It was raining when I headed back to my car. I had parked on the street behind the county courthouse but I wasn’t in a hurry to get there. I still had 30 minutes left out of the hour I had paid for with my last bit of change. I rounded a corner and could see my car, parked about a block away from where I was. And then I saw him. Officer Reid, the cop.

He parked his motorcycle in the empty parking place in front of my car and walked around my car. I wondered what he was doing. I still had tons of time left. He took his ticket-printing machine out and I started running toward my car. He printed a ticket out and wrote something on it. He glanced my way and held the ticket between his fingers. I ran faster, my heavy messanger bag pounding against the outside of my leg.

I stomped through the puddles as I ran across the street, soaking my canvas ballet flats. He watched me run towards him, trying to stop whatever it was he was about to do. A smug grin spread across his pale round face as held the ticket over my windshield. I made it to my car, gripping car keys in my hand, trying to push my rain-drenched hair out of my face. He dropped the ticket on the windshield.

“Oops, too late,” he smirked. “It’s already on the car.”

I stood there in the rain as he got back on his motorcycle and drove down the street. A truck drove past me, splashing dirty water onto my jeans. I snatched the ticket up and read it. “No Parking Between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM,” it claimed was my infraction. I looked up and down the block. There was only one sign at the end of the block. I was parked in the middle of the block.

A truck drove past me and splashed dirty water onto my jeans. I opened my car door and threw my bag into the passanger seat. The cop was across the street now, writing someone else a bad-faith ticket, a grin on his smug little face. Officer Reid and I weren’t going to be friends.