Echols, Jennifer (11 page)

The snatch won out. "Give me that," I said, grabbing for the notebook.

He held it away from me, over his head, and gave me a cocky grin and one dimple.

My heart rushed through a beat. What was this, middle school? "That's mine."

"It's evidence."

It certainly was.

He lowered the notebook and studied it against the steering wheel. "It's a haiku."

"Do I look Japanese to you?" "I've told you, yes."

"Wrong number of syllables on each line." He ran his finger along a line, counting aloud. "It's just a collection of weird things you say," I explained.

He gasped in mock outrage. "You told me you were taking notes for the project you're proposing."

"I am, in a roundabout way. My project has to do with you."

He handed the notebook back to me. I sat on it. Then he started the car and nodded downward so I knew to flick the switch for the siren.

As we accelerated across town, his grin didn't fade, just hardened into place. "Tell me about your project."

"It's a surprise," I said loudly over the siren.

"I don't like surprises."

No surprise there.

"I'm interested in this transformation you went through so quickly to become a cop," I said. "You don't have the heart of a cop."

"Do, too."

"But you do and say things that make you appear to be a cop, and that fool everybody. For instance, the fact that no one can touch you while you're in uniform."

"That's a safety issue. I'm carrying a gun. People hugging you or even touching you casually could pull out your weapon or set it off."

"Set it off? Don't you have the safety on or whatever so no one gets shot accidentally?"

"You can't be too careful with weapons. Also, when you go to a scene, especially a domestic, suspects want to approach you and get you on their side. You can't let them touch you. You maintain a buffer zone around yourself, which makes you more threatening. It's another safety issue."

"It's a safety issue, and you enjoy being threatening."

We went airborne over the speed bump downtown, but this time I didn't think to wake the dead with my
Dukes of Hazzard
yell. My eyes were on John.

"I like being respected," he said. "I didn't get a whole lot of respect when I was a skinny high school kid. And I like that people don't question me." He glanced at me. "Until now."

"Why don't you want people to ask you questions?"

"I guess I feel like I don't have very good responses."

"Responses," I repeated. "See there? That's another thing you do. You use words that distance you from what you're talking about.
Responses
instead of
answers. Vehicles
instead of
cars. Weapons
instead of
guns.
What do you call these?" I touched my jeans.

"Denim trousers."

"What do you call this?" I touched a demure part of my shirt.

"Chemise."

I put my hands up to my face. "This?"

"Visage."

I touched my hair.

He turned off the main road, onto the dirt road through the woods that led to Martini's. Yes, everything in this town was at the end of a dirt road through the woods.

He looked over at me. "Indigo." he said. "Cyan." He glanced at the road in front of him, glanced at me. He reached over and ran his fingers down one of the darkest strands in the back, where I'd used a little purple. "Violet."

The car had gotten very warm. I slipped off my jacket. He gave me one more sideways glance, but I couldn't tell whether it was for my violet hair or my cleavage.

"Hey," he said, "I got the day off—I mean the night off —for Rashad's party."

"You're kidding!"

"Nope. Normally I'd be off Thursday and Friday and come back to work on Saturday. But this week I'll be off Thursday, work Friday, and be off Saturday. Thank you!" He gestured out the windshield as if paying homage to the Powers That Be who let him switch his schedule. And then he turned to me again. "Thank you."

"No prob." Before this, I'd entertained a miniature thought of what might happen if I saw John when my official punishment was over two nights from now. This small thought had not become a large thought because it had no room to grow. Currently John was pouring Miracle-Gro on the thought. I was just getting out the hedge clippers to cut the thought down when he parked in front of Martini's.

The town's only non-country bar was as disappointing as everything else around here. With a name like Martini's, you would expect an upscale place like you'd find at Five Points in Birmingham, with low blue lighting and a mod interior. Well, I'd never seen the inside, but the outside was cement block, and I could use my imagination. They probably couldn't mix a martini. Or if they could, they served it to you in a beer mug.

The gravel parking lot was packed with cars. John parked near the dirt road for quick access if he had to chase a drunk driver. I knew John. But then he sat in the car with the siren still screaming, while the bar's patrons peeked out the entrance and ducked back inside.

"Are you scared?" I asked.

"Of course," he said, watching the entrance. "If you didn't feel the fear, going alone into a bar fight, you'd be stupid. Or insane. Or perhaps just gravely ill-informed. That's not why I'm waiting, though. I'm letting the siren soften everyone up." He reached down and flicked off the siren switch. In the siren's place, a bass line throbbed from the bar. "Back in a flash."

“I’ll go in with you and protect you."

He groaned. "I knew you'd say that. I'm serious, Meg. I can't have you in there. I really don't think anything will happen. If I did, I'd call for backup before I went in. But you never know with that many people, most of them drunk. That's why they had a fight in the first place."

"How am I going to gather material for my haiku?"

"Look, it's dangerous enough when I'm worried about my own safety and the safety of everyone in there. I don't want to be worried about yours, too. It's distracting."

"Just stop worrying about me, then. I can take care of myself."

"I don't want you to get hurt," he said.

"Right. You'll get demoted to jail guard. I'm not buying it."

"No.
I
don't want you to get hurt." He put his hand on my knee. "Meg, please stay in the vehicle." "Okay."

My knee radiated heat. As I watched him pull himself from the car and walk casually across the brightly lit parking lot, I thought dumb things: I will never wash my knee again. I will never wash these jeans again. I will cut the knee out of these jeans and sew a pillow to sleep on every night, just to have a molecule of him in my bed with me.

He slipped his nightstick from a loop in his belt and disappeared into the bar. The throbbing music stopped.

At least once a night, I watched him walk into danger. With his hand on his nightstick or his hand on his gun. It was like sitting up nights in your trailer, keeping the fruit cobbler warm in the oven, listening to the police scanner.

And I couldn't stand it. I was not cut out for sitting alone and still in the dark, waiting.

I forced myself to stand it. I prepared to wait long minutes before the shot rang out. Or until he staggered out the door with a knife in his back.

There was no wait at all. Almost immediately, people poured out of the bar like they were ants and John had stepped on their bed. Among them Eric, staggering as he led Angie Pettit by the hand across the parking lot and behind a pickup truck. Then the pickup truck turned on its headlights and drove away, revealing Eric's Beamer.

I watched them. The scene registered with me at some low level. Hmmm, what was that drunk wanker doing with the midget?

But any inkling of them was gone the second John appeared in the doorway of the bar, unshot, unstabbed, as casual and composed in his cop-like way as when he went in. I gripped the front of the seat with both sweaty hands to keep from jumping out of the car and running to him.

And then I got completely freaking furious with myself. I did hope that I was not entertaining a plot to somehow
date
Johnafter? I cranked up the chain saw to cut down the plot made by Miracle-Gro.

He got back into the car with much clinking of the weaponry attached to his belt. "What's wrong? I guess you saw Eric and Angie."

Eric and Angie. Ha. I pressed one finger between my eyes, still concentrating on the chain saw. Feel the chain saw.
Be
the chain saw.

"You know it doesn't mean anything," John said kindly. "He only asked her out to get back at me."

"Did it work?" As if I were worried about
Eric
right now. The chain saw had run out of gas.

"No. I've known Eric for a long time. I expect that kind of thing from him. And Angie.. .It just seems bitchy, doesn't it?"

I straightened in my seat and shrugged halfheartedly. "I don't know anything about her except that she wears clothes made for Bratz."

He couldn't have been very jealous, because he didn't argue. Instead, he produced the ol' clipboard.

Eric sat behind the wheel of the Beamer now, with Angie in the passenger seat. But he was scared to make a move as long as John remained across the parking lot from him. "Aren't you going to walk over there?" I asked. "I know Eric won't go to jail for underage drinking, but at least you could get his parents to take away his TV privileges."

John crossed through some of his clipboard forms. "I think I'll call him and Angie over here. It's more intimidating to make them move instead of me going to them. They'll be standing up and we'll be sitting down, which is not what you want. You want to be higher than the suspects, talking down to them, if possible. But in this case"—he gestured to the official police equipment and the cracked vinyl interior—"the Crown Vic speaks for itself, don't you think?"

"Oh, yeah, it's got Authority written all over it." Old, tired, bitter Authority, stuck in this town.

John flashed his headlights and made a big motion with one hand. Eric easily could have pretended he didn't know John meant him in the crowded parking lot. But he didn't dare.

He
did
dare to open Angie's door for her (a gentlemanly custom I'd had no idea he understood) and hold her hand again as they crossed the lot unsteadily.

John didn't watch them coming. He bent his head to the clipboard.

"What do you write in those forms?" I asked.

"Nothing. I just do this to look threatening."

I watched him scribble, and I made out his tiny drawing of a martini glass, with olive. It wasn't often that I got to study him like this, concentrating, in full light. He gently bit his soft bottom lip.

Maybe I was experiencing more Stockholm Syndrome. But that's not what it felt like. It felt like relief that he was alive, and joy that he was here in the car with me. I couldn't help showing him my appreciation. "You're sexy when you threaten people."

He turned to me. And oh oh oh, he gave me the look! Not the dark, threatening look, either. The dark, warm look I had imagined, as if he was in love with me.

But also wary.

Which was smart of him.

The worry lines appeared between his eyebrows. "Don't tease me," he said.

"I'm not teasing you."

He pointed at me with his pen. "I'm serious."

"So am I." I brushed some imaginary lint from my shirt, or touched my cleavage to catch his eye, depending on your perspective. "Are you afraid you'll be in trouble? I figure you'd be in trouble if we did something now. But not at 6:01 a.m. on Thursday, when my penance is over and you get off work."

"Thursday," he said thoughtfully. "What day is today?"

"Mon—It's after midnight. Tuesday."

As he checked his watch, Eric and Angie reached his side of the car. "Look bored," he told me.

Whatever!

He hit the switch to roll down his window. "Mr. Wexler. Ms. Pettit."

Eric nodded and slurred, "Officer After." Angie shrank behind Eric.

"You're both about a year and a half too young to be here." I loved listening to his calm authoritarian voice, when it wasn't directed at me.

"So are you," Eric said, but he didn't sound as cocky as he had at the bridge. Probably not quite as drunk.

"It's my job to be here," John said. "I come here just about every night to break up a fight, between, oh, eleven forty-five and—" He turned to me. "What would you say?"

"Twelve fifteen."

"Twelve fifteen," he agreed, turning back to Eric. "So keep that in mind the next time you're thirsty. In the meantime, you're not driving home drunk. You need to call your daddy to come get you. And Angie, if you're not riding with Eric's daddy, you need to call your own daddy."

Angie stepped from behind Eric. In her cute pipsqueak voice, she asked, "Can't
you
take me home?"