Angelo was on his way home from Wanna B’s–a karaoke bar.
“How was your night? Did you get your karaoke on?” I asked after he’d sat down in the front seat.
“Shoo,” he shook his head, “Yeah, it was fine, I guess. It was a rough night. It’s been a rough week.”
“Yeah? I’m sorry to hear it. What’s going on?”
“Oh, man, I’ll spare you the drama.”
“Whatever you like, Angelo. You don’t have to tell me your troubles, but people do it all the time. I don’t mind hearing their stories. It keeps the job interesting.”
“I found out this week that my fiance–well, now my ex-fiance–had been cheating on me with her ex-boyfriend.” He put air quotes around this second ex.
“Oh, man.”
“I mean, the whole time we were together, she was still seeing this guy and telling me it was all over. And like an idiot I proposed to her. In front of her whole family. Big ring and everything.”
“And she said yes? Even though she was cheating on you with this dude?”
“Yup.”
“Did he know what was going on?”
“Nope. She was playing him at the same time. And what makes it worse is that this guy was hitting her. Abusive, you know?”
“And she wouldn’t leave him?”
“Right.”
“I hear about that kind of thing a lot.”
“Me, I don’t really have a temper. I’ve never laid a hand on a woman, but now I’ve got to go to court.”
“Court? For what?”
“Okay, so, after I find out about this other guy, I call it off, right? She’s all upset. Blah, blah, blah. So then she sends me this text that says, ‘You have until one o’clock to fix everything in my life or you and everybody else won’t have to worry about my life anymore.'”
“She’s threatening to kill herself, you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what it looked like. So, I take off from work in the middle of the day and rush down to her place and call 911. I mean, I’m trying to look out for her, right? I don’t want her to do something crazy. Trying to get her help. So when the police arrive, she starts telling them that I’ve been abusing her. Says I’ve been hitting her and sh–.”
“But you haven’t been, right?”
“No. Not at all. I mean, there was one time when she was going crazy and slapping me and I grabbed her wrist and pushed her against the wall, but I was just trying to protect myself. You can ask my first wife. In seven years I never touched her. She’d swear to it in court.”
“They didn’t arrest you did they?”
“Yes, they did!”
“You’re kidding me. After you called the police to keep her from killing herself?”
“Yup.”
“Just because she accused you of hitting her?”
“Well, not just that. See, the day I found out about her and the other guy, I texted him some pictures of her.”
“Why?”
“It was stupid. She was naked. I wanted him to know too, you know? And I was pretty pissed at her. And he sent the pictures to her and she told the cops.”
“So they arrested you for…”
“For malicious communication or some sh– like that.”
“Do you have to go to trial?”
“Yeah. In a few weeks. But now she has a restraining order on me and all my sh– is at her place.”
“Man, you weren’t kidding when you said you’d had a bad week.”
“I know, right?”
“I know it sucks, I don’t mean to minimize all that, but at least you found out who she was before you married her, right?”
“Yeah, that’s good at least. I was ready to head to the courthouse with her and just do it any day. I’m so glad we didn’t.”
Umans of Uber 