When I saw her in her light blue convertible Super Beetle she was turning left at a stoplight about to exit toward I-40. My pump at the gas station had just clicked indicating "full" as I watched her, and him, drive past smiling with the wind mussing their hair.

When last I wrote, I was telling the story of the heartache of broken relationship. Fortunately, I had friends with whom to grieve. One friend was two years younger than I was. We'll call him, Stephen, because that is, in fact, his name. Friendly guy. Nice guy. We had become quick friends. Because I tend to wear my heart on the plastic lip of the button of my cuff, I had confided in him the misery and sorrow and stupidity of breaking it off with my girlfriend. His sympathetic eyes were like a Basset pup’s. This guy was awesome!

With tank now full, I slammed my car door, buckled my seat belt, and gunned it for the interstate.

An hour earlier I had seen my girlfriend . . . ex-girlfriend . . . at church. Church was along the ex-girlfriend trapline that I had learned to run each week in the expectation of catching a glimpse of her. We happened to walk out of the building at the same time so I felt compelled to ask her if she wanted to grab lunch. She would, but she was driving the 45 minutes to her childhood home for the weekend. Okay, maybe some other time.

As I was driving up the entrance ramp to the interstate I questioned whether I could catch up. My lighter-than-a-Tonka car was a small four cylinder and French. A detail that might help with the overall picture is that this car had a small rubber bulb to the left of the clutch that you had to stomp on to squirt windshield washer fluid onto the windshield. French ingenuity. When I crested the slope I could just barely see the light blue as they yielded to the center lane up ahead.

I drove faster.

With my gas pedal making an indentation in the floor mat and engine screaming like an elementary school playground girl, I crept up in the right lane ever nearer to the unsuspecting duo hoping my engine wouldn’t blow. Now, side by side, my horn wheezed out a weeeeeeeep weeeeeep. My girlfriend . . . . ex-girlfriend . . . stared straight ahead gripping the German wheel. I waved a curt hand with a sarcastic toothless smile on my face. Stephen, now a big open-mouthed goofy Labrador, waved enthusiastically. Feeling satisfied and justified in my outrage I took the next exit.

Allowing the temperature of my car and my blood to simmer to a rolling boil, I drove aimlessly through west Knoxville neighborhoods. I recounted the morning line by line. Church. Girlfriend. Ex-Girlfriend. Stephen. Anger. Church. Sermon. James. James? That morning’s sermon was from James 4: 1-2.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder.