“Ask me if my mother’s dead or alive! Ask me if my mother’s dead or alive! Ask me! Now ask me if I give a fuck whether I live or die! I don’t give a fuck if I live or die!! Go ahead! Call the police! I’ll kill every one of them! Don’t you fucking hang up on me! Don’t you hang up on me, Bitch! Tonight I’ll kill you, do you hear me? I’ll murder you! I’m going to stick a knife in you tonight! I’m going to stick a knife in you until you’re dead! You don’t think I’m serious? Come outside in twenty minutes and see what I do to your car! Do you hear me??!”

What the heck is going on? It’s 1:30 in the morning. I climb up out of bed and peer out the window down to normally placid 1300 block of Martel Ave just in time to see a lanky dude in dark hair stride past. And just in time to hear him let loose an inarticulate scream of rage. He’s on his cell phone. A companion follows several paces behind. The companion’s body language, in the brief, shadowy moment that I glimpse him, seems to say, “Here we go again.”

The dude strides up the street. His vitriolic rant fades with distance. Somewhere, I can hear police sirens. Thoroughly unnerved, I try to settle back into bed. This guy means business. I can’t imagine who’s on the other end of that line, but I can’t help wondering, who is she? What has she done to inspire such passion and hatred? Will she live through the night?

The police sirens draw closer. Then shut off. I climb back up to the window sill. A police cruiser eases down the street. I can see the glowing video monitor on its dash. And then its gone. The night sinks into silence. I notice a shadow stir in a window of the apartment complex opposite mine. Seems I’m part of a larger audience. Somehow, that gives me comfort.

I settle back into bed but soon realize that I’m not going to be able to sleep. So I slide out of bed and pad into the living room, where I set myself up on the couch with a banket and a pillow and watch an episode of Freaks & Geeks. From the website:

Tests & Breasts: When the geeks are humiliated in sex ed class and puzzled by the punchline of a dirty joke, they realize that they’re painfully behind in their knowledge of sex. They decide to watch a dirty movie to further their education. But the porno turns out to be more than they can handle – and may kill their interest in sex forever – until Sam gets the real scoop from the unlikeliest of sources: Mr. Fredricks. Meanwhile, Lindsay offers to tutor Daniel, who’s flunking math. But he convinces her to help him cheat instead, using a combination of good looks, charm and crying like a baby to manipulate her. Lindsay must deal with the guilt of lying to her parents and the well-meaning Mr. Rosso, whose liberal (i.e. hippie) approach to teaching never ceases to piss off the hilariously smug Mr. Kowchevski.

It’s three-thirty in the morning and I’m giggling uncontrollably.