It was Saturday, December 26, 1988.<\/p>\n
I’d driven back to the Twin Cities early in the morning; I’d left Jamestown at a frigid 8AM, and arrived back in the Twins early in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
I walked into the house; it reeked of chiba and…something else. I couldn’t quite place it, but it was hideous.<\/p>\n
Wyatt was sitting on the living room couch, with a flamboyant-figured, devastatingly-gorgeous blonde woman. Both were wearing bathrobes.<\/p>\n
“Dude”, Wyatt grunted. “Hey, Chris locked his cat in his room!”.<\/p>\n
Chris – our somewhat-emotionally-challenged roommate – had a cat. The cat usually had leave to wander the house – but Chris had gone to visit his mom for Christmas, down in Burnsville, and locked the cat in his room while he was gone.<\/p>\n
I’d never really had pets in my life, so I didn’t quite know the full import of “un-neutered male cat”.<\/p>\n
“Oh, hey – this is Teresa”, Wyatt said, nodding to the woman on the couch. “C’mon up…”<\/p>\n
I should take a moment to point out that Wyatt, in addition to being a smoker and a drinker and a heavy pot smoker, was an inveterate (albeit inept) gambler. He also had a thing for the ladies; he usually brought a different one home every night. This, however, was the third or fourth time I’d seen Teresa.<\/p>\n
“Hi”, I said, following Wyatt to Chris’ room.<\/p>\n
“I think she’s gonna be a regular thing”, Wyatt whispered conspiratorially as we walked up the hall to Chris’ door.<\/p>\n
“Like, girlfriend?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Sure. She’s awesome”.<\/p>\n
Then, a change of subject; “Smell that?”<\/p>\n
It smelled bad, and the door was shut. I whipped out my driver’s license, stuck it into the lock, and popped it open…<\/p>\n
…and was bowled over by the stench, as the cat ran out between us.<\/p>\n
The landlord came over later in the day, took one whiff, and said Chris had to go. “Now”.<\/p>\n
———-<\/p>\n
I had a new bar to work that night, so I grabbed a quick nap, took a shower, and got ready.<\/p>\n
The bar was “Jams”, in Brooklyn Center. It was another bowling-alley bar, smaller and smokier and more-cramped than “City Limits”, but a shorter drive. They also made a really <\/em>mean burger basket.<\/p>\n I started at 8:30. By 10:15, I had a full floor, and I kept it that way until closing time. The manager – a portly woman in her late thirties with a face frozen in a permanent scowl – came by the booth. “You’re pretty good! Great job!”, she said, scowling.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n I came home around 2AM. Wyatt was on the couch with a woman. Not Teresa, in this case; short, dark-haired, very Hispanic-looking.<\/p>\n “Hey, Mitch”, Wyatt said, “This is Ruby”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was Saturday, December 26, 1988. I’d driven back to the Twin Cities early in the morning; I’d left Jamestown at a frigid 8AM, and arrived back in the Twins early in the afternoon. I walked into the house; it reeked of chiba and…something else. I couldn’t quite place it, but it was hideous. Wyatt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}