Meter Maids Eat Their Young Read Online Free PDF Page B

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