I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have, because my alarm goes off the next morning, and the room’s starting to get light.And I feel better.Like I’ve been sick a long time, and all of a sudden, I’m okay, and I can think again, and my body feels normal again.I get up.I stretch.I go for a run.
And later, when I’m showering, I think, He was always going to leave.That’s how it works.
And later, when I’m brushing my teeth, I catch myself sideways in the mirror, and it’s like hearing myself: Like Mom.
Before I leave the house, I take my phone out and block his number.
I go to work.I wait for the locker room shit, but nothing happens.Everybody’s the same as ever, Foley grumpy because it’s early and he hasn’t had his coffee, and Norman moaning about his feet, and McGown grinning like a dog with two dicks and telling everybody he got some last night.Then it’s roll call, and I think, It’s going to happen now.But it doesn’t, and everything’s normal, like nothing happened last night.
He won’t be here because it’s a weekend, I think.
I’m headed out when Chief Peterson opens his door, and he sticks his head out and says, “Officer Yarmark, a word.”
He waits for me to sit, and then he closes the door and moves behind his desk.I don’t say anything, so finally he says, “Sam, I’m sorry about last night.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry for.”Too late, I remember to add, “Chief.”
“Well, I am.Detective Dulac invited me to see the work you’d done with that nonprofit.”He pauses, like saying that name might make me start bawling, but when nothing happens, he says, “And I admit that I was…unprepared for how events unfolded.”
I still don’t say anything.
“How are you doing?”Chief Peterson asks.
“Fine, sir.”
He considers me.
It goes on long enough that I say, “Was there something else, Chief?Because I don’t know why I’m in trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble, Sam.”He stops, and starts, stops again.Finally he says, “I understand that you’re an adult, and there are limits to what I have a right to ask you, so all I want to say is that if there was anything inappropriate in how Detective Dulac approached you—”
“There wasn’t.”
“All right, but if there was, you know you can talk to me about it.Or to HR.And I want to be perfectly clear that raising an issue like that is something this department encourages.There won’t be any punitive action toward you.Nothing retaliatory.If you somehow were under the impression that bringing up a problem might affect your application for detective—”
It’s funny how scared I was a few weeks ago, the last time I was in here.How fast my heart was beating.How I was sweating like crazy.It was like the whole world was moving too fast, and I was running along try to catch up.Now, everything’s slow.And I have all the time in the world when I stand, when I open my mouth, when I say over him, “We didn’t break any rules, so I don’t think there’s anything else to talk about.”I wait.And then I ask, “Is there, Chief?”
He sits there for a while.And then he says, “No.”
I reach for the door.And then I say, “You don’t know him at all if you think he could do something like that.”
And then I go to work.
It’s a day like any other day.I stop Mrs.Davis for speeding.She’s got to be over eighty, and she drives like she can’t see the speedometer.I have to dig Leonard Bint out from under the swing set at Tilley Park.There're kids throwing dog turds off the Seventh Street overpass, and they all scamper when I show up, and I let them go.There’s another call from the library because Christine is trying to put hand-printed copies of erotica on the shelves.She runs this club called the Shawnanigans, named for their favorite author, and she’s wearing a shirt today that says EMERSON AND SHAWN ARE MY ROMAN EMPIRE.Even though I tell her I mostly read nonfiction, she makes me take a copy before she’ll go.
What am I going to do?
That’s the question I keep coming back to.Not about Gray; there’s nothing I can do about that.He was always going to leave.That was the deal we made.And that’s how people are, anyway.People come.And then they go.And all you can do is try not to let it hurt too much.I guess I screwed that part up pretty bad.It’ll be awkward when we see each other at work, but there’s nothing anybody can do about that either.We’ll stay out of each other’s way.And eventually, it’ll be like it never happened.
By the end of the day, I’ve got it all sorted out.I’m still going to apply for the detective role.I mean, I did all that work.I might as well shoot my shot.If Chief Peterson doesn’t want to give it to me because he—well, whatever—then fine, but I’m still going to go for it.I worked hard for that event at WISP.I did a good job.I’m proud of the work I do with the department.I’m a good candidate.And I’m going to tell him all that, because he’ll give me an interview even if it’s only because he feels sorry for me.
Gran’s on Cloud Nine all through dinner.She can’t stop talking about Eugene, whoever that is, and not a word about Dr.Jacobson or Dogfood Carl.About how wonderful Eugene is, about how they met ballroom dancing and how he literally swept her off her feet.She says that three or four times until I finally say, “That’s real sweet, Gran.”If she’s still getting married in Vietnam or Thailand or wherever, that doesn’t come up.It’s easy to get through the evening, talking with Gran over dinner, smiling, laughing, cleaning up, and then watching TV with her until it’s time to go to bed.It’s easy because this is how it always is, and it’s like nothing’s changed.
But maybe not everything is okay.Maybe not everything’s settled.Because that question keeps coming back to me: What am I going to do?And I go through all of it in my head again, how I’m going to act when I see Gray at work, and putting in my application for the detective role, and what I’m going to say in that interview because I deserve that job.But it doesn’t help.I’ve got this feeling like I forgot something.
I’m in bed, in that closed-up darkness, and all the bad stuff is crawling back inside my head when it comes to me: Mr.Somerset.Mr.Somerset telling everyone I was a follower.
Fuck you, I think out into the night.
