Everyday Psychological Torture

    "Let's go to Pecante's!" Clive enthusiastically announced as he usually did on an occasion like this. We had been without necessities for several days and he had just had a nice days work and we were eager for the change. He strode from the front door to his room and back out again with barely a pause and was standing in front of me with his beaming face on.
    "Are you ready to head over? I have been since we shoved the last lot off the trolley."
    "I'm not trying to delay the trip. I have been starving too. Sure I love Pecante's! You have enough for the full array? The Sierra Nevada and the Nachos?"
    "That's right baby! The whole shebang. Now let's get going." We picked up and were out the door and heading over to San Pablo.
    "I hope you don't mind  but I am really fagged from all the loading today. I need to take the transit."
    I looked around to see if anyone had heard his English and said "I would rather walk. Are you sure you need a bus? It is ridiculous to take a bus for these ten blocks."
    "Well, you haven't been busting your ass humping funitchur all day and I have. No I insist we take the trolly."
    At the corner Clive announced that he had to run into the Jack in the Box to get a strawberry shake, keeping up the same high spirit. "Ah that's what I need right now. A frosty Jack in the Box milkshake! That would really hit the spot I tell you!"
    "That food killed Rodney Allen Rippey."
    "Ah assume you are attempting with your incomprehensible commentary to try to dissuade me from having my blessed shake and I can assure you it will not work!"
    "I thought since you seemed to know so much about Jack in the Box that you would know who Rodney Allen Rippey was. I don't see why you need a shake now just before we get to Pecante's. Aren't you going to get stuffed?"
    "That's what you can do if you think you are going to talk me out of my delicious Jack in the Box milkshake."
    "I don't think you need to get insulting. It's your stomach."
    Clive went into the dingy little diner first and boisterously ordered his shake. A thin and sickly person who had been at the far end of the counter slid behind him and stood next to me while Clive waited for his shake to be made.
    The young black man began to speak to me. "You know I was just standing in here thinking about robbing this place? What do you think of that? You think I should?" He was talking quietly so that I was the only one who could hear him. I felt that the heavily accented guy at the counter could barely understand English anyway.
    "I don't think you should." He looked at me and squinted a bit.
    "You don't think I should? Yeah I guess that's right. It wouldn't really be worth it."
    Clive had his shake in hand and had missed all the conversation that had occurred and we walked down to the bus stop with Clive praising his strawberry milkshake. I kept my eye on the door of the Jack in The Box. As we stood at the corner the door sprung open and the guy was swiftly making a direct move towards us. I said to Clive "Run!!!" with as much urgency as I could without raising my voice too loud. He began arguing and the assailant was on top of us. I had long enough to contemplate taking off without him but I stayed to face the situation with him.
    There was a little preamble as he paced around us with a hand under his shirt. He said that he was a drug fiend and a black racist who would like to just kill us for being white. He pointed out his sallow ashen complexion as proof of his drug addiction. He said he had a gun under the shirt that he kept sliding around as he circled us asking for our money. I told Clive to give him the money. Clive refused. I knew that he had seen Clive handle some money in the restaurant and that it would do no good for me to give him the money I had as long as he knew Clive was holding out with his. On one of the passes he made behind me I tried to consider taking him down and bashing his head into the highway. I let him slip away. I thought I was going to die several times until I started thinking if he had a gun he would have shot us by now. He was standing in front of Clive who was still complaining about losing the money he needed for dinner. I saw that Clive's hand and our attacker's were dead even with each other and I made a gesture with my eyes that Clive caught to check him. Clive pushed on his hand and when there was no gun present took a hold of the mugger and started dragging him around in the street.
    "Is it alright if I kick this Ahole's ass! I need to know if I am going to be in any trouble with the law if I give this asshole a thrashing!"
    "I think you might be now that we know he isn't armed."
    "Well I don't want to just let him get away with what he just did. Maybe we can have him arrested?"
    "That is something we can do." We looked around hoping that a cop would come along to make it easy and then began pulling him into the Jack In The Box. Inside the Jack In The Box an elderly black woman at the counter ordering began questioning what we were doing.
    "Why don't you let him go? He isn't doing anything. Just let him go."
    Clive led the counter argument "He told us he had a gun and has spent the last 20 minutes telling us he was going to kill us!"
    She acted as though she had heard nothing and just added he doesn't have a gun to her chant.
    The Indian or Pakistani behind the cash register just acted like he did not understand our request and kept saying uh no eh uh no.
    We decided it would be better to take him back outside and try to flag down a police car. The guy started squirming in the doorway and got his pants pulled off and ran away in nothing but his tiger striped bikini briefs.
    Clive and I did see a policeman soon after he had escaped and related the story. He asked us to go down to the police station and make a formal report.
    We continued on to the restaurant and had our dinner and I kept my disgust at Clive for his horrible mishandling of the situation to myself. I was relieved that it was over and we hadn't been hurt and told myself I didn't need to bash Clive for being such a dope. We could have had dinner on my money.
    At the police station they had the surveillance of the incident that they ran for Clive and I to fill in the details of the night's action. The police officer gave the advice that it really is better not to resist in these situations if you can help it. He thought it was pretty awful of the Jack In The Box to refuse to call the police for us and they would get back to us if they needed anything else.
    This became the beginning of the friendship that I had started with Clive breaking down. Once he started hiding out in his room and being obnoxious to me I was ready to throw him out. We wound up fighting bitterly over our apartment with him finally moving on. In the fighting I told him what an ass he had been in the mugging. I saw him a few more times after he moved and felt like I would like to still be friends but he kept his distance until I completely lost track of him.
    I saw the mugger again one day, giving me a squinty  hard look in his Sunday clothes, near the Jack In The Box. I didn't feel like bothering the police with it.