Frederick Busch - Girls

“Periodic discussions about dead girls. Are Ex ,” I said, making the sign for a prescription in some of his pastry crumbs and spilled sugar. “Hang around the parents of a dead girl and exchange little recognition signs about misery.”

“So, then, you don’t appreciate the idea.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“But you said yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

I said, “Why?”

“Don’t stall,” he said. “Why’d you agree? I made the suggestion to Strodemaster. But I didn’t tell you to do it. I can’t make you take on chores. That part was your idea. Why?”

“I felt like I had to, I guess. I don’t know. I — to tell you the truth, I was — something about it made me want to. I couldn’t stay away. I hated it. I hate it. The idea — it was like stopping someone’s death, if I could. I’m a goddamned nuthead, aren’t I?”

“You sound pretty savvy to me,” he said. “If you’re not careful, you’ll sound healthy.”

I said in almost a whisper, “Fanny asked me if I was your patient.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“I lied.”

“Of course you did. But what did you say?”

“I said I didn’t talk to you about her.”

He stared at me hard, his beautiful piggy face dead serious, his little eyes focused. “You don’t,” he said at last. “You talk about you. A lot of you’s about Fanny. That’s all right. Because one of these days, you’re going to tell her, ‘We both need to talk to Archie,’ and because you ask her to, she will, and then you’ll have told her the truth.”

“And this is ethical?”

He ate a huge mouthful of something shaped like a cowpie filled with almond slivers and glistening raisins.

“Don’t you fucking worry about ethics,” he said. “You worry about your wife and yourself and fuck your quibbles.” Crumbs flew as he spoke. He paused, he sipped a big bubbly mouthful of coffee and swallowed it. He waved his thick, short forefinger between us and he said, “Somebody comes in bleeding, Fanny does what?”

“She calls the doctor.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Jack.”

“Stops the bleeding,” I said.

“That’s what we want to do. Then we can worry about correct behavior. Are you working?”

“You mean with Fanny?”

“Are you fucking at work on the little missing girl?”

I nodded.

“Tell me how you feel.”

“It isn’t—”

“Tell me.”

“I need to go, Arch. I’m late.”

“You piss artist.”

“I know.”

“You find me this week, the next couple of days, and you and I talk. Yes?”

He was sweating, and I had ruined one more breakfast for him. I was no better than any recidivist. You arrest them, try them, send them up, parole them, and they’re back inside in a week, habitual offenders. Granted, Fanny and I had grappled a little with — let’s say with us. But we hadn’t addressed the event, and we wouldn’t. That was what, for the sake of some kind of honesty, some kind of friendship, I would have to tell Archie Halpern one day. I wanted his help, but I could never — and I never would — do what he would advise.

When I came in, the dispatcher told me that Big Pete was in an interview room with a woman who had a complaint. I could hear her voice ranging low to high, then Pete’s even bass. His voice would enrage her. She’d think he was being calm on purpose, so she’d assume he thought she was being hysterical, and she’d be furious with him, and neither one would know why.

I asked the dispatcher to request, on the intercom phone, that he come out and see me. When he did, rolling his eyes and loosening his necktie, I suggested that he take my campus loop while I talked to the student. Since he had to do what I suggested, he did.

We had built two small interview rooms, each with chairs and a small table that was large enough for the student being interviewed not to feel like one of us was looming over. I left my coat hanging outside and when I went in, before I took the clipboard with the incident report from the shelf, I said, “Hi. I’m Jack. Who’re you?”

She was Niva. She was in her third year. She had a crew cut almost as flat as Archie Halpern’s, and she wore a little golden ring through her nose. It was hard not to talk directly to the ring. Her scoop-necked sweater was a hazy kind of purple and her pants had once been black. There were various colors of paint on them. She wore high thick-soled leather boots. Her hands and feet were big, and the rest of her was very skinny. She was almost copper-colored, and her eyes had a coppery touch to them, too.

The complaint was about a senior boy who no doubt called himself a man. His name was Roger Gambrelle. He shared studio space with Niva in a section of the arts building they let the kids use for what I guess was art.

“He plays this heavy rap,” Niva said.

“Too loud?”

“He’s trying to fuck me, Jack.”

“You mean—”

Niva didn’t smile. I’d hoped she would. Her face had deep frown lines and it seemed to live in a kind of scowl.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” she said.

“Right,” I said. “I’m trying to figure it out for this report. My associate has written ‘To promote sexual intercourse.’ ”

She smiled, but it went away too fast for me to enjoy it. She said, “That’s the fucking, Jack.”

“So, Niva, are you complaining about the moves he’s putting on you, or — this seems to be about the music.”

“He’s a stupid racist asshole. He thinks all people of color dig rap, and what you do, you want to get in one of us’s pants, you send the music up. Like perfume, understand? Like you’re laying flowers on a woman you want. This hyena is doing this mealy shit music can’t no one get into on account of it sours your mind , listening to it hour after hour. It’s antifemale, it’s violent, it brings us down, and I’m trying to move some paint on a surface to mean something. You understand.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do. It’s easy. I’m going to make sure Mr. Gambrelle turns the music down.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t play the music at all is going to be very tough. I can try for it, but I can get it turned down. Low. Next part’s a little hairy. If you want me to, if you ask, I can kind of hint — I can’t do more than that — about how you would appreciate his laying off. But students don’t like anyone meddling in their lives, and some guy from security—”

“You feel inadequate for the job?”

“I’m pretty sure it isn’t my job,” I said. “Can you ask one of the student deans to talk to Mr. Gambrelle? Have you got a friend who can do it for you?”

“You’re friendly,” she said.

“Let me think about it. I’ll do the music. I’ll maybe drop the hint about the other. Is that all right?”

She stood up. She was taller than I was. “That’s all right,” she said. The smile came and went, and then she left.

“Watusi princess,” the dispatcher said.

“No,” I said. “Don’t talk like that. We can’t talk like that in here.”

“Excuse me ,” she said.

“Slow down,” I told her. “Don’t get mad. Just don’t talk like that. A favor to me, all right? Never mind it’s the rules, that we’re supposed to be courteous servants et cetera. Just as a favor to me, okay?”

I believe her face turned into dough with coal bits for eyes and sticks for the mouth. Something wonderful and strange happened to it because the door opened in, and Sergeant Bird of the New York State Police walked into the office. She stared at his lustrous dark skin. He winked at her, and she turned away, like a dog when you look into his eyes.