“Of course not, hmmm? That why you were so nasty to Officer Denton?”
“I, uh… I d-didn't know that I was.”
The judge peered over the tops of her round glasses at Robin. “You trying to tell me that you didn't know you were mouthing off to him? Or that you were being nasty? Or that by refusing to give him your name, or provide your license, or proof of insurance, that you were being disrespectful? Is that the way you do people, Ms. Lear?”
“No…”
“No?”
“Uh, yes… well, no,” Robin stuttered.
The judge snorted, looked at the bailiff. “Ms. Lear got herself an attitude problem, Mr. Peeples. That superior attitude got her into a little bit of trouble, didn't it?”
“It sure did, Your Honor.”
“I'm surprised Ms. Lear managed to make it this long before someone knocked her down a notch or two.” The judge tossed the file down and bestowed a fierce frown on Robin that sent another shiver down her spine. “Now look here, you need to wake up and smell the coffee, girl! How many of your fine and fancy friends get themselves thrown in jail for talking trash?”
“I… I don't know any,” Robin answered truthfully.
“Maybe that's cause they don't go around thinking they are better than everyone else. If you're gonna walk around thinking you are, you're gonna keep making trouble for yourself, do you understand me?”
“I don't think I'm better—”
“I said, do you understand me?” Judge Jobe demanded.
“Yes, ma'am,” Robin answered softly.
“I'm gonna accept your plea of guilty for driving without a license or insurance and fine you seven hundred fifty dollars for wasting my time.”
Robin blinked, wondered when, exactly, she had pled guilty.
“Now follow the deputy here, and try not to be annoying,” the judge said and handed the deputy a piece of paper. He pointed toward the door; Robin walked, head down.
And found herself waiting in another large room after she had received her personal property, which consisted of a belt, a Cartier watch, an emerald ring, and a half-empty purse, in which, fortunately, there had been a lone credit card in the side pocket. The very helpful deputies also gave her a paper with the location of her car and pointed to the window where she would pay her fine along with everyone else in Houston .
Robin made the mistake of asking the clerk when she could pay, which earned her a reprimand to be seated while the clerk and her friend chatted away as if they had nothing
else to do. Dejected, exhausted, and feeling terribly low, Robin sat, wondering if it were possible to get a bazooka in there to break up their little coffee klatch. Her head ached, her back ached, even her butt ached from sitting for so many hours on rock-hard benches like the one on which she was sitting now. She felt grimey in clothes she had now worn for almost twenty-four hours, her mouth tasted rank, and her stomach was in knots. All she wanted to do was go home and burrow under the covers of her bed for the next five months.
Miserable, feeling sorrier for herself with each passing minute, she waited.
It wasn't until someone sat hard next to her, jostling her almost off the bench, that she realized she must have been drifting on the edge of sleep. With a jump, Robin blinked, looked to her left. A man with impossibly broad shoulders had fallen onto the bench next to her. He was wearing a weathered leather jacket and faded jeans, had a crop of thick dark brown hair, and when he turned to look at Robin, he smiled and said with a wink, “Hey.”
Exhausted, all Robin saw was someone rude enough to knock into her, and seeing as how she had endured enough for one span of twenty-four hours, t hank you very much, she did not appreciate it in the least.
“Get real,” she muttered, shooting him an ice-cold look, and scooched over.
“God, what'd I say?”
“Hey,” she snapped.
“Oh come on, it can't be that bad,” he remarked, as if they were sitting in a park somewhere.
“What would you know?”
“Okay, so I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bump into you. Truce?”
Oh no, oh nononooo. She wasn't about to engage. “Excuse me,” she said coolly, “but I'm really not in the mood to make friends just now.” With her hand, she gestured for him to move. “Just… go away.”
“Believe me, lady, I'd love to oblige you,” he said, his
voice less friendly, “but in case you haven't noticed, it's pretty crowded in here.”
“You can find another seat.”
“Maybe you'd like to find another seat. I've been waiting two hours.”
Two hours? How did he get out so fast? That infuriated Robin—she had to wait all night, and this dude was out in two hours? “I was here first!” she insisted petulantly.
“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Clearly, I misunderstood.” But instead of moving, he just settled in.
Robin glared at him. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Like I said, the room is full, so unless you can produce a deed or something that proves you own this bench, I'm not going anywhere.”
“Oh my God!” Robin exclaimed indignantly and abruptly stood up.
“Nice talking to you, Miss Congeniality!” he said as she started to push her way down the row.
“Shut up!” she barked over her shoulder. Three or four seats down, she glared at two Hispanic men who, after exchanging a wary glance with one another, moved to make a seat for her.
She squished in between them like a sardine, then glanced down the row just as the jailbird got up and sauntered off. Bastard! But Lord… what a saunter that bastard had! Even in her dejected, repulsed, and generally miserable state, Robin could not help noticing how fine he was in his ancient denim jeans and briefly wondered what he might have done to land himself in hell, but quickly stopped when he turned abruptly and caught her staring at his backside. He flashed her a lopsided, knew-it smile. Robin frowned deeply, turned her attention forward, and did not look again. Except once. Maybe twice. By the time they finally called her name, she had definitely lost sight of him and was in such a hurry to get out of that stinking hellhole that she almost collided with him when she turned from the window, clutching her freedom on a receipt marked PAID.
He was standing in line just behind her; Robin gave a
little shriek of surprise and quickly jumped back a foot or more.
“Oh man… well, hello again, Sunshine,” he drawled.
“Je-sus!” she exclaimed heatedly, holding the hand with the receipt over her flailing heart as she glared up at him. “Can't you take a hint?”
“Hey, Your Majesty, I'm just waiting in line like everyone else.”
“Uh-huh, right,” Robin responded irritably and wondered for a split second why men thought women were so ignorant of their motives. “You know, if I were you, I'd be worrying about my new cellmate instead of trying to get a date!”
The man all but choked. He stared down at her, his copper-brown eyes wide with surprise. And then he laughed. Laughed. Laughed so roundly, as if that was so hilariously preposterous, that several heads turned in their direction. But he didn't seem to care—-he leaned forward, bent his head until his mouth was just an inch or two from her cheek, and said, “Sunshine, you're cute…” He paused, lingered there for a tiny moment, his breath warm on her face, so close that she could smell his cheap (but not altogether unpleasant) cologne. “… but no way are you that cute. And you're mean.” He straightened up. “You know, if I were you,” he said, mimicking her voice, “I'd see someone about that rod stuck up my butt.” With that, he calmly stepped around her to the payment window.
Okay. Well. She was now officially in hell. Some .. .jail guy… had just dissed her, and it was so unbearably humiliating that Robin beat a hasty retreat out the double glass doors, into the lobby of the processing center, clutching her purse and her receipts like a mad escapee, frantically searching the milling crowd for her grandparents.
Fortunately, her mother's parents were easy to spot. There was her grandfather, who had the distinct misfortune to have been named Elmer, and the even greater misfortune, in his declining years, of actually resembling Elmer. He was round and squat with hugely enormous feet typically encased in white Easy Spirits, which heralded his arrival a good city block before him. And in fact, it was Mr. Fudd's
shoes Robin saw in the lobby before she saw him.
Her grandmother, Lil, was the physical opposite of Elmer. She was tall and reed thin, and wore big pink-rimmed octagonal glasses that covered her cheeks and eyebrows and made her eyes look like big blue stop signs. She also wore Easy Spirits. The taupe ones.
Grandma spotted Robin and came hurrying like a squirrel across the lobby, darting in and around people in her haste to get to her granddaughter. “Robbie!” she exclaimed, and grabbed her in a bear hold, nearly squeezing the breath from her. “Oh my God, sweet pea! What has happened]”
“Robbie-girl, you all right?” Grandpa asked, rescuing her from Grandma's grip.
“I'm fine,” Robin insisted. “It's really so stupid. I'll tell you all about it in the car, but please, let's just get out of here,” she urged, ushering them in the direction of the door.
Grandpa had scored a prime parking spot into which he had maneuvered his Ford Excursion, an SUV the size of a small condo. Robin gratefully crawled into the cavernous backseat.
“Buckle in, hon. Now, are we going to hear what you did?” Grandma insisted, fastening her seat belt.
Best to get it over. “I got stopped for speeding—”
“Speeding! Where?” Grandpa insisted.
“On six-ten—”
“Well now, six-ten, that's just a death trap.”
“—And I guess I sort of mouthed off a little. I mean, I wasn't doing any faster than anyone else, and I told the cop so.”
“That's my girl!” Grandpa said proudly as he coasted out of the parking lot.
“So he asked me for my license and registration, but the thing is, I had left them on my desk at work—by the way, Grandpa, I need to go by my office and get my wallet, okay? Anyway, I didn't have my license or registration, and suddenly I'm a criminal! So the cop told me to step out of the car, and… well, I just thought… I just thought that he was overreacting and I shouldn't have to step out of the car.”
“Well, he should have taken your word for it!” Grandma
said with an indignant nod of her head. “Surely when you told him your name he ran some sort of check or whatever they do in their cars to make sure you weren't lying!”
Robin squirmed.
Grandma swiveled sharply to look at her. “Well?” demanded Grandma. “Didn't he?”
Robin sighed, leaned her head against a headrest covered with a pink baby T-shirt. “I was really tired and really cranky, and I didn't exactly tell him who I was. I just sort of thought it wasn't his business. So he arrested me.”
Grandpa gave a shout of laughter, but Grandma threw a hand over her mouth and stared at Robin in horror for a moment. “Can they do that?”
“Apparently,” she answered dryly. “He arrested me for failure to identify myself, driving without a license, and driving without insurance!”
“Oh my goodness, what does this mean?” Grandma asked.
Robin grimaced at her grandmother's look of shock, and turned away, to the window, where cars were swerving from behind Grandpa and whizzing past as he pushed the SUV up to sixty. “It means they convicted me of a Class C misdemeanor, took seven hundred fifty dollars dollars for their trouble, and told me to go home.”
“Did you see any murderers in there?” Grandpa asked.
“Elmer! This is no joking matter!”
“I didn't think that was joking!”
“Grandpa, don't forget to go by my office, okay?”
Grandpa acknowledged her request by putting his blinker on a good two or three miles before their exit.
“Well, you can't work today,” Grandma said in a huff. “You don't want everyone knowing why you were late— Aaron wouldn't like that at all.”
Honestly, Robin didn't know anymore. Maybe Dad would think she deserved to be publicly humiliated. “I just need to get my things and a couple of files, that's all. Maybe Grandpa can go in for me,” Robin said absently.
“I just can't believe you have been arrested,” Grandma said and shook her head again.
Too exhausted to think, Robin stared out the window, felt her eyelids growing heavy. The next thing she heard was Grandpa, saying, “Uh-oh. Looks like a fire.”
Robin opened her eyes and glanced out the front windshield. As her mind began to grasp that they were on the street of her office, she suddenly grabbed the back of Grandpa's seat. “Oh my God!” she cried. It couldn't be. Couldn't be! Robin quickly counted the floors of her office building and felt her heart sink to her toes. Oh yes, it could be, and it was. The LTI offices were on fire. Her office was on fire.
In front of her, Grandpa shook his head. “Some fool probably left a cigarette burning or a computer on or something like that,” he opined, disgusted.
Left something on… the suggestion was suddenly clawing at Robin's throat, choking her. The coffeepot.
She had left the coffeepot on.
Grandma found Lucy in the growing crowd on the street and ascertained that everyone was accounted for and all right, and further, that the fire was contained to the LTI offices. Relieved that at least she hadn't killed anyone, Robin begged Grandpa to take her home before anyone started nosing around.
Exactly how her world had suddenly disintegrated into so many little pieces was so far beyond her ability to comprehend that by the time Grandpa eased into the circular drive in front of her house, she was seriously contemplating a trip to the roof of the Enron building and a swan dive off the side. Her father, her job, her arrest, her office—God, she was living in a soap opera! She would not be surprised if Maury Povich leapt out from behind the bushes to inform her she was pregnant with her lover's cousin's uncle.
As it was, she practically had to arm wrestle Grandma to keep her from coming in.
“You need to call your mom and let her know you're all right,” Grandma said. “We'll come in with you—”
“I'll call, I promise!” Robin said, and dove out the door,
slammed it shut and popped in front of Grandma's window before anyone could take one Easy-Spirited step toward her house. “Right now, I just want to take a bath and crawl into bed and sleep until the next century. Okay?”