Well, it was dark. Because it was night. The forecast was actually completely clear but c'mon, allow me some artistic license here.
So. I am alone in my apartment. Anxiously awaiting the arrival of my male escort.
Get your mind out of the gutter...I was waiting for this dude who works for my mom's vet school roommate to come pick me up and drive me to said former roommate's house for a lovely family dinner.
I suppose I should insert a back story right about now.
I had just transferred to SUNY Albany in my 3rd year of college and my mother' s best friend and ex-cohabitant from Cornell happened to live in a suburb just outside the city.
My mother is also intensely overprotective and wanted to be sure I was acquainted with a responsible parent/guardian type should things go south in the student ghetto in which I now lived.
(Her fears weren't completely unfounded. Muggings occurred on a weekly basis. My friend was attacked by a small gang. And by small I mean they were all under the age of 8. Mini gang-bangers. No artistic license necessary here, this actually happened. These kids threw sticks at her and drew blood.)
So yea, anyway, I was off to dinner to meet my mother's Albany understudy.
He drove up in a (now infamous) yellow jeep wrangler. He was tall, dark and handsome.
Ok, ok, he was tall and dark. But he really wasn't my type. Call it my sixth sense about dubious characters.
We exchanged the typical I don't know you and you don't know me but this sure feels like a set-up type of pleasantries and we were off. Dinner was uneventful. We ate chicken and salad. Many Corona Lights were imbibed. All the better to put me at ease I suppose.
My mother's friend was quite lovely. I made it home. Alive. Slightly inebriated, but alive.
Time for another back story.
This guy was living with my mom's friend because his parents had recently been attacked by an axe murderer. Literally. Again, throw artistic license out the Jeep Wrangler window because I CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP.
His parents were attacked with the business end of an axe just months earlier. His father was killed and his mother was seriously injured. As in she was in a coma, required extensive facial reconstructive surgery and retained absolutely no recollection of the entire unthinkable incident.
His employer, Mom's friend, took him in. He was being investigated for the crime but she believed him to be one hundred percent no question innocent.
Subsequently, so did I.
A few weeks later this unfortunate young man sat across from me at my 21st birthday dinner celebration. (Mom invited him, like I said I wasn't feeling any sparks here.)
A few months after that he was sentenced to Life in Prison for the brutal murder of his father after irrefutable evidence surfaced fingering him for the crime.
He. Was. An. Axe Murderer.
And you wonder why I don't let my mom set me up on any blind dates.
Plus, you know, I dig piercings and tattoos and she likes guys in polo shirts and loafers.
I also like being alive.
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