Read Meter Maids Eat Their Young for Free Online

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.
    Robyn and I danced away what was left of the evening. She invited me to her apartment. I followed her in my car. At each red light or stop sign along the way, she bolted from her tiny Subaru, dashed back to my Fiat, kissed me, and then raced away before I could respond, her laughter trailing behind her, the sound of distant wind chimes on a soft breeze.
    She was waiting for me in front of her apartment block when I pulled the Fiat into the parking lot. I nearly tripped getting out the car in my eagerness.
    She had my shirt off before we were halfway up the stairs. We left a trail of clothes from the door to the bedroom. We tore the bed apart, scattering sheets and pillows and blankets, and finally ourselves, upon the floor. Somewhere in between the matings, Robyn fed me bits of scrambled egg, potato and ham, pushed between my lips with her fingers while sitting on my chest. By morning the roller-coaster reached the summit.
    The momentary flood of panic I felt upon waking receded with the sound of falling water. The musky smell of sex was heavy in the sunlit room. I buried my head in the pillow, inhaling the scent of her perfume, feeling its effects deep inside me. I turned my head, opened my eyes, and came face to face with the ugliest ashtray I had ever seen in my life. A squinty-eyed, unshaven old coot of a cowboy with a rope in one hand and the other resting on the butt of his gun, standing hunched over a pile of crushed cigarettes.
    Shuddering, I sat up and swung my legs from beneath the covers. Pushing myself from the bed, I followed the sound of the water, stepping into a bathroom so lime green and thick with steam I felt I was in an aquarium. The curtains parted and there she’d stood, all soap and glistening water. “Good morning, baby,” she said and reached out her hand.
    The roller-coaster car had begun its steep descent.
    ***
    The sound of chairs scraping against tile, loud voices, intruded on my thoughts. I could hear the crowd inside the church start to shuffle about, preparing for the holding hands thing. I unfolded myself from the stairs and tried to separate the past from the now. There was a pressure in my chest as though a bubble surrounded my heart, pumping dark memories into my veins with every beat. I looked