Downing the last of a beer when seated at a sidewalk table outside a cafΓ©, Marin Graham's eyeballs zapped hard left as a woman with great chest bounce walked by. And then he noticed the pushchair and his vision just as quickly straightened to gaze at the fat back of fatso sitting in front of him and eyeing the passing women, the jerk.
Marin sighed. His hair-lady said his hair was thinning. He decided to never go back to her again but he often said that; she was such a hard-talking know-all. Whatever happened to soft women? These days women were half-starving themselves, working men's hours, competing against men aggressively and then jettisoning anti-contraception just in time to slide in with a couple of kids in tow before turning forty. The other blatant social change that worried him was women seemed to prefer dating younger guys to challenge their pussy.
Well this wasn't good enough. Some reforms were needed to get women to pull their horns in.
Oh, thinking about pussy, this one was top shelf. Marcia waved as she approached and slid into the seat to conveniently block out much of fatso.
"Coffee, juice of something to get your motor running," Marin leered.
"Nothing thanks darling. Must rush. Sorry to drop this on you without notice and it will stuff plans for this evening but I have to end it with you. My manager wants to date me."
"The rotten bastard."
"You mean bitch darling. My manager is female. Well, that's the end of the bad news. Chin up, smile and think of the oil price."
"Oil price? What do you mean?"
Too late, she was already on the sidewalk. Marin yelled, "What about a kiss!"
Fatso turned and of course Marcia was nowhere to be seen. Fatso growled, "Listen you gay jerk, lay one finger on me and I'll punch you into tomorrow."
As soon as Fatso turned back to ogle at babes, Marin moved off on to the sidewalk and merged into the crowd. God, what a day! His boss had declared him redundant and earlier his mom told him she was about to remarry, so he'd have to find somewhere else to spend his boring weekends.
Distressed, finding it too much, Marin leaned against the granite of First Country Bank and wept. Then out of nowhere a woman wearing too much lipstick and with her hem just below her hips opened her shoulder bag and offered him five bucks to buy a coffee.
"No thanks ma'am. I've just lost my woman."
"Ooooh, for one-fifty I could spend an hour substituting."
Marin hurried off saying no thanks, and wished her a successful evening.
Well, nothing else could happen to him, Marin sighed, except he might get hit by a thunderbolt or a pigeon could dislodge a loose brick on to him from ten floors up. No it just wasn't one of those days to remember.
Marin entered his apartment building and saw Mrs Bryant from the penthouse above his premium apartment attempting to remove her key from the Bryant's mailbox. He and Eva shared the same birthday and both were thirty-five. She wiped away tears and tried again.
God, women want the world and yet they still cry over any little thing.
"Eva, allow me."
"Oh thank you Marin. I've extracted the mail but the key won't come out."
It almost fell into Marin's hand. He passed it to Eva and he saw she was shaking like a leaf.
"Eva, what's wrong," He thought perhaps they had a mouse in the kitchen.