A Town Like Paris by Bryce Corbett

Author:Bryce Corbett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780767929219
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2008-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Sticker Bitch

IF I WAS IN LOVE with my new set of wheels, it soon became apparent that it was a sentiment not shared by everyone. The courtyard fascists in my building prohibited the parking of any vehicle on the property, so Mojito had to spend her days and nights parked outside on the street. At first I worried that thieves would be attracted to her obvious beauty and snatch her away in the night. As it turned out, thieves were the least of my worries. A more sinister threat lurked in the shadows of Rue Sainte Croix, and it wasted no time showing its face.

Mojito was one of several bikes that were habitually parked on a wide stretch of sidewalk just outside the Love Pad. Designated, city council–ordained parking spaces for two-wheeled contraptions could be found at the end of my street, but to use them would have meant walking twenty yards out of my way. And if there was one thing no self-respecting scooter driver ever did, it was to walk more than was strictly necessary. It contravened the code. It has to be said that, perched on the path, Mojito and her friends did take up a large portion of the thoroughfare. But this was Paris. Scooters litter the sidewalks with almost the same frequency as dog shit—and as with the little piles of poo, the residents of Paris had simply learned to step around them.

Not so Sticker Bitch.

Sticker Bitch was an aging crone whose life had been reduced to a daily, one-woman battle against the scooters of Paris. For reasons that were never clear to me, she was so offended by the presence of Vespas on her sidewalk, she launched a stealth campaign of harassment and vandalism to rid her rue of the sidewalk-hogging scooter scum. At what I can only assume was considerable personal expense, Sticker Bitch had printed a variety of fluorescent yellow, orange, and green stickers with cartoon figures of humans pushing baby carriages and the battle cry: RENDEZ LES TROTTOIRS AUX PIETONS!—GIVE THE SIDEWALKS BACK TO PEDESTRIANS!

Every other morning I would bounce out of my apartment only to discover that the Mojito had been defaced again. Contrasting against her shiny black lacquer would be a sticker urging me to give the pavement back to pedestrians. Scratching at it would only remove the sticker partially, leaving behind a telltale streak of gummy white paper. Wherever I drove in the city, I could tell if a bike belonged to one of my neighbors, covered as it was with familiar fluorescent protests. And while some of my scootering comrades were apparently content to let the old dear wreak her daily brand of urban terrorism, I was incensed. To my mind, this was out-and-out vandalism. A gross violation of my private property and a cowardly campaign of neighborly intimidation and harassment. Sticker Bitch had declared war. She had thrown down the fluorescent gauntlet. And I was not about to shrink from the challenge.

The thing about guerrilla warfare of the type practiced by Sticker Bitch is that its attacks are purposefully random.

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