As soon as he enters the car, I realize something's very wrong. He barges into the back, slams the door, and doesn't even stop to say hello or in any way acknowledge my presence.
"I knew we should'a gone ta da fuckin' gym!", he rants, in his Andretti voice, flailing about the way he does when he's angry. He fidgets uneasily in his seat, yelling at one of the others:
"Would ya scoot over!"
The target is poor Stevie, who, to his credit, puts up a fight:
"Th-this is *my* seat! Y-you scoot over!"
This is met with an exasperated groan, as he throws his hands up and gives his hip a nudge which, had there actually been someone there, would no doubt have dislodged them.
"We couldn't have known", the voice of Gary, ever the peacemaker, pipes in. However, as usual, his serene demeanour blows up Andretti, who yells:
"Couldn't'a known?! It was a fuckin' pay-per-view! Ya don't slack off 'fore a pay-per-view! Bucciach!"
There is a moment of slience after the Italian curseword, and I can feel the tension emanating from the hulk of a man in my back seat, with his five personalities. Soon, however, the quiet is broken, as Andretti begins to rant again:
"If we'd'a been trainin', 'stead o' fiddlin' about with 'ead doctahs, we could'a been goin' for that damn belt right now! 'Stead, we're jobbin' to them two basket cases! Is tha' what we is now?! Jobbahs?!"
Gary comes in again:
"Andretti, calm down! Just because we're not fighting for the belt now, doesn't mean we can't go for it at the next pay-per-view..."
There is, however, no calming "Angry":
"Fuck da next pay-per-view! It should'a been tanite! We should'a been made guys by now! 'Stead, we're fetchin' sammiches f'r the hitmen!"
"Someone's been watching too many Mafia movies..." John's first contribution of the night. As always happens when he is being made fun of, Andretti bristles:
"Who said anythin' 'bout movies?!"
The argument which seems to be about to begin is, however, averted by a bout of crying by Stevie:
"Th-this is all my f-f-fault..I'm the one who's af-f-fraid of s-s-s-..."
Gary starts to say that it's not his fault, he doesn't need to beat himself up, but Andretti interrupts:
"Tha's right! It's all this fuckin' chooch's fault! I'm gonna kill ya, ya goddamn jamoke!"
Horrified, I witness, through my rear-view mirror, as the man in my back seat clasps one of his powerful hands around his own throat and begins to strangle himself. I know there and then that I need to intervene, before this situation gets out of hand. Before I can open my mouth, however, another voice comes in, chilling me to the bone:
"Please, Andretti..! Stop actin' like such a fuckin' baby. Who cares if we didn't win now? You know we're gonna get them sooner of later... Both of them. Dr. Doofenshmirtz AND the little blueberry!"
As soon as the slur is uttered, Gary comes in, in his best teacherly tone:
"Now, Big D, we don't use 'blueberry'. It's not a very nice wo..."
I watch a hand once again shoot to my passenger's throat, seemingly tighter this time around. When he speaks again, his tone is cold enough to freeze stone:
"I don't particularly care about 'nice', Mr. Goody Rowland. You should know that."
That's it. I have to stop this RIGHT NOW. I swivel back in my seat and put on my best Violet voice:
"Would ya babies shut the HELL up?!"
This has the desired effect, as the only sound to be heard afterwards is a meek "s-s-sorry, Violet". I glare at my passenger a moment longer, then turn back around on my seat and focus on the road once again; I don't want to cause an accident.
It doesn't take long for me to once again lose myself in the ebb and flow of night-time Manhattan traffic; and as I do so, I thank the powers that be for the fact that no one peeked into our car while the whole scene was going on. Had anyone done so, they would have been presented with the spectacle of two adults (one of which horribly disfigured) yelling at each other in funny voices. And God knows what impression that would have given them about us. Why, they might have even thought we were crazy.
