Jeffery Allen - Holding Pattern - Stories

Flat on his back, he caught sight of two bright eyes that he recognized as Boo’s. The child stood above Lee, staring down into Lee’s face. Blood on the cuffs of Boo’s white pants. Blood on his tiny shoes. Lee figured that the blood was his own.

Why you put that on my shoes? Boo asked. His eyes deep and black and filled with sunlight. Something else sparkled there too.

Lee tried to speak.

Why you put that on my shoes? Gon, get up.

Lee tried.

Gon, get up. Why you put that on my shoes?

Tears fell from Boo’s eyes. The sunlight was draining the eyes. Globes of light spilled into the blood on Boo’s shoes. In Lee’s vision, the shoes swam circles. Red fish.

The police superintendent sat bent forward at his sturdy mahogany desk, a big man in a big leather armchair, framed by a floor-to-ceiling window looking out onto the vast and vicious wonders of the city. He was reading a file that lay flat upon the leather-topped surface of his desk, the tip of one finger inserted between a thin gold necklace and a massive mound of throat, the necklace like some faint and forgotten residue, ring around the collar. The finger slid, pendulum-like, to his left earlobe, paused there, swung back to his bulging Adam’s apple, paused again, passed on to the other earlobe, paused still again, then lobbed back to the Adam’s apple, only to reenact the full arc of motion.

Ward slammed the door shut.

The police superintendent raised his eyes from the file and saw menace, tall and bony, standing in his office. If he was surprised that someone had been watching him — and who knew for how long — he did not let on. He withdrew the hyperactive finger from under the gold necklace, wet his thumb against the blotter of his tongue, picked up the file between wet thumb and dry forefinger, and placed it on top of a stack of papers at the corner of the desk. He curled his small and enormously pink lips into a smile, placed both palms against the desk edge, and scooted his chair backward. Then he gripped the padded armrests, raised himself up from the seat, and came around the desk — carpet muffling the sound of his steps, white cordovans shining with a high polish — over to where Ward stood with a hand extended in welcome.

“Ward,” he said. He spoke the single word to identify the man before him, as if he found it fully appropriate. “You’ve decided to come.”

“I decided to come,” Ward said. “I had to see you for myself.”

“Pleased to have you with us.” Hand extended, the police superintendent maintained his cordial and professional tone, either failing to detect or choosing to ignore Ward’s rebuff.

Ward stuck a finger inside his nose and worked it around, some food-craving scavenger scrounging up the last helpings of a jelly jar. Only then did he offer to shake his other’s hand. The police superintendent looked at the finger, looked Ward straight in the face. Ward seized one cuff of the police superintendent’s white linen shirt — so out of season, the thinnest fabric in the coldest weather — and cleaned the mucus-covered finger on the sleeve, back and forth in slow even strokes, as if buttering a bread slice.

The police superintendent looked at the sleeve, and he stood there looking at it for quite some time. Through need and want Ward could not refrain from believing that he had succeeded in stripping away the man’s studied veneer and that he was now actually witnessing some other life form taking shape, restructuring the flesh. But, to Ward’s regret, the police superintendent slowly raised his line of sight and offered Ward a face lacking any signs of anger or distress or revulsion, a face that betrayed no emotion, just the attitude of authority and duty, and he spoke to Ward in polite even tones, asking that he be seated, motioning to a leather armchair directly in front of his desk. Cautiously, Ward settled into the chair. The police superintendent walked over to a second picture window and stood looking out, dust drifting like unmoored astronauts in two smoky shafts of sunlight on either side of him, while Ward projected acts of destruction onto the broad screen of the man’s white-shirted back.

“A damn nice secretary you have,” Ward said.

The police superintendent seemed to be looking off at a skyscraper, surprisingly small and dull in the afternoon sun. A heavy man, so heavy that he might at any moment fall through the floor and plunge forever downward.

“‘Go right in.’ Damn nice. It can’t be easy for her.”

The police superintendent made slow steps away from the window, toward his desk, then sat down leisurely in his big leather armchair, eyes trained on the desk, giving Ward time to study the lumpy mass of his head, to penetrate the armored skin and gaze into the black skull, where a dry cloud hovered, the gathered force of will, reason, and worry. Light from the window gave the desk a liquid glow, an ashtray floating there like a water lily. The police superintendent pushed his long thick fingers into the leather desktop — worms burrowing into black earth, the material stretching and squeaking — then joined the fingers of both hands in a meaty cup. He cleared his throat.

“Might we get to it.”

Ward said nothing, his seeking gaze ranging over the police superintendent’s oddly constructed face. A diminishing crop of brown hair. Small brown eyes under an overhang of heavy eyelids and thick brows, so deeply embedded that they seemed to be sinking into the quicksand of fat-headed flesh. A swollen church bell of a nose. A broad yard of chin. And large ears that flapped in butterfly-like delight at the slightest movement.

The police superintendent lifted his eyes to Ward’s face. “I cannot stress enough”—gesturing with his hands—“how important it is that we follow our plan to the letter”—his palm held upward in supplication—“unless you can adduce any legitimate grounds for some fresh course of action.” He locked his fingers before him on the desk.

Ward watched him in silence.

“I am sorry. Profoundly sorry. Every one of us should be entitled to a private corner in the garden.” The police superintendent shook his head, weary, defeated. “Alas …” He parted his hands, nothing to offer.

Ward wet his lips. “The wonder of it,” he said. “Your face takes me back. Alluvial. Ah, the joys of evolution.”

The lines in the police superintendent’s face grew tight, as if disparate threads of yarn had been yanked all at once. “If your associates had been more careful in their actions, perhaps we could—”

“My associates?”

“Yes. Speaking plainly.”

“Allow me a question.”

The police superintendent spoke no reply, watching Ward with a look of come-what-may.

“Did you by any chance spend your beloved lunch hour bobbing for ripe, juicy turds?” Just like that. He began unbuttoning his black overcoat.

The police superintendent watched the unbuttoning without comment, blinking each time a button snapped free. He stirred heavily in his seat, then pushed himself up from his chair and walked to a third massive window, his profiled face metallic and gray in skyscraper glitter, his gold necklace no longer visible to the casual or curious observer, safe under the depths of his collar. He extended his arm stiffly out in front of him as if preparing to bend it in salute, caught the soiled shirt cuff between the thumb and forefinger of his other hand, unsnapped the button, then rolled the sleeve up his arm — dense wiry hair on the wrist, now the forearm — to the elbow. He did the same with the other sleeve. Stood still a moment with his arms hanging at his sides. Then he brought both hands to his chest and pulled violently at his shirt like some high-story flasher exhibiting himself to the world, buttons catapulting into air. He twisted backward and began freeing himself of the shirt — thin gold necklace, bare heavy shoulders, bare meaty back and arms — tilting his torso to one side, then the other, until both sleeves were free. That done, he crumpled up the shirt between both hands, his violent belly hanging like a mound of descending lava over his belt, and moved forward, the sausage rolls of his sides quivering with each step and the shirt trailing along the carpet behind him. He dropped the garment into a wicker wastebasket and resumed his station behind his desk, hands folded in his lap, watching Ward with murderous hatred.