one of these mornings i am going to witness a death...

i just know it.

she is probably 32, but she looks old for her age (from the neck up). her body is fantastic; long slender legs and shapely arms with just enough muscle and a teeny tiny waist. she dresses to accentuate this figure too, euh i guess you could say that... this morning it was an electric blue poor-man's hervé leger bandage dress with a bright red vinyl (poor-man's marni balloon) bag and black wedges from (and this is just a guess) bata.

her lipstick matched the bag and she even wore a matching red...wait for it...headband...

she might be crazy, at first i thought she was just a plucky, sporty frenchwoman eager to arrive at work on time, then last week she spit a mile as we sat at the stoplight and lately she's been laughing like a maniac and "revving up" (as much as one can "rev" a bicycle) at all of the lights. she jumps over lane dividers and swears at busses and taxis, she clangs her bell at everything in her path, pigeons, pedestrians, pieces of paper... i keep a safe distance between my bike and hers.

thankfully i stop just before the place de la concorde because i would really hate to see her work that circle...a place so dangerous that french car insurance won't even cover an accident there, where last year alone there were 41 accidents. she's gonna get squished...plucky, sporty, frenchwoman sandwich. i'll have to make a witness statement, be forty minutes late to work and probably have nightmares for the rest of my life and be forced to take the metro.

this morning i did something stupid. i knew it as soon as it happened...i glanced in her direction and (i couldn't help it) i giggled, like, out loud. and she blurted out some obscenity that i couldn't really hear because stevie wonder was too loud and she revved her bike and took off (and spit about a hundred meters later) now she wanted to compete with me. crap. suddenly a row of handsome bikers in matching grey suits fanned out next to me making a perfectly staged diagonal, more perfectly even than four actors could have made after a week of rehearsals. they laughed too, but she didn't hear them.

her wrath is now focused squarely on me. and i am either going to have to wear lower heels and bike faster or take another street to work in the morning...

to be continued...