Frank Zafiro - Waist Deep

Adam nodded slowly, looking at me. Then he checked his watch and rose from his seat.“I gotta head out.”He dropped a dollar tip on the table for Cassie.“You know, you still talk like a cop, Stef.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know. ‘Fuck this, fuck that, every fucking thing.’Cop talk.” Adam shrugged.“It doesn’t bother me.Just thought you should know.”

“Fuck, Adam.The last fucking thing I want to sound like is a fucking cop.”

Adam gave me a sly grin and left.

Cassie re-filled my cup, something she didn’t do for most customers.Adam’s question rang in my ears. I didn’t feel like thinking about it, so I picked up the free weekly newsrag off the rack at the doorway and thumbed through it.I figured I’d give Matt Sinderling another half hour.

The hue and cry of local politics blared from the pages.A budgetary crisis and a dispute over a huge parking garage downtown competed with allegations that a city council member was a lesbian.I snorted at that.Anyone who watched her for five seconds would go from suspicious to certain, but it was being reported as if it were some sort of revelation.The picture of her did little to soften the image. She had a stocky frame and a strident look on her face.I couldn’t decide what I found more disgusting-the fact that one group of people thought her being a lesbian made her unable to mismanage tax dollars any more than the next politician or the fact that another group of people already had her pegged as some sort of victim or a saint merely because of her sexual orientation.

This story will play for months here in River City, I thought with a slight shake of my head.

I turned the page and read absently about what was passing for movies these days.As I read, it occurred to me that if I voiced even half of my thoughts aloud, I would sound like a bitter old man.

“Stef?”

I glanced up to see Matt standing at my table.He wore a tan windbreaker over his green security polo.A battered River City Flyers ball cap sat on his head.

He motioned to the chair Adam had vacated.“You mind if I sit?”

I shook my head.“Go ahead.”

“Thanks.”He dropped wearily into the chair and rubbed his eyes for a moment.

I tossed the paper aside and pressed my lips together, saying nothing.

I’m only agreeing to listen, I recited to myself.Nothing more.

“Sorry,” Matt said, his fingers still massaging his eyes.“It was a late night.”

I didn’t reply.

After a few moments, he dropped his hand onto the table and gave me a tired grin.“That coffee?” he asked, pointing at my cup.

I nodded.

Matt swiveled around and caught Cassie’s eye.“Whatever he’s having,” he told her, sounding like we were at a bar and he was ordering cocktails.I clenched my jaw at the thought of how inviting that scenario still was to me. I guess you don’t ever completely beat booze, do you?

Matt didn’t seem to notice, but took a deep breath and then renewed his tired grin.“Thanks for seeing me.”

I shrugged.

“How’s your leg?” he asked.

“Fine.”

“It looked like you hurt it, is all.”

“Nothing big.”

He gave a short nod.We sat silently for a bit, until Cassie finished with his coffee and brought it to the table.He sipped it immediately and burned his lip.

“Ouch,” he muttered.“It’s hot.”

I watched him.I wanted to say Same ol’ Matt to myself, but the truth was, I didn’t know if it was or not.I struggled to remember if I’d been friendly to him in high school, or if we’d even talked.

Matt finished licking his burned lip and met my eye.His own eyes were glassy and tired and a bit sad, though it seemed he was hiding the last part as much as he could.

“I s’pose I should get straight to the point,” he said.

“Okay.”

He blew carefully on his coffee, tried it again, then set it down to cool.

I waited.His stalling was starting to irritate me.

Matt sighed.“There’s just no easy way to start,” he told me.

“Then just start.”

“Yeah,” he said.

I thought I heard a wavering in his voice, but I couldn’t be sure.

“It’s…it’s my daughter,” he said, then broke off, his eyes watering.

I didn’t know where he was going so I didn’t know how to answer.

“Hell,” he muttered.“Hell’s bells.”

I decided to help him along.“Something happened to her?”

“I hope not,” Matt said, looking away.“She’s run off.I can’t find her.I’ve looked everywhere, checked with all her friends, but she’s nowhere.Leastways, nowhere I can find her at.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.“I filed a runaway report.But I don’t think they really go looking for those kids, you know?”

“They don’t.”

He looked at me sharply, as if he hadn’t wanted to have his suspicions validated.“No?”

“Nuh-uh.They deal with them if they come across them, but no one goes looking.It’s not even a crime anymore to be a runaway.”

“Not a crime?Oh, great.”Matt wiped a finger across his nostrils, then on his napkin.“So she can run away and there’s nothing I can do?”

“You didn’t have this discussion with the police officer?”

“I only spoke with one on the phone.”

I sipped my coffee, not wanting to tell him that the person he talked to on the phone probably wasn’t a police officer, but a city employee who took minor reports like his over the phone.Unless things had changed since I was on the job, anyway.And given what I just read about the city budget, I doubted things had improved.

“I’ve been spending all my free time looking for her,” he said.“I’ve checked every place I could think of a hundred times.I can’t find her.I don’t know what else to do.”

I sipped again.Matt watched me and I watched him back.Finally he said, “So when I saw you at the game last night, I thought that with you being a cop, maybe you could help me.”

“I’m not a cop anymore.”

“I know.You told me last night.But then I figured that you could help me because you were. ”

“Yeah, I was.But not anymore.”

Matt didn’t respond to the challenge.He picked his own coffee up and sipped it.In the relative quiet of the coffee shop, I heard his heavy exhale.“I just don’t know how it got to this point.I don’t understand where I went wrong.”

“Do you think that she’s not a runaway? That she was abducted?”

His eyes snapped to mine.“Oh, no.God, I hope not.Is that what you think?”

I shook my head.“I don’t think anything.All I know is what you’re telling me and all you’ve said is that your daughter ran away.”

“But the ones that run away-not the ones who are kidnapped, but the ones who really run away-they usually turn up, right?”

I drank the last of my coffee, masking my grimace at his naivete.But his eyes kept boring into me and they held an insane hope, so I lied to him. “Yeah,” I said.“A lot of times they do.”

Other times, they don’t .That’s what I should’ve told him.Other times they turn to drugs and prostitution or if they’re lucky, they end up in some dead-end town working some dead-end job, toiling away in despair and anonymity for the rest of their lives.

I should have told him the truth.So he’d stop hoping.

He told me everything, but it wasn’t until he pulled out a picture of his little girl that I understood.

It was a glamour shot.One of those pictures with soft, distilled light designed to make its subject look like a model.Only I realized immediately that this girl didn’t need soft lights or a camera to make her beautiful.