avoid being hit.
Cutting left, Mary re-entered the lane she started in, and easily one hundred feet in front of Cuddy. Then, seeing an opening and hoping to further her lead, she cut two lanes to her left and was unexpectedly forced to slam on her brakes. The lane she’d pulled into was at a standstill, and Mary skidded onto the left shoulder to avoid rear ending the car in front of her. “Motherfucker!”
Cuddy saw the sucker hole Mary jumped into, but elected to stay in the far right lane. Typically the slowest lane, he saw a bend in the road and intuition told him as the cars followed the left breaking curve their density would force them to brake. There were too many cars for a given space. In the right lane he whisked past Mary at a blistering twenty miles per hour. “Who’s in the pole position now? Huh? It’s the Big Man,” he yelled inside his car, while he made sure to stare straight ahead and give no insight to his strategy.
Mary sat on the left hand shoulder waiting for traffic to move forward and allow her to reenter the lane. “Fucking assholes,” she swore in frustration as she waited. Without turning her head, Mary saw Cuddy go by on the right. “Motherfucker!” she wailed on her horn, a futile cry to get traffic moving. A hint of alarm creeped into her voice as PIGMAN drove away, “Motherfucker!”
As Cuddy widened the gap, Mary floored the accelerator and pinned the clutch. She pointed the wheels straight. Near the red line she let the clutch go, and shot like a rocket down the left shoulder. A risky move to be sure, but her only option. Accelerating by powers of ten - 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 miles per hour, she finally found an opening in the left most lane, cut hard right, and exited the shoulder. Now back in the flow of traffic, she saw an opening to her right and took it. In the center lane she surged forward. Cuddy’s truck was less than a dozen feet ahead.
With a few miles to go Cuddy was still gliding down the right hand lane. As he reveled in his lead, he alternately drummed an imaginary kit, clubbing the dash with his meaty paws for emphasis, and stuck power chords on his air guitar as he belted the lyrics to, I Wish I Were a Woman (So I Could Go Out With A Guy Like Me). He’d seen Mary come close, but not pass him. She rode inches off the bumper of the car in front of her looking for a chance to pass.
Pinned by Cuddy on the right and the jammed lane to her left, Mary had lost control of her destiny. She flicked her windshield wipers on and off, flashed her lights, and wrestled with how to free herself from her quandary. The rods in her engine stood on the edge of being thrown as she played with the throttle, clutch engaged and waiting to spring.
Looking forward, Cuddy saw he was about to lose the upper hand. A Yugo driven half on the right lane and half on the shoulder, hazards on, drivers hand pressed outward against the windshield, was about to force him to break. His truck was too wide to squeeze around the Yugo, and Mary now boxed him out of the middle lane. “Horse’s ass,” he screamed as Mary went by. KLASSY stole away, now the odds on favorite to win.
Passing the Yugo, Mary noticed the driver’s right hand holding the windshield in place, glass undulating under the force of the wind. As she passed, she gave him a piece of friendly, collegial advice. “Have some fucking pride.” She took a second look at the driver, and when she realized it was Mike, the new CFO, rephrased her words of wisdom, “Have some self respect you human piece of shit.” She closed with, “Fucking loser,” and raced ahead.
With the noise in the car Mike couldn’t hear anything, and thought Mary was wishing him luck. He nodded appreciatively.
He was surprised she recognized him. When Mike drove the Yugo he sought anonymity and always wore a baseball hat, pulled low, and oversized sunglasses. Face hidden, he then slouched low in the driver’s seat and blocked as much of the side windows as possible with the sun visor. He was used to honks of support from the like downtrodden. Those traveling in Renaults, Volares, and Cimarrons, often gave him the thumbs up sign. Perhaps he’d misread Mary, and she really was a good person. This was the first favorable experience he’d had with someone driving a fancy BMW.
Well ahead of Cuddy, Mary again taxed the engine and charged within inches of the rear bumper of the car now in her path. Scuff notwithstanding she tapped his rear bumper once and yelled out the window, “It’s the vertical pedal on the right. Move it asshole.” The driver of the Taurus put on his turn indicator and began to work his way to the shoulder to report the accident. He assumed Mary would join him. Mary screamed an unintelligible string of profanities as she flew past.
Certain she’d beat Cuddy to the exit ramp, Mary lit a celebratory cigarette. An occasional smoker, she wielded an expert’s deftness at violently flicking the butt, and rarely missed her intended target. Two drags in, Mary opened the sun roof and flicked the lit cigarette up and out.
Cuddy saw the inbound projectile but was unable to avoid it. The cigarette landed in an explosion of embers in the direct center of his hood, where it lay unreachable and inexplicably pinned by the varied forces of gravity and wind. Horns cried out, as Cuddy frantically jerked the steering wheel and jumped in and out of lanes in a futile effort to dislodge Mary’s detritus. Cuddy’s efforts were to no avail. The cigarette burned slowly and a pencil eraser sized bubble of paint rose up on the truck’s hood. Cuddy rolled his window down, hoping to dislodge it and prevent further damage, but the combination of his undersized arms and enormous belly kept him from ridding his ride of the offensive matter. The cigarette remained where it landed, causing further damage, as he raced for second place.
At the end of the highway portion of the commute, Mary took the exit ramp at eighty miles per hour and floored it at the turn’s apex. The car stuck like glue and effortlessly rocketed to one hundred miles per hour. It was the first time she’d hit triple digits on the inbound commute. Scrubbing speed, she downshifted on the city street, and then floored the accelerator. The car’s back end skidded loudly as she turned into G.O.D.’s main entrance.
On G.O.D.’s campus, Mary accelerated as she drove diagonally across the staff lot. She beeped her horn to scatter the employees from her path. Victory certain, she pulled into the executive lot and in a celebratory move parked crosswise, thereby removing from play the two most coveted parking spots. “Touche, douchebag!” she shouted at the nowhere to be seen Cuddy. Winning felt so good she repeated herself, “Touche, douchebag!” Reinforcing her win, she stuck her hand out the sunroof and gave the nowhere to be seen Cuddy the finger.
Car parked, Mary hurriedly ran to the covered bridge before Cuddy saw her. It was important Cuddy thought she had been here for a long time, and the ass whooping she dealt him a good one. Her lathered horse sat in the stable, engine clinking and popping as it cooled. In a few hours, her trusty steed would be called on to reverse the commute and return her home.
Sixty seconds after Mary parked, and fifteen seconds after she ran into the building, Cuddy pulled into the main entrance. He pitched his McDonalds trash from the window as he too raced diagonally across the employee lot, scattering employees to and fro. Cuddy didn’t honk. He figured he’d hit who he hit, and he liked the look in the employees eyes when whoever lay in his path realized he wasn’t going to break and dove for safety at the last minute.
Pulling into the executive lot Cuddy cried out his signature phrase, “Horse’s ass!” when he noticed Mary had taken the spot next to Doug, and blocked the next most coveted spot. “Well played sister.” Cuddy wasn’t above giving credit where credit was due. Cuddy parked in the third most preferred spot, twenty feet from Mary’s car, furious at the impact this might have on his career.
The Escalade’s engine turned off, Cuddy opened the door and worked his belly from under the steering wheel. As he sat sideways in his seat, spindly legs sticking straight out, he slid off the seat and fell the eight inches to the ground. An audible umph rang out upon impact, and the truck shook mightily as the front left shock was un-weighted and the vehicle rocked to and fro. Cuddy straightened himself and smoothed the front of his trousers.
Resigned to having lost, Cuddy walked toward Mary’s car thinking he’d hock a giant milk shake loogie on her windshield. He was working up the phlegm to leave the mother of all lung boogers, whose removal at day’s end would require an ice scraper, when fortune unexpectedly reversed itself. On the ground sat Mary’s four thousand dollar Hermes gloves. In her haste to avoid any contact with Cuddy, she’d accidentally dropped them onto the ground when she jumped from her car.
Cuddy bent down in excitement, tearing his pants as he did so, and in a swift and hurried motion, while pretending to tie his shoe, cut the thumbs off both of her gloves. He was one of the few executives in America who kept a knife on his belt. He pocketed the thumbs, a voyeuristic souvenir to relive the moment, and returned the gloves to where he’d found them. And, “What the hell,” he thought, as he spat on Mary’s driver side window.
Fifteen minutes after Mary and Cuddy entered the building, Mike pulled into the staff lot. The lot had filled quickly, and few spots remained. As he aimlessly circled the lot, hoping to find a spot to park, Cuddy’s trash bag became stuck under the Yugo’s front axle. The trash dragged noisily, a noticeable impediment to the car’s travel. Mike wasn’t concerned that he’d lost five miles per hour off the car’s top end with the bag wedged underneath, he was happy he’d made it to work alive. Mike found the morning work commute perilous, and with that in mind bowed his head and gave thanks to Saint Frances.