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The proud but down-and-out woman who lived near the bridge down by the river didn’t appreciate her shopping cart fort being torn up by a play-through from Miami Vice.
Her name was Greta, and she was eating beans out of a can when it happened. Two local drug dealers sprinted down the path under the bridge, nodding a greeting to her in passing. One of them tossed some of the coins he always kept on hand for her behind him as he ran.
As she was collecting the money, two men with guns came tearing after them. One was a black man in a three-piece suit (in Miami?!), and the other a white guy in a pink shirt and a white jacket (white, on the streets?!).
The brother wasn’t looking where he was going and crashed into her shopping cart, sending all her worldly possessions scattering to the four winds. Whitey then proceeded to pivot out of the way of the carnage, which coincidentally led him to knock into her, sending tonight’s dinner to the ground to be rat food.
To add insult to injury, they didn’t even acknowledge her; they just kept running.
“Damn cops,” Greta spat, surveying the damage. Now she’d either have to go back to the dumpsters at this time of night or put up with the stomach growling till dawn.
More often than not, the police made things worse instead of better. This was a perfect example of that. Jiggy and Mugs weren’t even any big-time criminals; they just sold a little weed and ludes here and there.
If she ever saw those two pigs again…
Fate was smiling on Greta because ten minutes later, the two objects of her ire came shuffling back towards her. Without their quarry, she noted with amusement.
“Sorry, lady,” Blondie muttered as they got within earshot.
If they thought they were going to get away with this unscathed, they had another thing coming. “Beans don’t grow on trees, y’know!”
“Uh,” Blondie muttered, as the two men looked at each other, then down at the spilled beans.
“We were just—”
“I know what you were doing,” she interrupted. “That don’t give you the right to destroy someone’s home.”
They looked at each other again. Greta got the feeling they did that a lot.
White jacket (which she was amused to see wasn’t completely white anymore, looked like Jig and Mug took ‘em down to the mud pit), winced, and pulled out his wallet. He handed her a five-dollar bill. “For the,” he waved his hand at the ground. “Go get yourself some dinner.”
“That makes everything okay then, does it?” Greta inquired archly, snatching the money from his hand and sticking it quickly into her bra.
They glanced at each other.
“Oh, stop that!” Greta yelled.
“Stop what?” Three-piece suit asked.
“You cops are all alike, all holier-than-thou and coming onto the streets harassing people who are just trying to survive.”
“We weren’t—” White jacket began, but was cut off by his partner.
The black one elbowed his companion. “We’re really sorry.” He bent down and began gathering up some of the stuff that had fallen, putting it back into her cart. After a second, whitey followed suit.
Greta watched them for a moment. “That’s not gonna appease me. You need to be taught a lesson. I hereby imprecate you both!”
Blondie blinked up at her in confusion, then looked at his partner. The other one had raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, you think just because I’m homeless, I don’t know how to read,” she gestured to the ground where a couple of her books had fallen and were now spines bent and pages wrinkled.
“To be honest, I have no idea what you just said,” Blondie admitted, picking up one of the books and trying to smooth the pages.
“She cursed us,” his partner offered helpfully.
“I have the arcane knowledge of the ancients,” Greta informed them. “You need to be taught a lesson.”
“Hey – we didn’t mean to disturb your stuff!” three-piece-suit sputtered.
Blondie reached into his wallet and pulled out another fiver. “Can I buy my way out of this?”
Greta snatched that one even as she shook her head. “Lessons must be learned,” she intoned.
“There must be something we can do,” Blondie insisted, as if they truly did believe in curses. “Just name it!”
“Well…”
Half an hour later, Greta was lying in bed in a local motel, enjoying a burger and watching Hollywood Squares, her possessions safely stored in the corner of the room and the rent paid up through the week. By then (with a word put in by her new ‘friends’), she should have that cafeteria job and secured permanent housing.
Some people are superstitious. Others aren’t, but who wants to tempt fate? She didn’t know which category the cops fell into, but she wished them the best. They weren’t half bad, for pigs.