Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

It’s Derek Pabst, one ofthe four cops on the Leyden Police Department.Derek and Daniel have been friends since the first grade.Derek was a sturdy kid with an oversized head and the defiant, wayward grin of a boy with a great many siblings and overworked parents.He never did his homework, he rarely passed a test, yet the teachers quietly promoted him at the end ofevery year, with the tacit understanding that his life was hard and that school was finally so unimportant to him that they should all be grateful he was attending at all.He had a wild streak that mes-merized Daniel.Through the course oftheir boyhood, through school days and summers, they were each other’s constant companions.They climbed trees, forded rivers, shot guns, kissed girls.As far as Derek was concerned, they were to this day best friends, though the persistence of their friendship has largely been Derek’s doing.When Daniel was sent off to boarding school, Derek wrote him letters and hitchhiked the hundred miles to sleep on the floor ofDaniel’s dormitory room.When Daniel fi-nally moved back to Leyden, Derek was there to meet the van, with a picnic cooler full ofbeer, another filled with sandwiches, and three ofhis own children to help unpack the truck.

Feeling exposed and ridiculous, Daniel puts the magazine back in the rack and goes to the counter to pay for the gasoline, the coffee, and the bagel.“Will zat be ull?”the Egyptian asks, as ifchallenging Daniel to pur-chase one ofthe magazines.

“That’s it for me,”says Daniel, forcing his voice to sound cheerful.

”How are you, Eddie?”Derek asks.He slaps a five-dollar bill onto the counter.“Let me have a pack ofCamel Lights.”He accepts the pack of cigarettes, the few pieces ofchange.Eddie acts frightened ofDerek, dis-playing the almost ritualized respect ofa man who has been warned.

Derek eagerly tears the pack open, lights up.“Since Stephanie got the new furniture delivered, she won’t let me smoke in the house,”he says, smoke streaming out ofhis large, dark nostrils.

Daniel and Derek stand beneath the eaves ofthe gas station and watch the pelting rain.

“How’s Stephanie doing?”Daniel asks.

”She’s okay.She says she’s going to give Kate a call, put together a dinner or something.”

Daniel’s heart sinks.He knows Kate will decline Stephanie’s invitation, he only hopes she does it without being too blunt.Hurting Stephanie’s feelings will only hurt Derek’s.

“The kids could play, too,”Derek adds.He takes another long drag of his cigarette.“How’s Kate doing?”

“Hanging in there.”

“You really scored on that one,”Derek says.“She’s a great lady.She’s so pretty, and so fucking smart.You know what I like about her? Her laugh.She’s got a great laugh.I look for that, you know.It’s a sign.”

Daniel raises his to-go cup, shrugs.“I’m sort ofrunning late.”It sounds too abrupt to Daniel, and so he extends the excuse.“I’m going over to Eight Chimneys, finally getting to wet my beak in some ofthat river gen-try cash-o-rama.”He grins, rubs his thumb against his first two fingers.

But Derek, fully aware that money doesn’t mean very much to Daniel, acts as ifDaniel hasn’t said a thing.“I had a runaway kid this morning,”Derek says.“At large and dangerous.I picked him up at the train station.”

“Whose kid?”

“One ofthe boys from Star ofBethlehem.I swear, the people running that place don’t have the slightest fucking idea what they’re doing.

They keep trying to respect those boys, or rehabilitate them, and mean-while it’s a fucking jungle, with some ofthe worst juvenile offenders in the state, with nothing to keep them in but a couple ofcounselors and an electric fence.”He looks at Daniel, trying to gauge the level ofagree-ment or disagreement.“These are the‘boys’that made you decide to get your white liberal ass out ofthe city and come back home.The kid I picked up? First ofall, his mother, who was probably twelve or some-thing when she had him, names him Bruce, probably after some Bruce Lee movie, and then, just to be Ebonic and make sure he never learns how to spell, she spells it B-r-e-w-s-e.”

“Since when do you care so much about spelling?”

“I learned how to spell.You used to cram it into my head before spelling tests.”

“I don’t remember it doing all that much good.Anyhow, spelling’s just custom.African-Americans are making their own customs.”

“Yeah, well this kid makes a lot ofhis own customs.Like the custom ofcapping the first motherfucker who stands between him and a new pair ofNikes.”

There’s a sourness in Derek’s voice, a disdain, which Daniel believes is an occupational hazard for cops, like squinting for a jeweler, or grisly jokes for a surgeon, but there’s an element ofracial scorn that Daniel can’t recall ever having heard from Derek before.Is it because he caught Daniel looking at theAfrican-American porn magazines? Or does Derek somehow sense that Daniel has fallen in love with a black woman? Did Daniel ever, in some swoon ofnostalgia for their old boyhood closeness, talk to Derek about Iris?

Derek draws on his cigarette and pulls the smoke deep into his lungs—he smoked marijuana before cigarettes and it shows.When he fi-nally exhales, very little ofthe smoke comes back out.

“What about tonight?”he asks Daniel.“Want to get a bite to eat orsomething?”

“I don’t know, Derek.It’s really hard to get Kate to go out, you know that.”And, for all Daniel knows, Derek may sense that Kate finds him dull company and that Stephanie is a sort ofparadigm for suburban fu-tility, with her mall bangs and turquoise spandex tights, her exhausting cheerfulness—Kate calls her the last ofthe StepfordWives.

“I was thinking just you and me, Danny,”Derek says.His face colors and Daniel realizes with a helpless lurch that his old friend feels embar-rassed asking him to sit down and share a meal.But the embarrassment, rather than make Derek shrink back, somehow propels him forward.He has nothing more to lose.“I really would like that,”he says.“We—”

“No, that would be great,”Daniel says, not being able to bear the awkwardness a moment longer.“I’ll just make sure nothing’s pending at home.

I’ll call you around six, six-thirty.”Who knows?They might go to a restau-rant and end up accidentally seeing Iris.Wouldn’t that be something?

Derek flicks his Camel Light into the rain.“How cool is it that you moved back here?”he says, grinning, shaking his head.His cruiser is parked next to Daniel’s car, blue lights slowly revolving, and every car that passes on the highway slows down at the sight ofit.He has left the window open and the sound ofhis radio can be heard.The dispatcher’s voice, static moving through it like whitewater.Daniel cannot under-stand a word, and Derek seems not even to hear it.

“How’s Mercy Crane working out?”he asks.

”She’s great.Thanks for putting us in touch with her.”

“She used to baby-sit for Chelsea.”He clasps his hands behind his back and stretches extravagantly.“She’s really something.”

“Mercy?”

“Real strict parents, though.Especially Jeff.He’s nuts, you gotta watch out for him.He’s the kind ofcop that gives cops a bad name.”

“She likes movies.I always try and rent something interesting for her to watch.”

“Oh yeah, she likes movies.And music, and just laughing her ass off.

She’s an amazing girl.And sexy, don’t you think? Not that I would ever do anything, but God, she is so fucking hot, those big eyes and those little spindly wrists and always wearing just enough perfume to let you know she knows exactly what you’re thinking.”He claps Daniel on the back.

”All right, buddy, go back in there and do your business, I’m out ofhere.”