mallorys_camera | The World Is Nuts

The world is a fuckin' mess.

I just broke up a fight in the Stewart’s parking lot. Guy parked in a handicapped space, another guy called him on it. They were actually exchanging blows. I got between them, screaming, "Stop it, stop it, stop it," (which was a really stupid thing to do), and when they saw that I’m an old lady, they backed down.

I’m still shaking.

###

This came on top of a brutal day.

Phillip Osario (not his real name) forgot one of his W2s yesterday.

He brought it in today.

Phillip Osario is working four jobs just to stay afloat, but the paltry amount he made at that fourth job shaved $2,000 off his refund.

He stared at me with blank, uncomprehending eyes: "So, don't put the fourth job in."

I sighed and shook my head. "Doesn't work that way. I have to."

"But I don't want you to!"

"I know," I said. "But if I know about the job, I have to put it in."

Phillip Osario glared at me through slitted eyes.

If I had to guess, I'd guess he was a reformed gangbanger. Beautiful face, Orpheus in the asphalt underworld, with a tattoo of a woman's name in ornate copperplate script veering alongside his left eye. I made up a bio for him: Something—the birth of a child?—had made him want to make an abrupt about-face in his life, but now he was struggling in a world that had no use for him, had no place for him. I felt every hour of the meaningless drudgery he put in to get by—a few hours in Walmart, a few hours at the Home Depot. An underling. The lowest of the low whose real job was to let other people order him around. I wanted to tell him, Take the $3,000 and enroll in a HVAC course at a community college! You'll make $100,000 a year. But I didn't. Because we didn't have a telepathic bond, much as I wanted to pretend we did.

So, instead, I lectured him on all the dire things that befall people who lie to the IRS about their revenue streams. "They impose interest and high penalties. They garnish your wages. And in this day of AI, nobody gets away with lying to the IRS anymore. It's impossible, they will find you out. It's just a matter of time."

Eventually, I talked him into filing.

But I felt like crying.

###

He left, and Angel Meduro (not his real name) came in.

Angel Meduro looked a lot like Angel Batista in Dexter, right down to the porkpie hat. And he made a shitload of money doing something for the U.S. Treasury.

Angel Meduro wanted to do Married Filing Separately.

"How long have you been separated?" I asked.

"Oh, we live together," he said. "But I got debts & things I want to protect her from."

"That's fine," I said. "We'll still need her social security number though."

"They didn't need it last year," said Angel Meduro.

"Really?" I said. "Then whoever did your taxes last year did them wrong. That's a hard and fast requirement for Married Filing Separately."

We went back and forth a little, and eventually, he started trying to call his wife to get her permission to use her social security number.

She answered the sixth time he called.

He had her on speaker phone.

"What the fuck are you calling me for?" she asked furiously. "I told you I was going to the acupuncture guy!"

"Sorry, mami. But I'm with the tax lady, and she says I need your social security number—"

"What are you, some kind of fucking moron? I am not giving my social security number—"
She said a bunch of other things, too, that I can't remember except that they were all pretty humiliating, and after she finally hung up the phone, he looked at me with haunted eyes: "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I can't do this."

The light bulb had already gone off over my head by this time: She was falsifying her filing status! Probably filing as Head of Household so she could rake in the earned income and child tax credits, and didn't want him imperiling her scam!

Poor Angel Meduro.

I hope she gives good blow jobs.