Meter Maids Eat Their Young: A Love Story

by EJ Knapp

  “You should have turned them over to me as soon as you found them.”

  “Believe it or not, I considered that. HL was opposed to the idea, and you know what, after listening to his reasons, I agreed with him.”

  I turned to face him. “Tell me, Marion, what would you have done if I had told you? You would have gone out and busted the meter maid and all you would have accomplished was to pin one cockroach to the kitchen counter, while the rest of the cockroaches scattered before you could bring up the lights, which was exactly the reason why HL wanted to sit on the story.”

  “What about the guy you saw in Cooper’s office?”

  “How did you know about that? Never mind. I know. I’m not even sure who I saw in Cooper’s office and, not that it matters now, but both HL and I were in agreement that you should be brought in on that. He just never had a chance ... a chance to make it happen.”

  He stared at me for a long time, his jaw tight, fighting between restraint and violence. He turned and began to walk from the room.

  Anger leapt again, bringing me down. I pushed away from the window and ran after him.

  “The least you can do, you prick, is tell me how HL and Felice are doing.”

  “I’m not your fucking messenger boy, Teller.”

  “Right,” I said, biting off the word. “How foolish of me to think you give a fuck.”

  He whirled on me so fast I skidded on the slippery wooden floor, ducking as I did so; sure he was going to hit me.

  “You listen to me, Teller,” he said, towering over me, his jaw clenched tight. “I care every bit as much for that old man as you do, you arrogant asshole. Who do you think guided my way through foster care after my old man hanged himself? After they hauled my mother away in a long-armed jacket? Who do you think paid my college tuition and supplemented my veteran’s benefits so I could eat a decent meal and not have to wear Goodwill hand-me-downs? And who do you think recommended me for this position, then threw the entire force of his paper behind my appointment?”

  I took a step back and actually mumbled an apology, hardly believing the words had passed my lips. He glared at me then walked away. I stood there, listening to his footfalls as they echoed down the hall.

  Arrogant?

  Arrogant!

  “Arrogant?” I yelled out to him when I heard the ding of the elevator. “You’re the one who walked away from our friendship. Arrogant? Hell! You never even thanked me for saving your miserable life.”

  I heard the elevator doors slide shut, the buzz of the car’s pneumatic descent mixing with the buzz of anger and despair in my head. I stared back into HL’s office, no longer able to deal with the chaos it had become, the battle ground I had helped create.

  Backing out Felice’s office, I made one last stop and left the building.

  Like A Frog In Heat

  As I pulled out the parking garage, I called the hospital for Felice’s room number. Though they wouldn’t give me information on her or HL’s condition, they did let it slip that he was in the intensive care unit. They connected me to Felice’s room but all I got was a busy signal. I flipped the phone closed. One way or another, I had to see her.

  Visiting hours were over for the day but when had rules like that ever stopped me? Crossing the lobby, I ducked into the fire stairs and ran up the four flights to Felice’s floor. The floor was nearly deserted, one weary looking nurse behind a counter, hunched over a file or maybe a book to pass the time. She didn’t look up as I passed. Maybe she didn’t hear me. Maybe she didn’t care. I found Felice’s room and stepped inside.

  She was sitting on the bed, staring out the window, her back to me. She was fully dressed in street clothes. A bandage was wrapped about her head. I had been expecting worse, so seeing her sitting there, so obviously ready to leave the hospital, caused such an immense wave of relief to wash over me I felt momentarily dizzy.

  Leaning against the door jam, I tried to remember how long I’d known her and Albert. Thirty years? Forty? I’d met them while still a teenager, the year I worked as a summer intern for HL.

  “Albert’s gone to get a wheelchair, Teller.”

  Startled, I jumped. It took me a second to remember where I was.

  “I told them I didn’t want one,” Felice said, still staring out the window. “But they insist. Silly rule.”

  “How do you always know it’s me?”

  “Your boots squeak,” she said.

  “Squeak?”

  “Like a frog in heat.”

  I looked down, rocked my foot back and forth. I couldn’t hear a thing.

  “I don’t think frogs do the heat thing,” I said. “That’s mammals.”

  She turned, giving me a look that questioned what I might, or might not, know about frogs.

  I felt a flash of anger followed immediately by guilt. Jack and Jill emotions tumbling over each other down an endless hill.

  “You knew, didn’t you Felice?” I said. “Long before I walked in your office with those tickets. You knew something was going to happen.”

  “Does it matter, Teller?” she said. “What I knew? What I guessed? What I saw? Does it matter at all now?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It does matter, Felice. It matters to me. I took those tickets to him. I’m responsible for him being here. For you being here. If I’d kept those tickets, that guy would have come after me, not you and HL.”

  “You’re not responsible, Teller,” she said. “You knew those tickets were important. And you knew that HL should know about them. You did what you did because it was what you knew you should do.”

  “But you knew, Felice. You knew if I took them to HL, they would go after them there. You should have told me.”

  “And if I had, what would you have done? Kept them to yourself? Possibly been killed?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “No maybe. Had I told you what I saw, what I felt, you would have second-guessed yourself, held on to the tickets.”

  “Okay, you’re probably right. But it would have been safer for you and HL that way.”

  “But life is risk, don’t you see that? If we thought we knew the likely outcome of every move we made, we would second-guess ourselves into immobility. No psychic, no matter how good, knows with complete certainty the outcome of any given move. To move through life you have to be the turtle, to thrust your head from the safety of your shell and move forward, regardless of how dangerous that might be. Without risk, there is no life. Knowing what the future holds, even if the knowing is not one hundred percent certain, reduces risk, yes, but it also reduces life to its barest essence.”

  She swiveled around on the bed, facing me, her hands folded in her lap.

  “I sense things, Teller, sense the nuance of patterns unfolding around me. Sometimes that sense is very clear, sometimes not. It is never certain. Long ago, I tried to intervene when patterns of disaster began to unfold. But it’s been my experience that when I do interfere, change something, the outcome is almost always worse than what I originally saw. I’ve learned to keep my visions to myself.”

  “So what you’re saying is ... life is cut in stone and that you can see the scratches on the surface.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all. Life is fluid, fate and freewill combined in an ever-changing mix. We are all fated to die. And maybe the road from birth to death is proscribed to one degree or another. But that road is also fraught with many forks and branches and our decisions, at the moment of coming upon those forks and branches, determines which road we take. As humans, we want to avoid pain, unhappiness, bad outcomes, even death. If we knew that a certain branch of the road would lead to disaster, we would avoid it. Yet much good can come from disaster and choosing that road may lead to a better outcome than if we’d known in advance and avoided it. There is just no way of knowing. And believe me, it’s better not to. You can’t imagine how difficult it is to keep such knowing to yourself. Especially when it concerns a loved one.”

  “Speaking
of which,” Albert said, as he entered the room, seated in Felice’s wheelchair.

  I stepped aside as he wheeled himself to the center of the room and did a sharp donut.

  “I’ve got to get me one of these things,” he said. He looked over at Felice and then at me. His smile faded. “Oops,” he said. “Serious conversation, huh? Should I leave? Tool about the halls for a bit? Irritate the nurses?”

  Before he had a chance to answer, Marion stepped into the room. Spotting me, his countenance took on the expression of a bishop realizing he’d stepped into the midst of a Heidi Fleiss birthday bash.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said, nodding to everyone but me. “Recognize this man?” He handed Felice an eight by ten photograph.

  She looked it over for a long moment.

  “Yes,” she said. “I recognize him.”

  “Is he the man who assaulted you and Mr. Essex?”

  “That I can’t say. He was wearing a mask.”

  “Nixon?” I said.

  She turned to me. “Reagan.”

  “What is it about sleazy dead Republicans that makes them want to return and haunt?” I said. “Can I see that?”

  “I’m a Republican,” Marion said.

  “Why does that not surprise me?” I said, taking the photograph from Felice. It was poor quality, grainy and soft focused but I recognized my friend despite the flaws.

  “Where did you get this?” I said.

  “Security camera in the garage,” Marion answered.

  I looked at the photo again, resisting the urge to crumple it up and stomp it beneath the heel of my boot.

  “This is the guy,” I said. “The one who tried to flatten me the other night. The one I think I saw in Cooper’s office. Who is he?”

  “His name is Keller. He’s second in command at the Department of Public Works. Some say he actually runs the place. We’ve got an APB out on him. I tried to get a warrant to search his office, and the DPE offices, but Gallagher is stonewalling me.”

  “Gallagher? I suspect he’s in their back pocket.”

  “As do I, but without further evidence, I have no call to go over his head.”

  “Would the tickets help?” I asked.

  “The tickets are gone.”

  “The originals, yes,” I said, pulling a manila envelope from beneath my jacket. “But not the copies I made of them.”

  Riot In The Streets

  Hospitals are designed for the sick and dying, not the weary.

  After Marion left with the tickets and Albert wheeled a protesting Felice out the room, I wandered up to the ICU. They wouldn’t let me in so I leaned against the glass, staring in at the sheet-draped figure where he lay thirty feet away, watching the spark of life flutter across the tiny monitor above his bed.

  I was exhausted, emotionally and physically. Gravity wanted me on the floor to keep it company. I stared at the hard, wooden bench along one wall and decided I could remain vertical long enough to make it home.

  I couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour or two when the phone started ringing. My first thought was HL. When I realized it was the landline ringing, I relaxed a bit. Felice would call me on the cell if there was any news. The answering machine caught the call and the ringing stopped. I eased my head back onto the pillow and drifted off. A loud banging on the front door woke me up again.

  I stumbled out of bed, aching in parts of my body I didn’t know I had. The banging at the door was more insistent. Sleep fogged, I couldn’t find my bathrobe so I ran naked to the front door and peeked through the window. It was Jaz. I opened the door a crack and she pushed her way in.

  “Jaz!” I said, trying to tuck myself behind the door.

  She looked me up and down, making me uncomfortable as hell.

  “Sorry about that. But you’ve got to see this, Teller. Get your clothes on and hurry up.”

  I made her go back on the porch and hurried back to my room, flipped on the light and threw on some clothes.

  “You’ve got a nice butt for a guy your age.”

  I spun around so fast I got tangled up in my pant legs and fell back on the bed.

  “Jaz! Could you give me some space here?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But hurry up.”

  I finished pulling on my jeans as she turned away.

  “You’re the Mangler, aren’t you?”

  “Do you want space or explanations?” she said.

  “Both would be nice.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “That’ll have to wait. You need to see this, Teller. You really do.”

  A moment later we were cutting across Market Street. The strong breeze was cool, smelling of a mixture of lilac and honeysuckle. And more rain to come. The birds were only now beginning to stir. Rustles in the overhead branches and cautious cheeps in the growing mist.

  We turned on Gratiot, heading downtown. The pre-dawn sky was rolling with thick clouds. The street was deserted. I could hear a garbage truck somewhere off in the distance. We were almost running by the time she led me down Walnut Street. When she stopped abruptly, I had to dance a quick side-step to keep from ploughing into her.

  “What do you see, Teller?”

  I looked around. Parked cars, closed shops, a street light that was flickering, no people.

  “An empty street?” I said.

  “An empty street packed corner to corner with cars,” she said.

  “Okay. I can see that. Why do I care at four in the morning?”

  “Look at the damn sign, Teller.”

  I looked up at the sign. “No parking, 5.00 a.m. through 9.00 a.m.” I read. “Tow-Away Zone.”

  I looked back at Jaz.

  “So? What else is new? This has always been a tow-away zone after ...” My head snapped round so fast the bones in my neck popped. I couldn’t have been more surprised at what I was seeing if the whole sign had suddenly unfolded into one of those Transformer bots.

  “… after 6.00 a.m.” I finished.

  Standing on tip-toes, I peered closer at the sign. I could just make out the white patch used to cover the 6 with a 5.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “You got that right,” Jaz said. “Walnut Street is ten blocks long. Do you have any idea how many cars will be ticketed today? How many towed?”

  Twenty to a side, Tom had said, so forty to a block times ten.

  “Hundreds,” I said.

  “And even more than that if the other commuter routes have had their time changed as well. And there’s no reason to think they haven’t.”

  She hurried off and I followed.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Over to Pine Street. I want to check.”

  We cut down Arbor and onto Pine. The signs there had been changed as well.

  “This must have been in the wind for a while, before it all hit the fan,” Jaz said. “It would take quite some coordination to pull this off in a single night. I bet they hit every commute route in town.”

  “And with no notice,” I said. “Handy having half the city council in your back pocket. How did you find out about it?”

  “I was out for a walk. I had a lot on my mind after ... after all that’s happened in the last few days. I needed to think and walking helps me think.”

  “I need to get to the paper,” I said. “Get something written up, warn people about this.”

  “That will take too long. There’s less than an hour. How are we going to warn these people?”

  I considered this. Lights were on in the apartment building across the street and in some of the houses I could see. People would be up, getting ready for work. Watching TV. Listening to the radio.

  “I have a friend at the radio station. I’ll give him a call. Then we start knocking on doors.”

  I flipped open my phone and got through to my DJ friend. I gave it to him straight out. He caught on fast, said he’d put it on the air right away. And pass it along to some other DJs he k
new. As soon as he clicked off I called Felice at home.

  “Teller. What’s up?”

  I gave her the same story I’d given the DJ.

  “I have contacts at the TV stations,” she said. “I’ll call them right away and get over to the paper. This is going to cause quite a stir.”

  “Stir?” I said. “This could well cause a riot. People are pissed. This whole parking situation has become a leaking powder keg and these fools are playing with matches.”

  “Then you’ll have to watch yourself out there.”

  “I always do.”

  “That could be debated, you know. But no time for that now.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Call me when you get to the office. If the town hasn’t blown sky high by then, we can talk about it.”

  I clicked off. Jaz had been busy while I was on the phone. There were people on the street now in various stages of dress, some still in their nightwear. A few were getting in their cars and driving away, most were just milling about, their voices filling the air with a buzz like bees about to swarm. A large group came from a side road and started spreading out. Loud voices, some curious, most angry; you could feel the tension mounting in the air like volatile fumes waiting for a spark.

  The spark came in the guise of a blue and white Cushman cart that came trundling up Walnut. When a second cart turned up the street, the fumes ignited.

  Someone threw a bottle. A coffee cup was launched. The first hit the street several feet from one of the carts. The other crashed into the windshield. Before the driver could emerge from behind the wheel, a crowd was on the cart, rocking it from side to side until they tipped it over. The driver of the second cart tried to make a run for it. A woman, hair in rollers beneath a flowered shower cap, rammed his cart with her pickup.

  Three more carts and a tow-truck appeared and were immediately set upon by the crowd. The tow-truck veered off, jumped the curb, flattened a tow-away sign and came to rest in the doorway of one of the shops. Several car alarms and the alarm in the shop went off at once, adding to the tension. By the time I looked back, the three carts were on their sides, the meter maids running down the street, an angry mob on their heels.