ETIQUETTE ON THE SIDEWALK

by Barbara J. Olexer

Mallory Hix stood at the intersection of Connecticut and Rhode

Island Avenues and M Street and glared after the bike messenger with
hate. She was surprised at how much she hated bike messengers. When
she'd first moved to Washington, D.C., or "the District," as the
cognoscenti call it, she had been an easy-going middle-aged lady. She
had smilingly made way for elderly people on the street and cheerfully
given her seat on buses to young women carrying infants. But ten years
of the incredible rudeness of the District had soured her as a pedestrian
and user of public transportation.
When she came down the escalator into the metro station in the
morning on her way to work, she felt a profound disdain for her fellows.
They scurried like vermin. They made her think of that Disney film of
lemmings rushing to the brink of the cliff to hurl themselves over and
swim out to sea until they were exhausted and drowned. She thought that
the people in the metro stations not only acted like lemmings, they
appeared to have about the same intelligence and understanding.
Swarming, jostling, pushing and shoving to get to their destinations ten
minutes earlier than if they took their turns like civilized people and
behaved like sentient beings instead of rodents driven by an instinct for
destruction.
Mallory stood on the sidewalk, her new mint green suit plastered
with birthday cake and the cake itself a broken ruin at her feet. She hated
the bike messenger with the accumulated hatred of ten years of
victimization. Bike messengers were the most selfish, arrogant, rude, and
despicable of all the District denizens. Tourists were a nuisance. She
disliked them on principle, especially those who had no better sense than
to ride the metro during rush hour. Little knots of secretaries were
annoying -- they walked three or four abreast on the sidewalk, shrieking
with laughter or shrilling with indignation, and giving not the smallest
damn how they assaulted your eardrums. Drivers of cars, taxis, and
buses were an abomination. They all drove as if pedestrians either didn't
have corporeal bodies or as if pedestrians were amusing targets, on
whom to count coup, especially by splashing in wet weather.
Yes, she had grown to detest most of her fellow humans in the
District. But the only ones she truly hated were bike messengers. Nearly
every day she suffered some rudeness from bike messengers and often
she was threatened with bodily harm. A friend of hers had once been
knocked down by bike messenger and had her arm broken. Bike
messengers pedaled furiously up and down the sidewalks, swooping
among the pedestrians, yelling obscenities at people who didn't get out
of their way quickly enough.
Mallory stood in the middle of the sidewalk, these thoughts flashing
through her mind. She glanced down at the birthday cake. She'd baked it
herself, decorated it with pink icing and colored sugar crystals. She'd
carefully covered it with plastic film and carried it tenderly from her
apartment down the escalator to the metro and up the escalator to
Connecticut Avenue. Within two blocks of her office building the bike

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messenger had ruined everything. And, to add insult to injury, he'd
yelled at her.
"Get your fat ass out of the way, granny!" he'd hollered as he flew
past. He hadn't run into her. Thinking it over, Mallory came to believe he
had deliberately reached out and knocked the cake from her hands. A
wave of fierce anger shook her. She turned and went back to the
Farragut North Metro Station. Down the escalator, into the train, back
home again.
Mallory called in sick to work. She explained to Virginia Stephens,
the office manager, that she'd been victimized by a bike messenger and
was really too shaken to come to work. Virginia expressed concern and
said they'd miss her at Becky's birthday party. Mallory asked her to tell
the others what had happened and that she was sorry she couldn't deliver
the cake she'd promised. That taken care of, she took off the suit and
drew a hot bath.
It was while she was soaking in the tub, trying to forget how much
she hated bike messengers, that the idea came to her. At first she tried to
put it out of her mind. Impishly, it refused to leave. The more she
thought about it, the more it seemed feasible. Not only feasible, sensible
and right. She would like to kill the bike messenger. It would serve him
right. How dare he run people down and yell at them! Strewing ruin and
mayhem behind him wherever he went. Damn him to hell!
The bath hadn't relaxed her. She was still so angry that waves of
hatred actually shook her as she dressed. She sat in her recliner but she
didn't turn the TV on. Neither did she pick up her crossword book nor
the vegetarian magazine that had come in the mail the day before. She
sat there and deliberately planned to murder the bike messenger.
The biggest obstacle, and one that seemed at first to stymie the whole
idea, was that she wasn't sure she could recognize that bike messenger
again. Gradually, as she brooded, she realized that it didn't matter. All
bike messengers were tarred with the same brush -- it didn't matter which
bike messenger she killed. All of them were rude and dangerous; any of

3
them might have run into her. Therefore, all were equally guilty and her
vengeance could be visited on any of them.
Mallory set her mind to think of how to kill a bike messenger. It
would be satisfying to stand in the middle of the sidewalk with a .44
magnum and let a bike messenger ride toward her, toward death. To see
the look on his face as he realized that she was squeezing the trigger and
he would be dead in an instant. Yes, that would be very satisfying. It
would also leave her open to pay the penalty of the law. That wouldn't
do. Knives, clubs, bombs. All the weapons she thought of were too
risky. She needed a weapon that didn't look like a weapon. Something
that an elderly woman would look perfectly natural carrying on the
streets of the District. Something like an umbrella. An umbrella could be
thrust in the spokes of a bike wheel, causing the rider to take a toss. As
she thought about it, Mallory saw that, properly set up and directed, a
very nice little "accident" could be staged. Moreover, under the right
circumstances an automobile driver could be made the actual instrument
of death, thus killing two birds with one umbrella, so to speak.
Drivers ignored crosswalks as often as not at stoplights, forcing
pedestrians to walk around them. And many of them let their cars creep
as they waited for the lights to change, making pedestrians wonder if
their legs were about to be crushed between bumpers. Then, too, drivers
often jumped red lights, rabbit-starting a few seconds before the light
turned green. Even more often they ran red lights, speeding up to get
through the intersection before the cross traffic reacted to the green light.
Bike messengers generally ignored all lights, weaving in and out of
pedestrian and vehicular traffic as they pleased. They took incredible
chances, turning in front of cars, darting from lane to lane, shooting
across intersections against the lights, causing drivers to slam on their
brakes or swerve to miss them. In the right combination of weather,
traffic, and bike messenger, Mallory was convinced that she could pull
off a perfect murder.
Mallory was actually very competent and on the inside she was calm
and confident but she knew that she appeared to be a trifle flighty. Most

4
people seemed to expect all elderly ladies to be disorganized and to
become hysterical in an emergency. She thought that if she behaved in a
hysterical manner at the "accident," no one would dream that she had
actually planned and caused it.
Having visualized the whole scenario, especially the bike messenger
lying on the pavement, broken like her cake, Mallory picked up her
magazine and began to read about the nutritive values of arugula and
radicchio.
For several weeks afterwards Mallory carried her umbrella whenever
it looked even remotely like it might rain. She bought a new purse, one
that she could carry by a shoulder strap so both hands would be free to
use the umbrella. She watched bike messengers with an almost indulgent
eye, knowing what was coming to one of them, exulting in the foretaste
of vengeance. Then it happened. Just as she'd imagined it.
It wasn't actually raining as she walked from her office to the metro
station but the sky was dark with the downpour that was expected
momentarily. Traffic was in a hurry to get as far as possible before the
storm hit. As she was coming up Rhode Island Avenue to cross M Street,
a bike messenger came pelting up the avenue, the wrong way, against
the traffic. A car on M Street, traveling too fast, swung into the little lane
that connected to Rhode Island. Mallory would never have a better
chance. She thrust her umbrella into the spokes of the rear wheel of the
messenger's bike. The bike messenger fell smack into the path of the
speeding car.
The driver hit the horn and the brakes, the car swerved but it was too
late. The bike messenger was flung into the air and landed on his back
near the monument to nursing nuns. Mallory screamed and screamed.
Police cars roared up, lights flashing, sirens screeching. Rain began to
fall in torrents. The driver of the car stood in the rain and babbled
incoherently about it not being his fault. The police sent for an
ambulance for the bike messenger and another for Mallory. They took
the bike messenger to the morgue and Mallory to the emergency room.
The doctors and nurses were kind to her there, after they got her

5
insurance information. They gave her a sedative and made her rest in a
high white bed for a couple of hours. Then they let her go home in a taxi.
A month or so later, Virginia and a couple of the women from the
office came to Mallory's apartment. They met now and then for an
evening of bridge at someone's home or a meal in a restaurant. It was
pleasant without being too demanding of time or resources. Virginia
went over to a new plaque on the wall. It was a newspaper article
laminated to a piece of walnut shaped like a shield. The headline read:
"Bike Messenger Dies in Accident." There was a somewhat blurry
picture of his body by the monument to nursing nuns with the car's
driver and the police in the foreground. Virginia thought it was soft-
hearted Mallory's memorial for the dead bike messenger.
Mallory never told anyone that it was a trophy of her perfect murder.

copyright © 2004