Jack O'Connell: Box Nine

Ike fishes his tea bag out of his mug, squeezes it dry against the side of the mug, then dumps it in the basket. He gets the milk from the refrigerator, empties the last of it into the tea, and tosses the carton. He brings the mug to his lips, blows over the surface of the tea for a few seconds, then sips and burns his tongue. He puts the mug down on the table to cool, and wonders who would come out on top in a matchup between Eva and Lenore. Who would he bet on? They have such different methods. Eva is so cool and controlled, she’s like a machine that was built with care and intelligence, made to give the maximum work, at the maximum efficiency, and to last for years to come. Lenore, on the other hand, is all fireworks, all noise and light. She’s perpetually explosive. She makes every decision on the verge of violence. Just watching TV with her can be a draining, punishing experience. Once they watched The Exorcist together, late on a Saturday night. Ike was a lot more afraid of his twin sister than he was of any demon. She spent two hours snarling right back at the screen, warning Satan to leave poor little Linda Blair alone or she’d “waste his pathetic ass back to hell.” Toward the end, Ike prayed that she wouldn’t go next door and come back with her Magnum, pull an Elvis, and blow his Sony into hundreds of pieces.

Lenore grabs a black coffee in a small white Styrofoam cup. She walks over to the window side of the conference room and looks out over the highway. The speed is bothering her a little today, making her feel slightly claustrophobic. To take her mind off this trapped, breathless feeling, she thinks about how much she despises the architecture of the police station.

The biggest problem is the windows. Back when headquarters was down on Kristie Place, there were these gorgeous old floor-to-ceiling windows with arched tops. During the May riots of’69, someone lobbed a bomb through one. It happened to land on the dispatch board. No one was seriously hurt, but radio contact with all the cruisers was lost for days. With that incident in mind, and combined with the energy crisis of the late seventies, when they finally built the new building at Tubman Square, they brought in these bizarre skinny strips of windows, maybe only two or three inches in width, bulletproof and Thermopane, but also incapable of being opened to let in fresh air.

There are a lot of days when Lenore just wants to bring her Magnum up from the bunker and empty the chamber into one of those skinny windows until it shatters and falls to the ground. Today is one of those days.

The conference room is on the top floor of the police station and from where she stands she can look at the sparse traffic rolling down the interstate. She’d love to be out there now, out of this stupid briefing, in a metallic-teal Porsche, clocking one twenty-five toward no destination in particular. Instead, she’s drinking bitter coffee, which she knows will only aggravate the speed jag, and hoping Zarelli doesn’t come over and try to start a conversation.

Richmond, Shaw, and Peirce are grouped next to the side table that’s crowded with the coffee urn and a cardboard platter of cheese and lemon Danish. Richmond is telling the women some long, confusing joke that has to do with a hooker and a talking parrot. No matter what the punch line is, there’s no way it can warrant the effort he’s giving the story.

Zarelli comes in the door with his hands in his pockets, wearing a dark grey suit, a strange white shirt with a long, pointy collar, and a red-and-grey-striped tie equipped with both tie tack and collar pin. He looks like he’s headed to a funeral, Lenore thinks. Why the hell did he dress like this? Who is he trying to impress?

It’s apparent that everybody else is a little confused by his clothes. Shaw and Peirce break their concentration from Richmond’s story and give funny, squinty looks.

Peirce says, “You got somewhere to go after this?”

Zarelli shakes his head deliberately and says, “I like to dress up on occasion. Problem?”

Richmond, annoyed at the interruption, says, “You look like a Bible salesman from ten years back.”

Zarelli just says, “Thanks, Rich,” and moves to the table to pour himself a coffee. He nods over to Lenore a little too formally as he adds packet after packet of sugar to his drink. She thinks he seems nervous and unsure of himself, nothing like the Zarelli she knows and is tired of. As he lifts the coffee cup to his lips, she can see his hands tremble. She has two responses to this. The first is to wonder if somehow he’s already picked up on her plans to sever the relationship, through vibrations in the air or some unconscious telepathy. The second is to wonder how those shaky hands can possibly cover her if they get caught in any life-or-death situations.

He starts to cross the room toward her. Her curiosity is a little piqued and now talking to him doesn’t seem as unpleasant as it had moments ago. He looks like he’s wearing rented shoes that are a size too big for his feet. He seems to shuffle across the floor, the coffee cup at his lips the whole time. There’s a sheen of sweat glowing on his forehead. His shirt is buttoned at the neck and pushes against his Adam’s apple. Lenore feels like gagging just watching it.

He reaches the window and stares out at the highway and begins to talk.

“Okay, Lenore,” he says. “This is it.”

She thinks about turning mute, not responding at all, letting him summon up all his powers of language and communication to no avail. Instead she says flatly, “This is what?”

“This is for real,” he says, his eyes starting to blink too fast. “I’ve got an appointment, all right? I’ve made a goddamn appointment.”

“That’s swell,” she says, “an appointment.”

“It’s the truth,” he says. “I told you I was going to do it. Today’s the day. This is the day. My life changes at noon today, all right? This is for real.”

She has to ask. “What happens at noon today?”

He clears his throat, tries to wipe sweat from his top lip with his thumb. “I’m meeting Marie today. For lunch. At noon. Today. I’m meeting Marie and I’m telling her it’s over. The marriage is over. I’m breaking free. I’ve given it eight years and today it ends. I’m telling her to get a lawyer. At lunch. I’m meeting her at Fiorello’s, okay?”

Lenore would like to drive a knee into his groin. The man dressed up in his best clothes to walk out on his wife. She knows that Fiorello’s is where he proposed to Marie. And it’s where he first took Lenore for drinks. She thinks Zarelli must be the never-ending soap opera for all the help at Fiorello’s.

She takes a breath and gets ready to say, “Like hell you are, you idiot,” but Miskewitz’s voice booms around the room, “Okay, people, can we get down to business, the mayor is a busy man.”

She turns around to see three people gathered around the lieutenant, just inside the doorway of the conference room. One is Mayor Welby, looking, as always, wise and professorial in a subtle, grey, hand-tailored suit. Welby is a tall guy with a huge dome of a forehead like a Yankee minister, but also a small, always-trimmed mustache that gives him an ethnic look. You might think this would be a drawback for vote-getting, but Welby has grown into the pols’ pol over the years. He plays City Hall like a master musician, knowing instinctively when to stroke, when to kick ass privately, and when to grab headlines with a rabid bashing of department managers and city councilors. He sticks to the basics — delegation of authority, the promise of no tax hikes in election years, and a flawless eye for just the right photo opportunity. He’s a fairly lean guy and he’s in his mid-fifties. The department has no real beef with him, though Miskewitz says he hasn’t taken a stand yet on the pending contract talks. The mayor married later in life and has two kids just now entering high school. His wife is often seen, but never heard, at various dedication ceremonies. Lenore doesn’t really have an opinion of him. She thinks that, like all politicians, he’s a man of often empty words, and since she considers her own life to be one based on action rather than words, she thinks they live on opposite sides of a very thick fence.