Enabeling for profit

     Oh, I just take people from point A to point B, and take their money.....And they talk....A lot.
     They feel they need to explain. Especially the ones who are doing something they might should not do.
     I don't drive M any more, pretty much because she said she would pay me on Monday for the eleven 25 dollar rides she took in the two weeks previous. But, when I called her late that night, she said she was in San-Francisco, and had my money, and would give it to me Tuesday. I got it from her mother on Tuesday. I really shouldn't have, as her mother was under the impression I was M's friend, and I just used my Taxi to pick her up for our trips to the Faire, and out to eat.
     Maybe M is a little bit of a sociopath. She told me she was 28 early on, and 25 a few months later. I met her when she took 10 dollar rides from her boyfriend's downtown room to her parent's home. I wouldn't flip the meter on till she got in, and he stepped away. But sometimes that took a lot of time. He had more money than he normally would, from an inheritance. Every trip included the gifts he bought her that day, until he got picked up on a parole violation and had to serve out his previous sentence at Duel Vocational Institution in Tracy.
      I didn't hear from M for a while after that: Until one day she called from a section 8ish neighborhood in the old north. 28 bucks to take her home. New boyfriend. I gave her a 25 dollar flat rate to keep calling me. I couldn't believe she would be dating such a loser though, and told her so. She paid for everything they did. I was pleased later when she said she had met a nice guy on the Internet who wanted to meet her. I took her to see this guy, and shouldn't have been surprised that she asked me not to tell the regular slug. I even drove her to where she was to pick up the new guy to take them both to the Faire. And again I shouldn't have been surprised that when he did not show up, she had me pick up the slug and take them to the Faire.
      Now I'm actually thinking that if I make myself unavailable, she will have to pay more for her rock and roll lifestyle, but I do need the money, and I am actually available. So she confesses to me that she regularly takes hundred dollar bills out of her 70ish fathers wallet.
     Ok, so now I have zero respect for her. So I don't bother with the speeches about how much better she could do than the convict and the slug. What to talk about. She is always amused by my Weird Al renditions of popular music. She tells me her mom thinks we're good friends, and doesn't know she pays me for rides. And I should let her believe that. Hmmm. I'm about the same age as her mom. This is getting uncomfortable.
     And I feel guilty about all this......Ya: By the time she decided I could wait another day to get paid, I was done. All her mom knows is that she was indeed paying for rides, and was probably relieved to know her daughter did not, after all, have a 'very special' relationship with a middle aged woman.