"Order, Order, Order," the Judge yelled in the crowded courtroom. Within several seconds a faint resemblance of order began to reappear. The courtroom was full: twelve jurors, a half-a-dozen witness's, reporters, ordinary people, and a few of the Cupi, who could only be best described as Cupid's cousins. Amazingly Cupid was still sitting silently at his assigned seat next to his defense lawyer. Cupid's cousins on the other hand, took every opportunity to fly circles in the air above the courtroom.
"Must I remind everyone assembled here today that there will be no flying in my courtroom under any circumstances," the Judge was seconds away from achieving the quiet he needed to get started.
"Circumcises...Circumcises," the Cupi started a chorus of singing. It sounded like a nursery rhyme revolving around the word circumcise.
"ORDER!" shouted the distraught Judge.
"He yelled!," shouted the oldest looking of Cupid's cousins as they all stopped singing and slowly settled back down onto the central beam running across the chambers.
"Circumstances," the Judge directed himself pointedly at the Cupi seated on the beam. "One more outburst from you and I will have you tranquilized and hauled from my courtroom," he threatened as they settled down. They knew he meant it, Judge Wang, his predecessor had done just that at the last trial.
"Now, to continue, today we will attempt once again to determine if Cupid is guilty of the many charges leveled against him, mainly of public lewdness," the Judge was reading form the papers before him. Every trial was different, different charges brought against Cupid by the prosecutor. Each trial had ended without any judgment having ever been made. The Judge was convinced that this trial was going to be different. His predecessor, the late Judge Wang had just recently passed, likely from the efforts of trying to deal with Cupid and the Cupi for all these years.
For his part, Cupid was sitting silently, without his bow and quiver, at the defense table. So far so good, thought the Judge as he turned to the prosecutor.
"The prosecution would like to call its first witness," the prosecutor was standing now, aware from the Judges pretrial instructions that they should move things on snappily and not give Cupid any chance for his usual tricks and games. The prosecutor was the same one that had attempted to see Cupid locked up at all of his previous trials, and as such was eager to finally settle a case against him.
The courtroom was quiet as a stately, elder gentleman stood up, pulling the arms of a very comely woman from him as he strode quietly across the floor to the witness stand. Formalities were done by the bailiff and then the man spoke.
"I never got tickets for parking," he began, all the while looking at the lady whom he had left sitting in the stands when he'd come to testify. "And I didn't have any reason to get one on this day, the meter was still valid, but she had given me a ticket anyway," he was pointing at his companion. For her part, she was smiling and blowing kisses at him as he continued.
Everyone knew the background to this story, of how Cupid was looking the other way, trying to set a record for how many kids he could hit as they waited for the school bus at the downtown station to transfer them home. Newspaper stories had quoted Cupid as saying he was around twenty-one something when he'd heard the prostrations of Mr. Henry and had become interested.
Mr. Henry slipped back into time as he testified. He was at the day they first met, having just arrived at his car and been greeted by a parking ticket.
"But I can't get a ticket today," protested Mr. Henry to the meter maid as she started to get back into her little car-cycle and head off to the next offender.
"Well don't worry then, you're not going to get a ticket today," the meter maid smiled as she humored Mr. Henry. Her pause was just long enough for a smile of satisfaction to spread across Mr. Henry's face. "Because you've already gotten it, and I'm leaving to go on break," she said as she started up her truck.
"I'm going to have some lunch and you can just sit there and contemplate what's not going to happen as long as you'd like," she said as she started to pull away. Cupid's arrow hit her dead center right on the heart and she stopped before she'd even gone a foot.
"Or if you'd rather do something more fun," she was saying to Mr. Henry, "you could do me," she was putting the vehicle back into park and staring at Mr. Henry.
"Excuse me," said a befuddled Mr. Henry. He thought he had just heard the meter maid offer herself to him.
"You heard me right sweetie," she said as she started undoing her blouse, "I said 'or you could do me'," her hands were quickly removing her blouse and revealing her ample cleavage waiting beneath.
Mr. Henry just stared. He was almost sixty he thought, and yet this meter maid was undoing her blouse as if he was going to just hop in and give it to her. He laughed, realizing that Viagra might make it possible, but he didn't have any handy.
Her blouse was undone, and she was unhooking her bra. Her large chocolate colored nipples spilled out and stared right back at Mr. Henry. Mr. Henry looked at his hand, his ring, over thirty years invested and nothing like this had ever happened. It was rush hour and there were hundreds of people teeming about. She was attractive, and there was that exotic appeal to her dark skin he thought, but...