I’ve spoken before, however briefly, of my penchant for revenge. When I am wronged and powerless to strike back, I don’t forget; I file the debt away, waiting for the day the ledger might balance. Sometimes, the interest on those debts accrues for decades. In one particular case, I didn’t have to lift a finger. The payback for my childhood nemesis was far more costly than anything I could have orchestrated, delivered with pure schadenfreude.
Frank Alves was a kid from the “other side.” He ran with a tight-knit Portuguese clique that viewed our neighborhood as contested territory. We traded insults like currency, fueled by the tribalism of the ’70s. To us, they were invaders; we mocked their food, their customs, their very presence in “our” streets.
The feud turned physical one day when we were seven. In the middle of a scuffle, with my back turned, Alves hoisted his younger sister’s tricycle and brought it crashing down onto the back of my head.
I survived the blow, but the cowardice—the back-handedness—was a wound that refused to heal. The resentment simmered for decades, a low-voltage hum reminding me of its presence. Retaliation was impossible; Frank was never without his “clan.”
1982
The hum grew louder one afternoon while my friend Tom and I were hunched over the rear brakes of his car. I looked up and saw Frank walking down the street, a woman on his arm—Lee.
He stopped to talk to a neighbor, but Lee kept drifting toward us. She backed up deliberately until her ass was barely twenty inches from our faces. We were still crouched by the brake drum, staring at it She glanced over her shoulder, flashed a lightning-fast smile, and returned to Frank down the street.
Tom and I shared a look that required no translation: God damn. You saw that, right?
I stewed in silence, hating that a prick like Alves had managed to land a woman like that. When Frank finally caught up to her, our eyes met for a split second. Neither of us spoke. The old feud lingered, unspoken.
As they walked away, Tom broke the silence. “You see that? You see what she just did?”
“Yeah,” I replied, wiping grease from my hands. “She knew exactly what she was doing.”
Late 1990s
Decades passed. Enter Bob—a fixture in our circle for years, and conveniently living just around the corner from where Frank and Lee had settled. I hadn’t thought of the Alves family in years until a night at a local taproom in ’97.
“How could you not know Bob was fucking Lee?” Tom asked, nursing a drink. “Everyone knew.”
“I’ve been buried,” I countered. “Between full-time work, J&W courses, and playing nurse to the sick ones at home, I’ve been out of the loop.”
He quickly brought me up to speed on Lee’s infidelities. An hour later, Bob himself walked in. I couldn’t resist asking.
“Lee?” Bob laughed. “I’ve been seeing her for a decade. She came to me—never chased her away. The guy is completely pussy-whipped. She does whatever she wants regardless of him.”
Then he delivered the centerpiece.
“She was over at my place an hour after Frank left for work,” he began. “Suddenly, there was banging on the front door. I look out the side window—there’s Alves, screaming for me to open up. He knew.”
Bob grinned as he told the rest. “I grabbed Lee and her clothes and we flew through the house into the garage. I shoved her into the trunk of my ’72 Thunderbird and latched it down. Put on sweatpants. Opened the front door, acting like I’d been dead asleep.”
“Cut that shit!” Frank had yelled. “You woke me up! What are you doing?”
“She’s here!” Bob shouted back. “I know she’s here! Let me in!”
Bob let him pace the house, shouting Lee’s name, going from room to room. When Frank reached the garage, he found nothing but two cars and a silent room.
“You satisfied?” Bob demanded. “She isn’t here.”
“So you let her out then?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, grinning. “I whispered through the trunk that he was still lingering outside. She stayed quiet. Then I went back inside and watched TV for forty-five minutes.”
“You left her in the trunk for forty-five minutes?”
“Ah, so what? She’s a toy,” he said, laughing.
Eventually he went back to free her. Lee then snuck out through the back of the garage to a friend’s house, and the charade continued for years.
Tom, who had been watching me throughout the story, asked why I was grinning. I didn’t answer. I just thought about a seven-year-old kid with a tricycle and a cheap shot.
Enjoy your marriage, you prick. YOU have to live with her, not me!
Is it immature? Certainly. Is it pure schadenfreude? Without question. But I am human, and I am vulnerable to the dark satisfaction of seeing a bully’s life become the very joke he deserves.
