Meter Maids Eat Their Young: A Love Story

by EJ Knapp

  I looked out the window for the woman who had handed me the flyer but she was nowhere in sight. She had been alone. She had walked right up to me. With nothing but the single flyer in her hand. Had I just been given an invitation to meet with the folks at CARPE?

  I did a quick geographic calculation in my head, feeling my stomach churn over as I did. That part of Grospecke Highway was west of city center in the old, and mostly forgotten, industrial part of town. I’d been avoiding that section since my return. I’d spent seven years there in a little cinder-block apartment building off Rose Street, less than a brisk walk from that pawnshop. Five of those years with Robyn.

  You’re a journalist, Teller, a voice in my head nagged. You go where the story takes you. Yeah, yeah, I nagged back, easy for you to say. But I knew I would go. Had to go. I folded up the leaflet, ordered the dogs to go and hurried to my car.

  Chics Dig Guys Who Pawn

  The day was warming up. I had the windows down as I navigated my way along the slowest route I could think of to get to Grospecke Highway. Paul Simon slipped from the speakers and whispered that he was heading to Graceland. I felt like I was heading into memory’s minefield.

  It’s strange how the geography of a city can change so abruptly. One minute you’re moving down tree-lined streets of mid- and upper-class homes; baby carriages, swing-sets, Beamers and bikes with training wheels, then within a single block and a set of railroad tracks, you’ve crossed over into The Land Time Forgot.

  As I made that transition, the air thickened with the smell of rusting iron and diesel fuel. What sunshine there was seemed purged of warmth and vitality. Ancient wooden warehouses hugged the old rail line, their heavy plank sides and thick beams crumbling in on them.

  Abandoned cars, rusted, dented, their windows cracked and broken, most on cinder blocks or bare brake drums, lined the rutted streets like rotted teeth. An ominous wind had kicked up, as if welcoming my return, scattering beer cans and scraps of paper in endless eddies.

  Despite having been born and raised here, Robyn had no notion this part of town existed before meeting me. After, she took to it like a big game hunter finding virgin wilderness. We made love in several of the old warehouses, even spending a Halloween night in one, telling ghost stories and drinking Bloody Marys.

  Many were the evenings we trod the broken sidewalks and overgrown rail line. She’d found a lover for Dinger here. Dinger was my cat at the time and I hadn’t understood then why she needed a lover. Time hasn’t enlightened me any. But that was Robyn, the way she was, the way her head worked. The affair between Dinger and the old, orange tomcat Robyn had lured back to my apartment didn’t work out. Dinger nearly tore the old boy apart. Maybe some relationships are never meant to be.

  Though I had sworn I wouldn’t, I found myself cruising down Rose Street. After HL’s talk and my increasing immersion in the Robyn Zone, you’d think I’d have better sense than to add a visit to the apartment complex – if you can call six, drab grey, cinder block apartments a complex – where I’d spent so much time with Robyn. But then, I’m not sure I’ve ever been known for my good sense.

  Shortly after coming back to town, I’d read that the juvenile detention center, once the view from my bedroom window, had expanded their territory, taking over the complex, turning the small apartments into housing for the night staff.

  The apartments were dark. There were no cars in the pitted asphalt parking lot. I stared at the first apartment, the one closest to Rose Street. The cheap shag carpet had been a grotesque shade of green and always smelled of mold, stale beer and cigarettes. Except for one or two antiques, the furniture was mostly Salvation Army rejects. My old Harley had occupied the dining room. As I drove past, I could almost see my little red Fiat sitting out front. I could almost hear Robyn’s laugh.

  I hit the gas. This was stupid. I could feel that trapdoor in my chest opening up again and felt that at any moment I might fold up and drop through it, Buster’s laugh following me to the hard glass bottom of the bottle.

  I was passing the detention center when something caught my eye. I hit the brakes, reversed, stopped again. There was a sculpture along the roadway. I stared at it in amazement. How terribly sensitive, I thought, grinding my teeth. The sculpture depicted a family scene: dad and his daughter playing catch while mom and son sat nearby watching the action. What a happy, happy little scene for the kids inside. The closest most of them had ever come to a game of catch was when dad, or mom, bounced a baseball off their heads.

  I hit the gas again, hard enough to make the tires squeal, trying to outrace my tumbling feelings. A moment later I pulled into the rutted parking lot behind the pawnshop and killed the engine. I sat there a moment, the blood pounding in my head, the trapdoor in my chest squealing closed on dry hinges.

  The building was old cinder block, pitted in places as if someone had fired shots at the building. There was an ancient White Owl cigar mural, faded, all but colorless, covering the entire wall. From the looks of the chips in the cinder block, it appeared the owl had been the target.

  Walking around to the front of the shop, I came up short when I spotted the sign hanging off the front of the building. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Chics Dig Guys Who Pawn. What the hell was that about? Bristling at the misspelling, I looked around, expecting to see typographically-challenged pawnshop groupies congregating, and trying to imagine what a typographically- challenged pawnshop groupie might look like. Except for a young guy, mid-thirties, maybe, with a shaved head and huge red earrings distorting his earlobes, sitting on the sidewalk between me and the front door, I was the sole human on the street.

  I took a step back, my body doing the old goose-stepping-over-my-grave shiver as I stared at the kid, the sign forgotten. There was something familiar and unsettling about him. He was wearing black slacks and shirt, a black apron and a red-and-black checked wool vest. His backpack was open, his worldly possessions scattered around him. A wheels-up skateboard with a dirty Styrofoam cup full of something brownish, and a half-eaten sandwich sat within arm’s reach. There was a large pile of multicolored ties in his lap and he was tying them, one by one, around his neck with perfect Windsor knots.

  Cautiously, I made a wide arc around him and stepped quickly through the pawnshop door.

  Citizens Against Repressive Parking Enforcement

  A chime sounded from somewhere in the back. Muffled voices, whether a radio or a conversation I couldn’t tell, fell silent. I waited for someone to part the heavy curtains near the register but no one came. I sniffed the air. There was a familiar scent and it took but a moment for the connection to click. Jaz. Or rather the scent Jaz wore. I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see her, or worse, the kid who’d been outside. There was no one there.

  I looked around. The room was square with plaster walls painted off-white. Some sort of wavy-line design circled the room a foot below where the wall met the ceiling. Guitars, saxophones, flutes, every musical instrument imaginable hung from the upper half of the walls. Below were shelves stacked with recording equip.m.ent and stereos. Along the back wall shotguns and hunting rifles stood upright in locked cases. The handguns and jewelry were displayed in glass cases set in a U-shape on the hardwood floor. One case near the register held nothing but laptop computers, PDAs, and other computer-related equip.m.ent. A small, black box near the end caught my attention.

  As I stared down it, it came to me what it was; a voice synthesizer. Before I could give it another thought, the curtains at the rear of the shop parted and a broad-shouldered man with an even broader smile stepped through.

  “Mr. Teller,” he said, his booming voice matching his bulk.

  I cocked my head, alert. “You know who I am? And it’s Teller, by the way. No ‘mister.’”

  “Teller, then,” he answered. “And I believe everyone in town knows who you are. The conquering hero returned to vanquish the parking enforcement dragons.”

  He reached his hand across the counter
. “Tom Philo, at your service.”

  I took his hand. Despite his stocky build, he didn’t pull the macho handshake on me. I liked him for that. I hate it when men think they have to crush your knuckles to show how manly they are.

  A breeze puffed out the curtain. A door slammed somewhere in the back, startling Philo. His smile faded.

  “Customer?” I said.

  “Uh, yeah,” he answered. “Some folks, you know, don’t like to be seen in a pawnshop. I, uh, think of them as my backdoor trade.”

  He laughed but it sounded hollow and nervous to me. I looked down, noticed an empty space on the shelf between two laptops. When I looked back up at Philo, I caught him looking at the same spot. Color dotted his cheeks. Something was going on but I couldn’t fathom what.

  “You know you have a kid sitting outside your door, right?” I said, throwing him a curve ball. He seemed relieved by the change of subject.

  “Oh. Yeah. He’s there most every day. Comes for the coffee and sandwich, I think. Never comes in the store, just sits out there, wrapping his ties around his neck and talking to whoever it is he talks to. He’s no bother, really. The kind of clientele one gets in a pawnshop and all that. No one pays him much attention. He never gets angry or belligerent. Doesn’t drink or take drugs that I can tell. Odd, considering his parentage.”

  “You know his parents?”

  “Both dead,” he said, suddenly more nervous than he had been when the back door had slammed. “Both, uh, before my time here.”

  “Is there something I’m missing here?”

  “Um.” He took a deep breath, blew it out. Took another one. “His father,” he said. “I believe you knew his father.”

  “Shit,” I said, half under my breath. That’s why the kid looked so familiar. “Willy T.”

  “Yeah,” Philo said.

  No wonder I had felt spooked walking by the kid. I looked back over my shoulder, expecting to see Willy T standing behind me, shovel in hand. Ghosts. Everywhere I turned there were ghosts. Damn, but I was tired of all the ghosts.

  “Mother?” I said.

  “Died in childbirth. She was a boozer, I’m told. Like Willy.”

  “No one was quite like Willy T,” I said more to myself than him. “Trust me. Look, I didn’t come here for a trip into memory’s minefield.”

  “Obviously not,” he said. “I imagine the Mangler brought you to my door.”

  The smile was back. I wondered why.

  “Do you know something about the Mangler?”

  “I know a few things about parking meters,” he said. “Nothing about the destroyer of parking meters, though I certainly applaud … er … his actions.”

  “What exactly is CARPE?” I said.

  “Citizens Against Repressive Parking Enforcement,” he replied. “Made it up myself. The acronym, I mean. Well, the whole organization, I suppose. Such as it is. We have a website and everything. Quite a few hits, considering the local nature of the thing. There is growing discontent with parking enforcement around the world. I thought the name had some zing to it, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Zing. Yeah. Tell me about this,” I said, plucking the leaflet I’d been given from my pocket and holding it in the air.

  “You want to know why meters should be banned?”

  “I want to know why it was handed specifically to me, why there’s an address scrawled across the bottom of the page when no other flyer I’ve seen has any kind of contact information printed on it.”

  I stared at him. His smile was broad. The overhead light sparkled off his earring.

  “Perhaps it’s an invitation to learn more about parking meters and why they should be banned. Got a morning to kill? As for why there is no contact information, let’s just say it’s not a good idea to be seen to be opposing the DPE.”

  I thought about what HL had said earlier in the morning; about how the DPE was trying to quash my stories; about how he was getting no support. About whoever was driving that SUV.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a morning to kill.”

  Why Parking Meters Should Be Banned

  As Tom Philo settled into his chair he said, “You know the history of the parking meter, I assume?”

  We were sitting in the backroom now, the shop closed up. The scent I had smelled earlier was stronger back here. It made me as uneasy as the overstuffed chair I sank into. The chair was big enough to accommodate Arnold Schwarzenegger. Philo had made tea and I balanced a delicate china cup in one hand and my notebook and pencil in the other.

  I’ve never understood the point of those china tea cups. They hold but a gulp and a half of liquid and who but a small child could get their finger through that tiny handle to hold the thing? Rearranging the small items on the wicker table next to me with my elbow, I set down the cup and turned back to Philo. My knees nearly in my face.

  “I do,” I said. “I know they were created to alleviate traffic congestion, or that was the pitch, anyway. I’ve never seen much evidence of it.”

  “The only true relief for traffic congestion is the tow-away zones on the major commute routes in and out the city. Which, I might add, are metered as well. Still, opening up those extra lanes during the rush hour does help move the traffic in and out. The meters, however, all meters in fact, may actually cause more congestion, but I’ll get to that in a moment. You’re aware, of course, that there are over five million parking meters in use in America?”

  “That many?”

  “Indeed. With more being installed every day. The original meters clipped the patron for five cents an hour, plus a twenty-dollar fine should they forget the time. Today they’re as much as two dollars an hour with fines as high as fifty dollars. More in certain restricted areas like parking for the handicapped and loading zones.”

  “Yeah. I’m aware of that.”

  “Are you also aware that the very first ticket issued was challenged in court?”

  I didn’t know that. “On what grounds?” I said.

  “That the streets are public space and you can’t charge the public to utilize what is theirs.”

  “And the public lost?”

  “In fact, they did. But not on those grounds. The defense team knew that it was basically charging a rental fee for space that belonged to the public. They also knew they would never get away with that defense. Instead, they argued that the revenue from the parking meters, and the inevitable tickets, was to pay for parking enforcement.”

  I thought that one over a moment. It was very twisted logic.

  “And they won with that argument?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Wait, let me get this straight. We feed the meter—”

  “A device none of us asked for,” Philo said. “Nor were we consulted over their placement.”

  “Right. We feed the meter to pay someone to patrol the meter we didn’t ask for and give us a ticket if we park beside it for too long. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No. It doesn’t. But that’s how parking meters overcame their first legal challenge and we’ve been tossing nickels, dimes and quarters into their gaping maw ever since. That little tidbit is lost to history. And now that the legality is essentially out the way, city councils all across the country have a number of ersatz reasons for sticking a meter alongside any spot big enough to park a car.”

  “Such as?”

  “Turnover. Force people to move their cars so others can park. Of course, that’s only valid in shopping areas so it doesn’t explain the prevalence of meters in every part of town.”

  He picked up his tea, sipped it and set the cup back down.

  “Forcing people onto public transportation is another dubious reason given for the parking meter’s existence, though that, too, is ludicrous. In most metropolitan areas, public transportation either doesn’t exist in any meaningful way or, where it does, is wholly inadequate for the needs of the communities it serves. This inadequacy leads to frustration, which leads to more people driving, which leads to less re
venue, which leads to further deterioration of service … and on and on in a downward spiral.

  “The problem, of course, is that if people drive, they must park. For them to park, there must be parking places. On average, a person works eight hours a day. You don’t find many eight-hour parking meters: Thirty minutes, sixty, two hours tops. It doesn’t compute and this is where the whole theory of metered parking falls apart.”

  “Fall apart? “ I said. “I’m not sure I understand that.”

  “It’s simple, really. As with anything, there is an obvious cost and a hidden cost. With metered parking, the hidden cost is quite high. Now, the obvious cost is the meter itself; its installation and maintenance and, of course, all the people necessary to run a department of parking enforcement, including those who check the meters and write the tickets. This cost is borne by the revenue produced by the meters and the tickets, roughly twenty percent of gross.”

  “And the hidden cost?”

  “Businesses carry the brunt of that,” he said. “And then there is the issue of lost space.”

  “Lost space?”

  “Yes. You see, the state mandates the size of a metered parking space, pretty much to accommodate the largest vehicle that might park there, plus several feet fore and aft. But not everyone has large cars, especially in this day of escalating fuel prices. What this means is, a Volkswagen is allotted as much room as a Cadillac. On a city block with ten meters, only ten cars can park. Without those meters, you could likely squeeze in thirteen, maybe fourteen cars. Because the block is metered, nearly twenty-five percent of that block is lost to parking space.”

  “Okay. What about the loss to business?”

  “Easy. Two-hour parking meter. Eight-hour day. Anyone parked at a meter will have to run out to their car three, possibly four times a day. More if they get a meter with less time. Figure ten to twenty minutes each trip, call it fifteen on average, and you’re looking at an hour of productivity loss per worker per day.”