Tom Perrotta: Nine Inches

“That’ll be sixteen dollars.”

“Could you bring it into the kitchen?” He took a step back and beckoned me inside. “I left my wallet in the bedroom.”

I was about to tell him that it was our policy never to enter the customer’s home when it occurred to me that this might be a good time to make an exception. I stepped into the cramped foyer and followed him into the hallway.

“You go ahead,” he said, stopping outside the bedroom. “I’ll be right with you.”

I continued into the kitchen, set the insulated pouch on the countertop, and pulled out my iPhone. It only took a couple of swipes to find the Voice Memo app and touch the red button to record. By the time he emerged, the phone was back in my pocket, and the pizza was out of the pouch.

“Smells good,” he said.

If I’d been him, I might’ve taken an extra minute or two to put on some clothes, but he was still just wearing that pervy robe. It was looser than before, providing an unobstructed view of his broad chest and bulging belly.

“I think you’ll like the sausage,” I told him. “It supposedly won some awards.”

Lt. Finnegan slipped one hand inside the robe and began absentmindedly massaging his left pec. It was bright in the kitchen, and I noticed a pale scar on his knee, one of those old-time Frankenstein sutures, like the stitching on a softball.

“You hungry?” he asked. “I can’t eat that whole pizza by myself.”

“I’m on the clock.”

“How about a drink then? I got soda and OJ. Beer, too, but that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Maybe just some water.”

He took two glasses from the dishwasher and filled them straight from the tap. We never did that at home, only drank from the Brita pitcher. We sat down at the table and touched our glasses.

“Cheers,” he said. “It’s nice to have some company.”

I let that pass, even though company hardly seemed like the right term for the guy who delivered your pizza. He smiled at me. His expression was shy, strangely boyish.

“I like you, Donald. You’re really easy to talk to.”

I took a sip to calm my nerves. The water was tepid, with a sweet, chemical aftertaste.

“We hardly know each other,” I said, speaking slowly and clearly for the benefit of the recorder. I didn’t feel great about what I was doing, but I knew it had to be done. “We only ever talk when you pull me over.”

“I know.” He laughed, like this was a cute story we would someday share with our friends. “It’s crazy, right?”

“You pulled me over three times last month. And the third time, the night you were in the unmarked car, you tried to give me a backrub. It kinda scared me, Lieutenant Finnegan.”

He stiffened a little, and I could see I’d hit a nerve.

“Look, Donald, I’m really sorry about that. I got carried away, you know? I do that sometimes. But I hope you’ll give me another chance.”

“What do you mean?”

He gave me a sly look, like he thought I knew exactly what he meant.

“I mean, you can’t get a good backrub in a car. You need to be able to take your shirt off, stretch out on a bed, and relax.” He reached across the table and laid his hand on mine. “Why don’t you come by after your shift tonight. That way we can take our time.”

I slid my hand out from under his and stood up.

“Please listen to me, Lieutenant Finnegan.” My voice was shaky, and I was surprised to realize I was on the verge of tears. “I don’t want a backrub. I didn’t want one when you pulled me over, and I don’t want one now. I think you have a problem, and you should probably get some help.”

“Whoa, hey.” He held up one hand, as if he were stopping traffic. “I’m just trying to be nice here.”

“And just so you know” — I held up the phone — “I’ve been recording this entire conversation.”

It took him a few seconds to process what I was telling him. I could see it in his face, that awful moment of clarity.

“Jesus, Donald. Why would you do that?”

“Look, I don’t want to get you in trouble. I’m just asking you to leave me alone. Is that so hard to understand?”

I waited awhile, but I never got an answer. I wasn’t even sure he’d heard the question. He just lowered his head into his hand and started cursing softly, telling himself how fucking stupid he was, how he knew this was gonna happen, how he’d told himself to stop and had kept on doing it anyway, and now he was totally fucked, wasn’t he, muttering this pitiful monologue that followed me all the way down the hallway and out the door.

A YEAR and a half went by before the next time I got pulled over. Lt. Finnegan was retired by then, forced to leave the department after a bunch of people had complained about his strange behavior. Apparently, I wasn’t the only young guy in town who’d gotten a backrub along with his traffic ticket. It was a minor scandal for a week or two, but they hushed it up somehow, and he managed to leave the force without facing any charges or losing his pension. Last I heard, he was living in Florida.

Lots of other things had changed, too. I’d become Eddie’s right-hand man at Sustainable, managing the original restaurant while he opened a new one in Rosedale. We were working hard, making good money, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever have the time or the patience to go back to school. Shortly after my nineteenth birthday, I’d moved out of my parents’ house, into a studio apartment across the street from the bike shop. The rent wasn’t too steep, and I needed the privacy now that I’d gotten together with Karen, one of the new waitresses we’d hired after Malina and Jadwiga had gone back to Poland. We got along okay, though she could be kind of moody and relied on me for pretty much her entire social life, not that I had a whole lot to offer in that department. Mostly we just got high and watched TV.

I’d lost touch with most of my high school friends, but hadn’t made any new ones except for Adam and Eddie. The three of us had gotten pretty tight over the past year, ever since we’d started our weed business. Using Eddie’s money and Adam’s connection, we’d developed quite a sideline, buying in bulk and selling to a handful of carefully selected clients, moving a pound here and a kilo there, lots of profit with what seemed like minimal risk. We transported our product in Sustainable’s delivery cars, hidden in pizza boxes tucked inside insulated pouches. It was my idea, and I was pretty proud of it. You could drive right up to the front door of a dealer’s house, make a cash transaction, and no one would suspect a thing.

So I wasn’t nervous that night in April, heading over to Rick Yang’s house — he was one of our best customers — with a large onion-and-pepper in one box and a pound of weed in another. I’d done it a dozen times before, never a problem.

It all went down so fast. I barely had time to register the lights in my rearview mirror when I saw two more cop cars right in front of me, blocking the intersection. I got out with my hands on my head, like they told me to, and the next thing I knew I was lying facedown in the street, with my hands cuffed behind my back.

It’s funny what goes through your head at a time like that. I didn’t think about my parents, or about Eddie and Adam, or even about Karen. I didn’t wonder about what kind of trouble I was in or consider how my life might have been different if I’d gone to Uganda. What I thought about while they searched the Prius was something I’d almost forgotten, a stupid thing I’d done while applying to college.

The applications were due on December 31, and I’d left my safeties to the last minute. I was just so sick of the whole process by then — it had consumed almost a year of my life — fed up with answering the same useless questions over and over, tailoring my responses to whoever was doing the asking. It was ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve, and there I was, sitting at my desk, staring at the question Why Fairfield? and I guess I just lost it. Instead of repeating my usual bullshit about a liberal arts education, I went ahead and told the truth: You’re my Safety School, motherfucker! And then I pressed SEND before I had a chance to stop myself. It felt so good I did the same thing for Roger Williams and Temple. I’d never told anyone about it, not even when people were scratching their heads, wondering how it was possible that an honor student like me had been rejected by all three of his safeties.