Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2) (13 page)

Caleb looked at the other four teams still standing, one of them nervous and in the spotlight now. “Okay,” he whispered, pointing. “That one there. The one with my roommate, Sean.”

She looked for a few seconds, biting her lip cutely. Then she put her mouth so close to Caleb’s ear that her lips tickled him as she whispered her answer.

“That’s easy,” she said. “Your roommate goes through and so does the adorable little girl with the red shoes.”

Chapter 11

I
t was only the beginning of Jane’s first week alone on the job, and already everyone loved her. The employees of the businesses on her blocks would see her and run out to bring her coffee or slices of pizza, or sometimes simply shout her name and wave hello. At first she thought they were just being kind. But when she noticed their cars, she began to understand.

She saw a hat first. Left out in plain view on the dash. It belonged to the guy from the sandwich shop around the corner. Then she saw a stack of menus from the pizza place, also perched on the dash. A T-shirt from the pub; a coffee-shop apron. And all of these cars had one thing in common—expired meters. Jane was conflicted. She knew they were local employees working hard to make ends meet, but she also had a job to do. She decided to try leaving notes, writing them out and placing them in ticket envelopes left under the wipers. The notes read:

Hi. I noticed you work on the block and I decided to leave you a warning first. Please help me do my job and either pay the meter or find a more permanent parking solution. Thanks! —Jane

The next day came, and no one said hello and most of the cars were gone. One car remained with a ticket envelope still under the wiper, and when Jane stopped to check it, she found a twenty-dollar bill tucked inside. She left the envelope and the money where she’d found them and added an actual ticket. That’ll teach them to bribe me, she thought.

But it wasn’t just the local employees she had a hard time ticketing. It was lots of other cars too. If she came upon an expired meter and the car parked there looked run-down, its owner likely struggling financially, Jane would leave a note instead of a ticket. She did the same thing if a car had infant seats or if a vehicle had a war-veteran plate. But once she started leaving notes for some people, it didn’t seem right for her to choose who she would ticket and who she wouldn’t, so she began making rules for herself to follow. She decided she’d leave notes on every other block and then switch the blocks up the next day to be fair. Then she’d make an exception, of course, and she’d have to remake the rules again.

On the afternoon of her third day, she came upon a yellow Porsche double-parked. Finally, a citation she could write without remorse. She had just printed the ticket and was stuffing it into the envelope when she leaped back because the Porsche’s alarm sounded. She looked up and saw the driver jogging toward her with his remote in his hand.

“I’m just leaving!” he shouted, jumping into his car.

She remembered what her trainer had said about serving the ticket and she rushed to put it under the wiper. But the driver peeled away in his Porsche and left her standing at the curb with the ticket in her hand.

Jane sat for lunch at a local deli. When she’d finished eating, she tallied up her tickets for the day. She’d written fifteen and served only ten of them. A far cry from the hundred or so her trainer had said was normal.

“How many of those do you write in a day?” the server asked, eyeing the tickets in Jane’s hand as she refilled her tea.

“Not enough,” Jane replied.

“Are you on commission?”

Jane shook her head.

“That’s good,” the server said. “My husband’s an auto mechanic, and he always says people are about as happy to see him as they are to see the meter maid or the dentist.”

Jane had been home from work less than an hour and was just getting out of the shower when she heard a knock on the door. She pulled on her sweats and a T-shirt and went to answer it. Her neighbor was standing there with Buttercup in her arms.

“Hi, Marjorie,” Jane said. “How is he?”

“Just Marj is fine. He’s doing much better, thanks to you.”

The dog had several patches of shaved fur where he had received stitches, and he looked at Jane from the opening of the silly cone on his head and let out a thin bark.

“He’s happy to see you.”

“Well, don’t stand out in the hall. Come on in.”

Jane stepped aside so they could enter and then shut the door behind them. Marj stood, looking around at the apartment.

“It’s just like mine but backwards.”

“I know,” Jane said. “I had the same feeling when I went into your apartment to get your shoes.”

Marj looked back at Jane and smiled. “Well, we didn’t want to bother you, but Buttercup insisted on saying hello. Didn’t you, Buttercup?”

She leaned her face down to the cone opening and Jane saw Buttercup’s little tongue lick her nose. Then she held the dog out to Jane, but Jane shook her head.

“That’s all right,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to hold him wrong and open a stitch or something.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, he loves to be held.”

Jane relented and took the dog from her and cradled him in her arms. She rocked him gently and looked down at his tiny
face staring up at her from the cone like some kind of alien baby in a bonnet. The brown snout, the black button nose.

“He really is cute,” she said. “What kind of dog is he?”

“A min pin. That’s short for miniature pinscher.”

“Like a Doberman?”

“No. People think that, but they’re different. They call these the ‘kings of the toys.’ Although he sure defended me like a Doberman the other night. Didn’t you, Buttercup?”

“I’ve noticed he’s not barking as much lately.”

“That’s because of the pain medication the vet sent home with us. That and I’m walking him more. He barks because he misses his yard.”

“You used to have a yard?”

She nodded. “We moved in here six years ago, but I’ve had Buttercup going on ten years now. He used to love his yard.”

“I miss my yard too,” Jane said.

She remembered the photos of the handsome man on Marj’s nightstand and was tempted to ask her about him, but she didn’t want to pry. Instead, she looked back down and spoke to the dog.

“You’re a little cutie, aren’t you, Buttercup? A tough little cutie too. You sure showed that crazy coon. I’ll bet he’s still licking his wounds. Oh, baby, look at your eye. I’m sorry about the pepper spray, if that’s why it’s red. I got a little on myself, so I know what it’s like.”

When Jane glanced back up, Marj was standing at her shelf of books. She reached and took one down, then flipped it open.

“I have this same book of daily reflections,” she said.

“Is that right?” Jane asked. “Are you in recovery too?”

Marj set the book back down on the shelf. “I used to be in Al-Anon. When my husband was alive. But I just quit going when he died. I’m not really sure why. I miss it sometimes.”

“I miss it too,” Jane replied.

Marj turned to look at her. “Al-Anon or A.A.?”

“Al-Anon. I went for years.”

“Why did you stop going? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“My daughter’s an addict. Well, she was an addict. She’s passed away now. Then I moved here and it just seems so hard to get reconnected, you know?”

“Well, isn’t this a coincidence,” Marj said. “The two of us meeting up like this. And all because of a raccoon.”

“Maybe it’s a coinci-God,” Jane said.

“What’s that?” Marj asked.

“Oh, just something my old sponsor used to say. When something really random and coincidental would happen, I’d say it was spooky and she’d always correct me and say it wasn’t spooky, it was spiritual. ‘There are no coincidences, Jane,’ she’d say. ‘Only coinci-Gods.’ ”

Marj laughed. There was another silence between them when it was obvious that each was lost in her own thoughts and neither knew what else to say. Eventually, Marj stepped over to take Buttercup from Jane’s arms.

“It’s almost time for his medication, so don’t be surprised if you hear a little barking coming from next door.”

Jane was closing the door after them when she had a thought.

“You know,” Jane said, “there’s an Alano Club on my work route. I was thinking about popping in for a meeting, if maybe you wanted to go together. Maybe even tomorrow.”

Marj didn’t answer right away, and Jane thought maybe she had overstepped a boundary. Her neighbor looked down the hall at her apartment door, as if recalling the loneliness that waited inside, then she looked down at Buttercup in her arms. She looked back at Jane and nodded.

“I think that’s a great idea.”

“Don’t you have to work today?” Marj asked, buckling in.

“It’s my day off,” Jane said, pulling the car away from the curb. “Then tomorrow I start my first night shift. Or my first one solo anyway.”

“Friday night downtown. That’s got to be rough.”

“Yeah, but at least I’ve got my stab vest now.”

“What’s a stab vest?”

“Oh, nothing.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence and when they reached the Alano Club, Jane parked and paid the meter with her credit card.

“Don’t you get a special pass or something?” Marj asked.

“Nope. I’ve got to pay like everyone else.”

“I’m really sorry about laughing at you that one time.”

“What time?” Jane asked.

“From my balcony. When you got that ticket. The day you gave me the finger.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jane said. “I’m sorry for flipping you off.”

“I guess I get angry at the noise because I miss my home. It was so quiet there. And the apartment walls are so paper thin. But maybe it’s more than that. I don’t know. Maybe I get mad at everything because I miss my Rob.”

With the meter transaction completed, Jane looked up and saw that Marj was staring at the ground. Jane glanced at the entrance to the Alano Club, where a few men stood smoking. Then she looked back at Marj.

“Is this hard for you?” Jane asked. “Because we can just go get a coffee or something instead. Or maybe ice cream.”

Marj looked up, and Jane saw that her eyes were wet.

“No, I should do this,” she said. “It’s not hard because of what you might think. My Rob was a good man and he’d been sober for a lot of years. It was his heart that got him, not the
booze. It’s just that we used to go to meetings together. That’s all. But this is good. I need to do this.”

Jane took Marj’s arm in hers and they walked together toward the door. The two men there held their cigarettes away in an effort to keep them clear of the smoke, then both nodded and one welcomed them. Framed sobriety slogans lined the walls of the foyer and a short hallway led them to an open door and the meeting already in progress. They slipped inside and sat in two empty chairs. The chairs were metal and circled up so that everyone faced one another, maybe twenty people in all. The man who was sharing had paused briefly when they entered, but as they sat, he began speaking again.

“I know they say a meeting is a meeting no matter where you are, but I guess I’m just getting used to the meetings here in Texas still. They’re so different from meetings in Maryland. Yesterday I was down at the Last Chance Saloon—they’ve got a seven a.m. meeting there before the bar opens—and this guy came in . . . let’s see, how do I say this? He was a guy but he wasn’t, which is fine, of course. But anyway, he or she was still drunk and smelled like booze, and when she sat down, she dropped her purse, and you’ll never guess what fell out.”

“A vibrator,” someone guessed, joking.

“Why a vibrator?” someone else asked from across the room. “Did you lose one?”

A silver-haired gentlemen sitting next to the first man who had spoken out of turn elbowed him gently in the ribs.

“No cross talk, John.”

Jane and Marj looked at each other, suddenly realizing that they were the only two women in the room and simultaneously guessing they had stumbled into the wrong meeting.

The man sharing continued. “No, it wasn’t a vibrator. She dropped her purse and a pistol fell out. Right there on the bar
floor. And no one even said a word. A guy just leaned over and picked it up for her, and she put it back in her purse. I knew then I was really in Texas. But I guess a sex addict is a sex addict, no matter where you are.”

Everyone laughed and nodded at this as if it were true. Then the man who had been speaking looked right at Jane. “I’d like to pass to the newcomers,” he said. “Ma’am, would you like to share?”

Jane was struck momentarily speechless. She pointed at her own chest, as if to verify that he was in fact asking her to speak. He nodded that he was, and she nodded that she’d guessed so. She glanced at Marj, but Marj just raised her eyebrows and shook her head.