Every night, around four in the morning, on the rue Benoit Bunico in Nice, there is a shouting match between a man and a woman and though they are not always the same man and woman the shouting match always ends with a gunshot. The man is the one clapping and laughing and his voice is much stronger, but the woman shouts more and it is the shrill pitch of her voice that first invades the minds of the two foreigners, a husband and wife, sleeping four stories above the street. “I hate this place,” says the wife, turning over in bed, cramming toilet paper into her ears, the rest of her hot and naked, barely covered by the thin sheet. Her husband turns over too, adjusts the paper in his own ears. “Don’t hate the place; hate the people,” he says. He wonders if he locked the door. Of course he did, the door is a thick slab of metal and there are not one or two but six deadbolts that all lock together when he turns the key. There is no doubt they are locked away inside. The shouting match continues down on the street, in French, which neither husband nor wife understand until, this particular night, the shouting woman’s French breaks into the Queen’s English – not for long, but long enough for her to say, “Pascal, if you go now, that’s it, fine, brilliant, that’s just brilliant,” and then like all these shouting matches it proceeds again in French and the foreigners pushing the crumpled toilet paper deeper into their ears understand nothing of the shouting. And it does not end until the gunshot sounds.

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SCOTT LAMBRIDIS is co-founder of Omnibucket.com, with a BA in neurobiology and an MFA from SF State. His debut novel – a scientist discovers the end of time – is seeking publication. Check him out in the new New American Writing. Email him at scott@omnibucket.com

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This piece was read as part of a production of “Action Fiction!”, sponsored by The San Francisco Writer's Community, Fiction365 and Omnibucket.  

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