Suburban Goddess

So we head for The Mercury Room downtown, a spot that K swears is one of the coolest in Houston. When we get to the parking lot, K reaches into the envelope and finds…nothing. The $200 in cash was not there. The Middle Eastern parking attendent is getting very annoyed with us as K flies into a fury. A nearby police officer watches with interest, and I start to imagine what a night in Houston lockup must be like. She eventually convinced the parking attendant that she would run to an ATM and return with cash. He regarded us suspiciously as we walked away.

“You not back in five minutes, I tow!” his warning followed us. I thought K would have an aneurysm on the spot, but she refrained. As we walked in the direction of the club, she stopped in front of the cop, reeking of alcohol.

“Let me askya sonethin…” she started, and relayed the whole story to the officer, who leaned back slightly but listened intently. He looked at me with some amusement, and I widened my eyes and feigned stupidity in response. After ten minutes, he told her it was basically her word against valet, and she shouldn’t have left the money in the car to begin with.

“I DIDN’T,” she replied loudly. “IT FELL OUT OF MY PURSE.” At this point I grabbed her hand and started to drag her away, mumbling thank you to the nice policeman who thankfully did not arrest her for being drunk in public.

As we moved closer to The Mercury Room, I started to feel horribly out of place. A group of guys walking by made the comment, “Hey, look, white girls.” Like we were some oddity of nature. And as I looked around, I realized we were. Apparently, a popular Houston rapper was performing at the club that night. K went from mad to furious. “Well, this is just f#$#$ great,” she said, just a little too loudly. A group of fabulous rapper groupies turned around with three snaps and a big attitude.

“You got a problem?” A large woman started moving towards us. I pulled K behind me and apologized quickly. “She’s drunk,” I offered. “She really doesn’t mean anything by it.” Big Momma did not seem convinced, so I quickly started pulling K back towards the car before we became a blurb on the ten ‘o’ clock news. We were immediately accosted by Parking Attendant, who, at this point, was seriously pissed off.

“You not bringing back my money! I tow! I tow!” He followed us all the way back to the car, which thankfully, was still there. All the while he’s following us, and other parking attendants are starting to gather in our very own version of West Side Story. I slowly reached for my heel in case I had to defend myself. We loaded into the car and immediately backed out. I waited for the THUD, but thankfully, K managed to miss the attendants. As we drove away, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the restaurant. I knew what was coming next, but there was nothing I could do but grip the door handle & pray for this experience to be over. For the next twenty minutes, K weaved in and out of traffic in the Montrose area, alternating between gunning the gas as helpless pedestrians dove into bushes and coming to complete stops at red lights, all the while screaming at the valet manager about the virtue of his employees. I realized that she was trying to drive back to the restaurant, so I began to try to convince her that we could go somewhere else. After another ten minutes, she finally relented, and decided she wanted to dance.

The time was 12:30pm. Still no end in sight.

This entry was posted on May 16, 2006 at 7:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.