No Parking Zone

No Parking Zone
The next thing I saw was two men approaching our car.
May 1973
My bachelor days were brief and bumpy. I operated on Groucho Marx’s quote, “I wouldn’t belong to a club that had me as a member”: I eventually wouldn’t date a girl that would have me as a boyfriend. And besides, generally speaking, I was also stupid and had a mean streak in me. I dated Karen on a bet, then I told her about it, but that wasn’t all—I also spent lots of our time together ridiculing the Catholic Church, and Karen was Irish Catholic.
One night I took her to DuPar’s—I considered it a “classic” LA coffee shop— where we had apple pie alamode—another “classic” item for me. We were there to discuss why I had done something as lame as make a bet on dating her, and whether or not I was actually interested in her as a person, quite a prickly path to travel. Soon enough though, we were talking about Paul Simon, the Pope and the Minnesota Vikings. Then we drove back to her house. Outside her house, inside my car, we talked some more, and I stayed on the subject this time. We talked for over an hour and a half, and then I saw something funny in the rearview mirror.
A car pulled up behind us and shut the engine off but no one got out. Then they blinked the lights at us. It was 1:30 in the morning. Karen thought it was the pesky neighbor boys, but I wasn’t so sure. The next thing I saw was two men approaching our car. The one on Karen’s side of the car was putting his hands on his right hip; the guy on my side tapped my window. Karen got a little panicky turning from one window to the other, saying, “What I is it?” as if I knew.
I rolled down my window and as soon as the guy said, “How you doin’ tonight?” They were cops.
“Fine” I said, “How are you?”
“Where you going tonight?”
“We’re on a date” Karen interjected “This is my house! Here’s my driver’s license! We haven’t done anything! I live here! He was bringing me home! We were just talking!”
The cop chuckled. The other cop took his hands off his gun, but put them on the car door. I felt trapped and a little embarrassed but not scared.
“Well, the reason we’re here is, well it is kind of late and we got a call for a possible B&E.”
All I could think of was bacon and eggs. “What is that?” I asked.
“Someone thought you were breaking into homes.”
“Oh, sure. That’s what we’re doing. I got some nice stereo equipment in the trunk. Wanna buy some?”
“No. But can I see your drivers’ license?”
He was running a make. Karen started up her proclamations of innocence all over again, but he just walked back to his car. The other guy was no longer leaning on the passenger door with his hands, but was still standing on the curb by the car door, in case Karen made a run for it, I suppose.
It turned out ok. The cop returned and joked about stereos and hoped that my “conversation” with my date would come to an end soon. We really were just talking. Mostly.