Chris Grabenstein - Mad Mouse

We both sip our coffees. Katie gets some froth on her lip and licks it away with a flick of her tongue and a giggle. She's in uniform today. Sleeveless white top with Salt Water Tammy's stitched over her left breast, not that I'm staring at her breasts which, okay, I guess I am. I quickly shift my gaze over to the marina. Up here on the third floor, you get a great view of the whole bayside of the island. This is where the older people like to live, the ones who dig sailboats and sunsets more than the beach and surfboards. I can see a new development of condos under construction up past where the yachts are docked.

“Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“You look nice today,” she says.

“Thanks. You, too.”

“Oh, you like a girl in uniform, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

“You like girls? Not that there's anything wrong with that.”

“No,” she laughs. “I like it when, you know.”

“When I wear my uniform? My cop cap?”

“It's not so much the hat. It's, I don't know. You're doing something worth doing.”

“Directing traffic? Writing parking tickets?”

“Protecting people.”

“Yeah, well-I think it's cool what you do, too. Teaching kids.”

“You think you'll go full time?”

“I put in my application. We'll see. Sometimes, there's a lot of politics involved … only one slot.”

“Yeah.”

We sip and sort of smile at each other for a while.

“You know what makes summer so great, Danny?”

“What?”

“It's like dessert. You only get it after you put in a fall, winter, and spring. If it was summer all the time.”

“We'd be in Hawaii.”

“Yeah. I think Hawaii would be boring. Nothing to do but nothing to do, you know?”

“Yeah. I like working,” I say, sort of surprised to hear myself say it. “I mean lately.” I cannot tell a lie, and not because Ceepak would bust me if I did. Katie knows my history. Until now, work had been what I did during the day to pay for the fun I had at night.

Katie gives me her softest smile, melting my heart faster than a Good Humor bar dropped on August asphalt.

“Relax, spazz!”

My head whips right. It's this new instinct I've developed ever since I started working with Ceepak. My radar's always up.

“We're goin’ for a ride!”

It's those five muscle boys I saw downstairs. The football team. They're pushing this scared kid in a wheelchair up the ramp from the second level. The kid's head is sort of droopy and tilted sideways. One of his arms seems frozen in front of him, limp at the wrist, dangling like it's dead. Palsied.

“It's Jimmy,” Katie says. She sounds scared. “Tammy's son. He's … you know …”

“Let's go on a roller-coaster ride!” The lead jock races ahead of his buddies, shoves Jimmy's chair up the ramp fast-makes him pop a wheelie.

“No! Stop!” The kid sounds like he's going to cry.

I look at all the shoppers standing around licking ice cream cones or nibbling monster chocolate chip cookies. Nobody's doing much besides shaking their head.

I stand up. I don't have a gun. I don't even have my badge or cop cap. It's my day off. I don't know what I think I'm going to do. I just know that these knuckleheads are totally freaking out the poor kid.

“Ready?” the biggest guy hollers down the slope to his buddies.

“Ready!” they holler back. “Send the retard down!”

The one who's holding on to it is about to let go of the wheelchair, about to send Jimmy rolling back down the ramp.

“Stop!”

I run over, push him aside, and grab the wheelchair handles.

“Hey, man! What the fuck?”

“I'm with the police.”

“Then arrest this little retard. He blocked traffic, took up the whole fucking ramp.”

The guys down below thump up the incline. They have me and Jimmy surrounded.

“I'll take care of this,” I say.

The big boys move in tighter.

“You gonna arrest him?”

“We'll help you roll him over to the jail, dude.”

“Kid's a retard. He should stay inside.”

“Yeah, he's scaring away the ladies.”

“Okay, guys.” I try to channel Ceepak. “Thanks. Now, why don't you move along?”

“I got a better idea,” the biggest one says. “Why don't you go fuck yourself? We were just having some fun, right retard?”

Terrified, trembling, Jimmy nods.

“We were just about to give him a free rolly-coaster ride.”

“I can't let you do that,” I say.

“Retards like rolly-coaster rides.”

“Leave him alone.”

“Make us.” The circle shrinks. I wonder if I'm cut out for this job I just told Katie I like so damn much.

A menacing wall of sweaty meat surrounds me. I could use the wheelchair to bulldoze over a couple of them but that would probably leave Jimmy traumatized for life or, at least, pretty bruised.

“We were just having fun. Right, spazz?”

“Maybe you should go have it somewhere else.”

It's Ceepak.

He's behind me licking an ice cream cone. The football boys take one look at him, and, suddenly, they aren't so menacing anymore.

“You heard Officer Boyle,” he says. “You need to move along. You need to do so in an expeditious manner.”

“What?”

“Leave. Now.” Ceepak tosses what's left of his waffle cone into a trash bin and wipes his sticky hands with a paper napkin. He crumples the napkin into a tight wad and tosses it into the can, too. When he crushes stuff, you can see the veins and muscles and tendons rippling in his arms. You have to figure his fists will be somewhat furious.

The five guys step backwards in virtual lockstep. Like they're not really leaving even though they actually are. It's the tough dude retreat, the fadeaway admission of defeat.

“Watch your back,” one of them remembers to hiss at me. “Watch your back!”

“You okay, Jimmy?” Katie's beside him now. She's kneeling in front of the wheelchair so she can look Jimmy in the eye, so he can see her familiar smile.

“I want ice cream.”

“Then we'll go get you some, okay?” Katie looks back at us. “Thanks, Danny. Mr. Ceepak. You guys are the best.”

She takes the wheelchair in hand, turns it, and waves, as she heads down the ramp with Jimmy.

I wave back.

“That's Katie?” Ceepak says.

“Yeah.”

“Nice lady.”

“Yeah. Real nice.”

I'm glad Ceepak approves. He has high standards for everything. Women included.

“Becca suggested I might find you here,” Ceepak says. “She told me to wait until fifteen forty-five.”

That's army talk for three forty-five P.M. I guess Becca wanted to give Katie and me fifteen minutes alone.

“What's up?” I ask.

“Not much. Just wanted to report in on my conversation with the chief.”

“And?”

“Are you free tomorrow evening? He'd like to take us out to dinner. I suspect he wants to discuss something with you.”

“The job?”

Ceepak refuses to rise to the bait. I never actually thought he would.

“Not knowing, can't say,” he says.

It doesn't matter.

It's The Job.

It's mine.

Friday morning. September first. I feel like a full-time cop already. I'm working sewer duty. Or maybe it's water main duty. Basically, I'm acting like a human traffic light-signaling cars to slow down and move into the center lane of Ocean Avenue so these backhoes can dig up the street and pull out eight-foot-wide sections of concrete pipe.

I hope it's a water main. I don't want to think about an eight-foot-wide tube of sewage, even if it is buried underneath a ton of asphalt.

You've got a lot of time to think about stupid stuff when you're a human traffic light and it's 92 degrees in the shade-of which there is absolutely none in the middle of Ocean Avenue. The heat makes me loopy. If I weren't wearing my cop cap, I think my head would melt.