David Jackson - Pariah

‘You’re quiet,’ she said. ‘Everything okay, Callie?’

He hated the way she called him Callie. Nobody had ever called him that before. It was her own invention — something she seemed to find cute.

He should have just said, Yes, everything’s fine, and got on with the job at hand, but this time he couldn’t keep it in. This time she’d gone too far.

‘You want the truth? No, everything is not okay. Everything is fucked up.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You wanna talk about it?’

‘Yeah, I could do that. Lemme see, where do I start? How about with all the looks and the winks I got from everyone in the squad this morning? Or the way Kaplinsky kept calling me “Stud”? Or how about the way people kept asking me why I only like eating Italian now?’

Marino did the wrong thing then. She laughed. Put a hand to her mouth and made a farting noise with her mouth like this was some big joke. If she had been mortified instead — if she had exhibited the merest hint of shame — he might have been able to prevent what was coming next.

‘You think this is funny? This is funny to you?’

She tried to put on a straight face, but to Doyle she wasn’t trying hard enough.

‘Well, the Italian thing, that is kinda-’

‘What have you been saying?’ Doyle demanded. ‘What the fuck have you been saying?’

‘Nothing. Take it easy, Callie. I just had a little girlie chat with Kaplinsky. Locker-room talk. You know how it is.’

‘No. Tell me. Tell me how it is.’

‘She’s been asking for a long time now. About you and me. About how we are together. About whether we’ve, like, done the dirty yet.’

‘Uh-huh. And of course you put her straight, right? Told her how we’re just partners, like any two cops on the job. All strictly professional and platonic, right?’

‘Come on, Callie. If I said that, Kaplinsky really would start wondering. Anybody can see there’s a thing between us. A what-you-call-it — a chemistry.’

‘No, Laura. No chemistry. Not unless it’s like you’re sulfuric acid and I’m getting burned real bad. Because that’s how I’m feeling right now. Real burned. So what else did you say to Kaplinsky?’

‘Nothing. She asked whether me and you had got it on yet, and I just smiled and walked away.’

‘You smiled and walked away? That’s it?’ As if that wasn’t bad enough.

‘Yeah, that’s it. Except, well, I might have made a little gesture.’

‘A gesture? What kind of gesture?’

Laura hesitated for a second. When Doyle looked in her direction, she raised an eyebrow mischievously, then put her hands out in front of her, palms facing each other, about a foot apart.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Doyle said. ‘Please tell me you didn’t actually do that.’

Laura was laughing again. Doyle wasn’t.

‘I was paying you a compliment,’ she said. ‘Most guys, I’d just wave my pinky in the air. You should be grateful for me telling it like it is.’

‘Like it is? What the fuck are you talking about? You’ve never even seen. .’ He let his words trail off.

‘You oughtta try taking a walk through my head sometime,’ she said. And then she was laughing again. Huskily, but to Doyle not at all seductively. In fact, this was starting to feel dark and disturbing. Inside Laura Marino’s head did not seem the most inviting of places right now.

Doyle pulled a sudden left turn across honking traffic and into the only free space he could see. Which happened to be the entrance to the parking garage of the swish hotel next door.

‘Hey,’ Laura said. ‘What are you doing?’

Doyle put the brakes on, left the engine idling. ‘We need to talk, Laura.’

‘And you can’t talk while you drive?’

‘No. Not when every brick wall I see makes me want to head straight for it.’

She pulled her neck in and squinted at him like she thought he was loopy. Like she just didn’t get what all the fuss was. How could she not get that?

‘So, like, okay. What do you want to talk about?’

He turned toward her on the seat, took a deep breath.

‘This me-and-you thing. Don’t get me wrong, Laura. I like working with you. I think we make a good team. But that’s as far as it goes. The things you’ve been saying about me, the way you’ve been acting, you’re going to land me in a whole heap-load of shit.’

She pulled the me-no-understand face again, and then there was another laugh. Doyle felt his fists bunching. He’d never hit a woman in his life, and now he was thinking of taking it up as a career.

‘Callie! Lighten up, will ya? It’s just a joke. Cops talk about other cops like that all the time — you know that. Give it a few days, it’ll blow over. Anyhow, it’s such a bad thing, people thinking you managed to talk me into the sack? I thought you guys liked stuff like that. Another notch on your bedpost, and all that.’

‘Maybe in Neanderthal World, Laura. Maybe when we were both teenagers with more hormones than sense. But aren’t you forgetting a fact or two? Like Danny and Rachel? You think they’ll laugh their socks off at this big joke of yours?’

Laura rolled her eyes. ‘Well, not Rachel — that’s for sure.’

‘Oh. .’ Doyle bit his lip, trying to hold in his fury. ‘Fuck you, Laura.’

And then he was out of the car, slamming the door so hard the window almost shattered. He forced air through his nostrils and paced the ground like a mad bull on the lookout for something to charge.

A uniformed valet emerged from the dark mouth of the hotel garage.

‘Excuse me, sir. Are you a resident of the hotel?’

‘No. Just give me two minutes.’

Not sensing the danger he was in, the valet continued: ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t park here. You’re blocking the-’

‘I said go back into your hole. Now!’

As the man skedaddled to the hotel entrance, muttering to himself, Laura got out of the car.

‘Come on, Cal. We got places to be.’

She said this so matter-of-factly, as though their disagreement was over something as trivial as whose turn it was to drive. For a moment, Doyle couldn’t help wondering why he was the only one feeling there was a problem here. He stepped around the car.

‘Listen to me, Laura. This is serious, okay?’

‘Callie, you’re making this out-’

‘No! Listen. To me, it’s serious, even if you don’t give a shit. And quit calling me Callie. The name’s Cal, okay?’

She rolled her eyes again, like she was a teenager being chastised by her father for staying out late, and who has no intention of sticking to the rules he’s laying down.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Cal. Whatever.’

He started ticking items off with his fingers. ‘First of all, it’s bad enough a story like this is going around the job. I’m not talking about the grunts: they’ll have their laughs and be done with it. But something like this gets back to the brass, then we got some explaining to do.’

‘Cal-’

He cut her off by jabbing another finger in front of her face. ‘Second of all, and more importantly, I have a family to consider. And before you start mouthing off about Rachel again, you should know that I love her and I have no intention of doing anything that would hurt her. Ever. Whatever you and Danny have between you, that’s your business. You want to hurt him, go ahead. Just leave me out of it. The heat you caused between me and Rachel last time was bad enough. I don’t want to go through that again. Point three-’

‘Last time? What last time?’

‘Last Christmas. You do remember that, don’t you?’

A dreamy smile appeared on Laura’s face. ‘Oh, yeah. Christmas.’

They had been at a party at a fellow cop’s house in Queens. Danny and Rachel were there too. Laura got drunk within the first half-hour. Kept making suggestive remarks to Doyle, pinching his ass — that type of thing. Rachel witnessed much of it in stony-faced silence. Danny seemed never to be in the same room. The last straw was the kiss: Laura with a sprig of mistletoe in one hand, the other clasped behind Doyle’s neck in an embrace that lasted far too long. By the time Doyle had recovered enough from the shock to push Laura away, Rachel had disappeared and gone home. The nights that followed had been pretty lonely ones for Doyle.