I sewed my own clothes from McCall's patterns ('Make it Tonight, Wear it Tomorrow!'), was nice to my neighbours and called my mother at least once a day. I took in a stray cat, was good at my job – good enough to be promoted to Manager until it was discovered that managing the office and managing my arrival time were two separate skill sets – and went to the library once a week, on average. If occasionally I gave crazy drivers the finger or got a warning to pay my overdue heating bill, it wasn't because I was a bad person.
So when a knock at the door one evening interrupted our dinner, I was a little surprised to find two cops standing in the hallway. They eyed me sceptically,
"Deborah Soooodoool?"
"Sudul. It rhymes with poodle. And noodle."
"Oh, we're in the right place then." They both laughed. "We were expecting somebody East Indian." There was really nothing to say to that, so I laughed along with them.
"Looks like you've got a few parking tickets outstanding," said the red-headed one. He looked at a paper in his hand. "Well, more than a few. Nineteen, actually, as of the beginning of this year. Would that be right?"
Well, damn, that would be right.
When the weather was fine, I rode my motorcycle to work because it was fun and cheap and because there was a little space where I could leave it for free behind the office. But when it turned wet or cold, I took the car and played hide and seek with the parking cops, ducking out of the office every few hours to move the car or plug the meter with a couple of quarters. At least twice a month I'd find a ticket under the windshield wiper. The best thing about that was that if I left it there, I was good for the rest of the day. Procrastination ran interference with my best intentions, and tossing the ticket in the glove box put off the annoyance and financial pain of putting a cheque in the mail. It also made it easier to forget.
The two cops seemed to be waiting for me to do something. "Maybe you'd like to get your purse?" the redhead prompted.
"Pardon me?"
"You might want to have that with you when you come downtown. This," he waved the paper at me, "is a warrant for your arrest. ""
He couldn't be serious. I started to laugh, in that hiccup-py kind of way you do when it's involuntary and inappropriate.
The boyfriend offered up some reasonable points about wasted taxpayer money and having bigger fish to fry. We all agreed that this attention on me and my tickets was ridiculous and laughed together as one. I was almost convinced that this jollity would put an end to the whole thing and I could go back to my supper. What it actually meant was that I found myself in the back seat of a police cruiser without any inside door handles.
I hoped my neighbours were blind or completely incurious and slunk down as we drove off, only to stop a few blocks away at a house where a woman was mowing the lawn. Red and his partner got out to talk to her but soon enough, they came back to the car and she resumed her mowing. Red volunteered that she too had a bunch of unpaid fines.
"But she swears that she paid them all yesterday. " He rolled his eyes. "Now, if you'd told us that, we would have given you the benefit of the doubt," he said, helpfully, "at least until tomorrow. I'd put ten bucks on her being at city hall paying them first thing in the morning."
"Really," I said.
It was a windy evening and on the way downtown a big gust blew through the car, scattering papers out the window and over six lanes of traffic, which I took to be a direct intervention from Above. Red's partner threw on the brakes and they both jumped out to chase after their errant paperwork, while I crossed my fingers that the one with my name on it would get sucked into an updraft. Red's triumphant face told me it had not.
We pulled up in the alley behind the police station. The back door had none of the 'Serve and Protect' PR of the public entrance and I started to feel a bit sick. Red brought out a pair of handcuffs – "It's just standard procedure, nothing personal" – and only reluctantly relented when I promised him I'd go along peaceably. Riding up to the fourth floor in an elevator smelling of pee sucked the last bit of humour out of me and when the doors opened to a room full of cops and Red crowing, "Look who we've got!", I thought I might die.
The woman behind the thick glass partition itemized the contents of my purse and when I balked at giving her my scarf, said drily, "We don't want you to hang yourself, honey." Bail was set at $75. I called the boyfriend, who didn't have the cash. The only good thing about that was that I'd already used up my one phone call and it was he who had to call my mother. I didn't know which was worse – being in jail, or being a disappointment.
I was frisked by a matron who clucked disapprovingly over the reason for my visit and led me to a big cell holding half a dozen women, most of whom seemed to be under the influence of substances I generally avoided. Matron took pity on me when I started to cry and put me in a single cell instead, with a sink, a toilet with no seat and a mattress I didn't dare sit on. Smoking was allowed, but I had to make an official request for a light.
After four hours of solitary confinement that felt like twenty-four, my bail was finally processed, but not before I had re-examined my attitudes about the nature of crime and punishment. From the other side of the fence, it seemed like a silly idea to put procrastinators like me, or for that matter, anybody who hadn't actually hurt anyone, in jail. Fraudsters, vandals, petty thieves – surely society would be better served if these people did something useful like painting a community centre or reading to the blind. After reimbursing their victims, of course.
But I have to admit that my time in the slammer made me resolve to do better. I vowed to get up early enough to take the bus to work. To stop procrastinating – about everything. To use the glove box only for Kleenex and the tire pressure gauge. And failing that, to always have bail in my pocket.
0 comments:
Post a Comment