Buffaloed 2019 Site

The judge pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ms. Dahl. You glued a lego to the gas pedal of his other car.”

Now, at twenty-six, Peg sat handcuffed to a radiator in a Buffalo Police substation, her leather jacket smelling like regret and stolen staplers. The charge was “aggravated mischief,” which was just a fancy way of saying she’d repossessed a motorcycle from a deadbeat who happened to be the nephew of a city councilman. The job had been clean. The paperwork had been forged beautifully. The problem, as always, was that Peg couldn’t resist the encore. buffaloed 2019

She represented herself. That was the first mistake everyone made, assuming Peg Dahl needed help. She stood before the judge—a weary woman named Castellano who’d seen three generations of Dahls pass through her courtroom—and laid out her case with the manic precision of a game show host. The judge pinched the bridge of her nose

But that was the problem. Buffalo, New York, had buffaloed her. The city was a grimy, snow-choked funnel of dead-end streets and cheaper-by-the-dozen lawyers. Peg had tried to leave twice—once for New York City, where she was too loud; once for Chicago, where she was too honest about being dishonest. Both times, the city had pulled her back like a rubber band. Here, she was a big fish in a puddle. A grifter with a GED and a gift for small-claims chaos. You glued a lego to the gas pedal of his other car

Her new business card read: Beneath that, in smaller letters: We don’t get buffaloed. We are the buffalo.