Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“Are you sure you won’t come to the party tonight?” she said finally, lighting a cigarette.

“You know how I feel about it, Cassie,” I said. “This is your night. Your friends and the students want to have you to themselves. I’ll have you forever after that.”

“Think you can handle me?” she asked, with a grin, and I knew from her grin she meant sexually. We had joked before about how I awoke this in her, which she said had been dormant since her husband left her seven years ago and maybe even before that, from what I knew of the poor crazy guy. He was a teacher like Cassie, but his field was chemistry.

We supposed that some of her nineteen-year-old students, as sex-obsessed as they are these days, might be making love more often than we did, but she didn’t see how they could. She said it had never been like this with her, and she never knew it could be so good. Me, I’ve always appreciated how good it was. As long as I can remember, I’ve been horny.

“Come by the apartment at eleven,” she said. “I’ll make sure I’m home by then.”

“That’s pretty early to leave your friends.”

“You don’t think I’d sit around drinking with a bunch of educators when I could be learning at home with Officer Morgan, do you?”

“You mean I can teach a teacher?”

“You’re one of the tops in your field.”

“You have a class tomorrow morning,” I reminded her.

“Be there at eleven.”

“A lot of these teachers and students that don’t have an early class tomorrow are gonna want to jive and woof a lot later than that. I think you ought to stay with them tonight, Cassie. They’d expect you to. You can’t disappoint the people on your beat.”

“Well, all right,” she sighed, “But I won’t even see you tomorrow night because I’ll be dining with those two trustees. They want to give me one final look, and casually listen to my French to make sure I’m not going to corrupt the already corrupted debs at their institution. I suppose I can’t run off and leave them either.”

“It won’t be long till I have you all to myself. Then I’ll listen to your French and let you corrupt the hell out of me, okay?”

“Did you tell them you’re retiring yet?” She asked the question easily, but looked me straight in the eye, waiting, and I got nervous.

“I’ve told Cruz,” I said, “and I got a surprise for you.”

“What?”

“I’ve decided that Friday’s gonna be my last day. I’ll start my vacation Saturday and finish my time while I’m on vacation. I’ll be going with you.”

Cassie didn’t yell or jump up or look excited or anything, like I thought she would. She just went limp like her muscles relaxed suddenly, and she slipped off the desk and sat down on my lap where there isn’t any too much room, and with her arms doubled around the top of my neck she started kissing me on the face and mouth and I saw her eyes were wet and soft like her lips, and next thing I know, I heard a lot of giggling. Eight or ten kids were standing in the hall watching us through the open door, but Cassie didn’t seem to hear, or didn’t care. I did though because I was sitting there in my bluesuit, being loved up and getting turned on in public.

“Cassie,” I gasped, nodding toward the door, and she got up, and calmly shut the door on the kids like she was ready to start again.

I stood and picked up my hat from the floor. “Cassie, this is a school. I’m in uniform.”

Cassie started laughing very hard and had to sit down in the chair I’d been in, leaning back, and holding her hands over her face as she laughed. I thought how sexy even her throat was, the throat usually being the first thing to show its age, but Cassie’s was sleek.

“I wasn’t going to rape you,” she said at last, still chuckling between breaths.

“Well, it’s just that you teachers are so permissive these days, I thought you might try to do me on the desk like you said.”

“Oh, Bumper,” she said finally, holding her arms out, and I came over and leaned down and she kissed me eight or ten warm times all over my face.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how I feel now that you’re really going to do it,” she said. “When you said you actually are finishing up this Friday, and that you told Cruz Segovia, I just went to pieces. That was relief and joy you saw on my face when I closed the door, Bumper, not passion. Well, maybe a little of it was.”

“We’ve been planning all along, Cassie, you act like it was really a shock to you.”

“I’ve had nightmares about it. I’ve had fantasies awake and asleep of how after I’d gone, and got our apartment in San Francisco, you’d phone me one bitter night and tell me you weren’t coming, that you just could never leave your beat.”

“Cassie!”

“I haven’t told you this before, Bumper, but it’s been gnawing at me. Now that you’ve told Cruz, and it’s only two more days, I know it’s coming true.”

“I’m not married to my goddamn job, Cassie,” I said, thinking how little you know about a woman, even one as close as Cassie. “You should’ve seen what happened to me today. I was flimflammed by a soft-nutted little kid. He made a complete ass out of me. He made me look like a square .”

Cassie looked interested and amused, the way she always does when I tell her about my job.

“What happened?” she asked, as I pulled out my last cigar and fired it up so I could keep calm when the humiliation swept over me.

“A demonstration at the Army Induction Center. A kid, a punk-ass kid, conned me and I started blabbing off about the job. Rapping real honest with him I was, and I find out later he’s a professional revolutionary, probably a Red or something, and oh, I thought I was so goddamn hip to it. I been living too much on my beat, Cassie. Too much being the Man, I guess. Believing I could outsmart any bastard that skated by. Thinking the only ones I never could really get to were the organized ones, like the bookmakers and the big dope dealers. But sometimes I could do things that even hurt them . Now there’s new ones that’ve come along. And they have organization. And I was like a baby, they handled me so easy.”

“What the hell did you do , Bumper?”

“Talked. I talked to them straight about things. About thumping assholes that needed thumping. That kind of thing. I made speeches .”

“Know what?” she said, putting her long-fingered hand on my knee. “Whatever happened out there, whatever you said, I’ll bet wouldn’t do you or the Department a damn bit of harm.”

“Oh yeah, Cassie? You should’ve heard me talking about when the President was here and how we busted up the riot by busting up a skull or three. I was marvelous.”

“Do you know a gentle way to break up riots?”

“No, but we’re supposed to be professional enough not to talk to civilians the way we talk in police locker rooms.”

“I’ll take Officer Morgan over one of those terribly wholesome, terribly tiresome TV cops, and I don’t think there’s a gentle way to break up riots, so I think you should stop worrying about the whole thing. Just think, pretty soon you won’t have any of these problems. You’ll have a real position, an important one, and people working under you.”

“I got to admit, it gets me pretty excited to think about it. I bet I can come up with ways to improve plant security that those guys never dreamed of.”

“Of course you can.”

“No matter what I do, you pump me up,” I smiled. “That’s why I wanted you for my girl in spite of all your shortcomings.”

“Well, you’re my Blue Knight. Do you know you’re a knight? You joust and live off the land.”