My mother is 65 years old and still goes to work every day. Because she is on a walker, she takes a Pace car to work. While Pace drivers are not the lunatics that are Uber drivers, you still get mixed bag of nuts showing up on your door every day.

Several times, she rode with this one religious guy. And, many times, I’ve ridden with her and this same guy. He’s really religious and I have to listen to his god-music, blasted loud while we go wherever we are going for the hour or so that it takes to get there. One time, I was trying to engage in conversation with him and he went on and on about how homosexuals were definitely going to hell in a hand-basket with a red bow on top, and I tolerated the hate speech because my mother has to ride with him from time to time and I didn’t want to cause her any problems.

However, he’s mean. He jostles my mother around. Tells her to hurry up when she can only walk so fast on the walker and is, generally, a jerk of the highest order. Under all the religion there’s just a bitter person.

One day, he caught me in a bad mood and my mother wasn’t moving fast enough for him to get into the car. He was in a hurry and he was talking to her like she was some kind of dog. I guess I was glaring at him. He looked at me and said something like: “Don’t look so mean, God doesn’t like that.”

And I stared him deep in his eyes and said: “There is no God.” A thing I would never do normally—to each his own and all that.

But his face was so beautiful reflected in the sunlight: disbelief, rage, a sexy cosmic kind of indignation. He started saying things under his breath about my going to hell and one day I’d see and all that while hustling her into the car like he was going to catch Hell by just standing near me.

That was satisfying. Very.

Sidenote: He doesn’t pick Mum-thur up anymore.

Oops.