Meter Maids Eat Their Young: A Love Story

by EJ Knapp

  “Did you see where it went?” I said.

  He considered my question, scanning the park. “It stopped, not quite finished with its task. It shrieked, I believe, and glided quite fast up the hill. Mounted a two-wheeled vehicle just there,” he said, pointing toward the monorail station. “Rode off in that direction.” He swept his arm toward the north end of the park.

  I looked off in the direction he was pointing. I was about to ask him if he’d seen anything else when he stood up and pulled a long, well-worn purple leash from the pocket of his coat.

  “It is time for us to depart, young sir,” he said, moving toward the skateboard, the leash dangling from his hand. “The sun will be hitting its zenith soon and Nebuchadnezzer is prone to heat stroke.”

  He attached the leash to an eye-hook on the front end of the skateboard, retrieved the ball from beneath the wheels and began walking away, the skateboard trailing behind him, bumping over the thick grass.

  “You have a good day, young sir,” he called back over his shoulder.

  “And you and Neb as well,” I called back to him.

  As he disappeared over the hill, I considered his take on the morning’s activities. I had to admit that the Dementor thing was an interesting observation; at least as good as a vampire, if not more original. Tall; willowy; rode off on a bicycle. Sort of matched Skeeter’s description, minus the gender, as did the abrupt departure. The shriek. Could the Mangler have stumbled across Harrison’s body?

  I checked my notes, flipping back over several pages. A tall, dark figure, wearing a cape, had been seen outside the courthouse parking structure two weeks earlier, shortly before the second set of parking meters installed there had their circuits fired. Count Dracula that time. The source had been about as reliable as Morris and Skeeter: old Shotgun Sam, the town Sterno freak. Why was it the only witnesses to the Meter Mangler’s escapades seemed to be several bricks short of a full load?

  I made a note to look up Sam, have another talk with him, maybe when the social security checks came out and he stepped off the Squeeze platform and boarded the Night Train. Squeeze – Sterno stuffed in an old sock and twisted until the clear liquid ran – was a rage-filled aperitif. I’ve heard it said the grungier the sock the better the taste. Not something I’d want to test for myself.

  There wasn’t a ticket on the Altima when I got back to it. Wonder of wonders as I had forgotten to feed the meter. Though I try to stay objective in my journalistic work, as it was beginning to look as if the Mangler had nothing to do with Harrison’s death, I was back to secretly rooting for him. Now if I could only figure out why he was doing what he was doing. Shaking my head, I started up the car and was about to pull away when I spotted something that made me pause.

  A dark-colored SUV was cresting the hill about a hundred yards away. When the crumpled fender on the passenger side came into view, I clicked the door lock and ducked down in the seat. The rumble of the exhaust drew closer, stopped. The SUV idled alongside me for a moment and then moved on, the sound of the exhaust diminishing as it drew farther away. When I could no longer hear it, I sat up, shifted position, noted the license number and watched as it rolled to the bottom of the hill and turned away, in the opposite direction to the Monorail Station.

  Twice in one day. Definitely not a coincidence.

  Starting up the car, I pulled out and made my slow way home, phoning in the story, such as it was, to Felice. When I tried to reach Marion, I was told he was unavailable. They kicked me over to voicemail and I left him a message, giving him the license number and a better description of the SUV. I debated withholding the fact I had seen the car earlier in the day, out by the construction site but decided against it. It would piss him off that I’d held it back at all, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that now.

  Downtown was coming alive by the time I reached it and already the traffic was growing thick. A smaller group of protestors than I’d seen in the park had gathered on the steps of the Admin building. They were carrying signs and handing out leaflets to anyone who would take them. I noticed a lot of people reading them as they strolled down the street.

  The courthouse parking garage meters had started the protest. The Department of Parking Enforcement had thrown fuel on the small flame when they installed meters around the park and at the Monorail station. When the Meter Mangler fried the new electronic meters at the garage, there had been a full-blown, spontaneous celebration the following day. The DPE immediately installed new meters, and despite the two night guards stationed at the garage, the Mangler fried those a week later.

  That had been my first encounter with CARPE. I had tried to find out who started the group, who the leader was, if there was an office and where it might be located; those I talked to either didn’t know or were holding back.

  Through one of Felice’s police contacts, I discovered how the Mangler had managed to skirt the guards: Pizza laced with Rohypnol. Interviewing the guards hadn’t gained me much. One couldn’t even remember eating a pizza, while all the other one gave me was a vague description of a tall, willowy guy in a long trench coat, wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, delivering the pizza and telling them it was from the department. Luckily, he also remembered the name of the pizza place.

  There, I met Vera Dietz, the young lady who had taken the call that night. She remembered it because the police had interrogated her for several hours over the incident. Even if they hadn’t come, she said, she would have remembered it. The guy who called had sounded a lot like James Earl Jones, she claimed, and he wanted the pizza delivered to the security desk at the Admin building, which she had done. She couldn’t give me a good description of who paid for it but assured me the guy didn’t look at all like James Earl Jones.James Earl Jones was the voice of Darth Vader.

  As the news spread about the Monorail meters, the protesters were gathering for yet another celebration. A news van pulled up as I was passing by. Making a mental note to check out CARPE again, I turned down a side street to avoid the slowing traffic. A moment later I pulled into my driveway.

  Tossing Catnip Bags At Kitty Ghosts

  In the kitchen, I poured the last of the coffee from the French Press and set the mug in the microwave. While it irradiated, I rummaged through the junk drawer until I found the list of meeting times and places. Just my luck, there was one that evening at the church down the street from my house. So much for finding an excuse to put it off again. Higher Power works in mysterious ways.

  The microwave dinged. I shoved the papers back in the drawer and slammed it shut, grabbed the cup of coffee, added some Stevia and milk, and headed toward the front of the house.

  Halfway through the living room I noticed the call light was blinking on the answering machine. I hate phones in general, and landlines in particular, but it came with the house and I’d never shut it down. I did put an answering machine on it to fend off the telemarketers. I’m glad now I kept it. Somehow the Meter Mangler had found the number and had been leaving me cryptic little bits of information and egging me on. He was using a synthesized voice that sounded a lot like Darth Vader with a head cold. Or James Earl Jones with a head cold.

  I pushed ‘rewind’. The first two messages were for a backyard pool and a life insurance policy I could take out despite my advancing years. I deleted those. The last was from the Mangler.

  “I did not kill Harrison de Whitt. Find the answer to why I must exist and you’ll find the answer to who killed him. Follow the money, Teller. It’s always about the money.”

  I played the tape three times and then popped the tape out and put in a fresh one. Follow the money. That was the overriding scheme of the Watergate affair. What the hell could it mean here? Follow the money? What money?

  Shaking my head, I walked out onto the porch and found Jaz sitting in one of the chairs.

  “Teller,” she said.

  “Jaz.”

  “Look, Teller, I’m sorry for the way I acted this morning. It was out of line.
I was just ... just stressed out and I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and then that early morning call and finding out Harrison de Whitt had been murdered. I’m just really sorry. I know he was your friend.”

  “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, a little,” she said, looking away as she said it. Skeeter came to mind, and her insistence the vampire was a girl.

  “He was a council member and a major pain in the ass for my boss,” she continued. “Always a good thing as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Yeah, I knew the DPE was on his radar screen but he was keeping it close to the bone. Wouldn’t tell me what it was about, even off the record. Said he wasn’t ready for the news to break,” I said.

  “Do you think the Mangler killed him?”

  I debated telling her what Marion had told me and decided it couldn’t hurt. The news would come out sooner or later anyway. “Not according to the CSI guys. Harrison was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the parking lot as much as an hour before the Mangler even showed up. At the moment, there’s no official connection between the Mangler and Harrison’s death.”

  “And unofficially?” she said.

  “I’m keeping an open mind about that at the moment.”

  I sipped the coffee, thinking about Harrison, not yet feeling the loss I knew would come, and come with a vengeance. Staring out the window at the playground across the street, I spotted a homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk, lying up against the fence. Shabby, food-stained brown coat, black watchman’s cap over scraggly, unwashed hair, he looked an awful lot like the guy who had hit me for change back at the park.

  I turned my attention to a couple of kids in the playground. Two girls in pigtails: One swinging, the other pushing. A little boy in short pants spinning himself dizzy on the go-round. A tramp passed out on some drug or another, children spinning themselves silly. What was there about human nature that makes us want to find any way possible to alter our reality?

  “Did I ever tell you I lived in this house for almost a year when my Uncle Burt was in Europe?”

  “No, you never mentioned that. What made you think of it?”

  “The park across the street. Robyn and I used to sneak over there at night, swing on the swings, spin ourselves senseless on that go-round.”

  I turned to look at her. Her face had turned dark and serious.

  “Look, Teller,” she said, “and please don’t take this wrong, okay? I’ve only known you a couple of months, and I like you. I really do. Even though you are a man. But, from the stories you tell, one would think the five years you spent with her were the only five years you lived on this planet.”

  Her words pulled me up short. I stared at her for a long moment trying to decipher the feelings tumbling through me. It wasn’t so much that I felt hurt, more like ... exposed, jolted into some sort of confrontation with the disjointed thoughts that had been plaguing me since returning. I turned my head away and stared out through the screened windows, watching the kids play in the playground across the street.

  “You know, Jaz,” I said, turning back to her, “there are moments when I feel those five years were the only ones I’ve lived on this planet. Feeling alive, anyway. All the years since feel as though I’ve just been going through the motions.”

  I guess my voice cracked when I said it. I’m not good at sugar-coating my emotions.

  Her expression turned to one of concern. Pulling her legs from the porch rail, she leaned forward and touched my knee lightly with the tips of her fingers. “I’m sorry, Teller. I didn’t mean—”

  “Not to worry, Jaz,” I said, brushing away her apology and her hand. “You didn’t hurt my feelings.” I stood up from my chair. “Hell, you’re probably right. Look, I should go feed the felines before they do something drastic. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Teller—”

  I waved her off and slipped into the house. Closing the door, I leaned against it and stared up at the ceiling. Back in the Robyn Zone again. Jesus, this was getting old. There were tears in my eyes. My heart was thumping in my chest. And oh how I wanted something hard and harsh with a real kick to bring me down to earth. I started reciting the Serenity Prayer in my head, over and over, the words blurring together. A minute passed. Two. My heart started to slow. I pushed myself from the door and made my way to the kitchen.

  I made a production of washing the cats’ bowls, lingering over the stacked cans of food in the utility room, trying to guess which flavor would be just the right one to please everyone. An impossible task, of course. Cats are never pleased. But the narrowing of focus, the concentration, brought me back into myself.

  What the hell had just happened? We had talked of Robyn before, but I hadn’t felt it had dominated our conversations. I tried to remember what I’d told her. There had been the time Robyn had been accused of killing a disco singer. And the time I’d been accused of killing an old nemesis. I was pretty sure I hadn’t told her the story of what went down that night with Willy T and Marion. I didn’t talk about that to anyone.

  It was just that Jaz was such an easy person to talk to or maybe I just needed to talk. But our conversations hadn’t been all Robyn, had they? I’d been back in town four months and the border between reality and the Robyn Zone was wearing thinner with each passing day. It was driving me crazy, but I wrote it off as understandable considering that every time I turned around, I was running into some memory of her and me. Probably why I hadn’t yet gone out of my way to look up any of the old gang that might be still around.

  When I stepped back into the kitchen, the cats were milling about. The neurologically-damaged Doubtful Guest wove right-hand circles in and out my feet as I made my way to the counter. Mooch sat in the corner, doe-eyed and ready to run at the slightest sudden move. Spook started yowling. The Beast jumped up on the counter, eyeing my shoulder, but I skirted away before he could make the leap. Booth eyed me from the doorway of my bedroom, while Feral-When-I-Wanna-Be sat patiently in the shadows of the utility room. Puss Cat scampered in from the living room, scaring Mooch who disappeared in a black flash.

  I stood in the middle of the room, shaking. Fifty-something and this was all the family I had. My cats outnumbered my friends. How had that happened? Would I end up stuffing their cremated remains in a wooden box, taking over Morris’s place on a sunny bench in the park, tossing catnip bags at kitty ghosts?

  Damn, that was a scary thought.

  I put the food into bowls and the bowls set out in various places throughout the kitchen and utility room and then walked into my bedroom, all the questions Jaz’s words had raised following at my heels, babbling in the shadows.

  Does Zappa Really Do Your Hair?

  Applause was coming from beyond the church doors as I made my slow way up the sidewalk. The meeting had already started. This was my modus operandi; arrive late, hang at the back of the room or outside, leave early. My sponsor gave me no end of hell for it.

  It wasn’t that I disliked the meetings, despite how boring and repetitious they can be at times. It was more that the room was full of people and I don’t do well in purely social situations. Without a notebook in my hand, the cover for my journalistic inquiries, I’m as lost amongst a crowd as a boy walking home from his first day of kindergarten.

  I’d had the same aversion to social situations back in my drinking days. I rarely went to bars. Being in a bar always made me feel invisible. Sitting at a table, drinking a cold one, watching everyone else having fun; all boisterous loud voices and hand gestures, out on the dance floor twirling about or hunched over a pool table, slapping corner pockets and bank shots. They all appeared to know just what to do, what to say and when to say it. I somehow missed that lesson on social interaction.

  They say that booze lubricates the social self. It never worked that way for me. It just made me lonelier.

  I sat down, leaned back against the steps and lit one of the rare cigarettes I smoke these days. The speaker’s voice was as
clear as though I was sitting in the front row instead of out on the steps. I let his words drift through my mind as I watched the sky turn slowly dark. The one positive thing I have to say about meetings is I always got something from them. Each story touched me in some small way or another. Maybe that’s why I kept going back. Though the meetings made me feel alone, the stories told in those rooms never did.

  ***

  I met Robyn at a dinner dance on a sultry Sunday evening near the end of June. The woman who normally handled the social up-and-coming was sick and finding myself yet again on HL’s shit list, he assigned me to the event. I spent the afternoon, angry and a little drunk, wandering amidst the glitterati, mumbling questions and making rude observations in my notebook. Not owning a suit, I was forced to hit the local Goodwill for something appropriate to wear. The only thing that matched my measurements was a ghastly disco thing in bright, polyester white. I felt like an overdressed ice cream vendor.

  Someone hired a street artist to do caricatures and in a moment of boredom I sat in his empty chair. My hair was a lot longer then and still retained much of its original brown color. The goateed artist busied himself with pastel chalk while I sulked. When finished, he scrawled the words ‘Hair by Frank Zappa’ across the bottom of the sketch and hung it on the wall with the others he’d drawn. Embarrassed, I skulked off to find another beer.

  Toward the end of the evening, long after I folded up my notebook, I was standing at the back bar determined to salvage something from the day by finishing off the last of a case of cold Beck’s Dark. A voice behind me asked if Zappa really did my hair. Irritated, I turned, something sufficiently sarcastic forming on my tongue. The words froze there. The owner of the voice stood two feet away, head cocked in question, blonde ringlet curls framing her face, full lips turned up in an engaging smile.

  It was her eyes, though, that captured me. Eyes so bright and shiny blue I forgotten to breathe. Mouth agape, I sputtered something inane. The band struck up a slow tune. She asked me to dance. Somewhere in the distance, a roller-coaster car began inching its way to the top of a very steep hill.