Edward Lee - Creekers

“I gave at the office,” he said when he saw who it was.

The pretty face offered a snide smile. The blond icebitch, he recognized all too fast. Susan, our amiable, upbeat dispatcher.

“Nice towel,” she said.

“If I’d known you would be knocking on my door, I’d have dressed black tie. Okay, so how much are the Girl Scout cookies?”

“You really are horribly sarcastic,” Susan Ryder said.

Phil could imagine how silly he looked: green Edge Gel fizzing on his face, and a towel as the only thing keeping him from being stark naked. “All right, let me rephrase. What the hell do you want?”

“Well, I think I’m already regretting this, but I thought I’d offer to buy you dinner.”

Dinner, Phil thought nebulously. This woman hates me. She thinks I kill ghetto kids. Now she wants to buy me dinner.

“Or I should say,” she corrected, “whatever it is we night-shifters call the first meal of the day. I guess it’s our breakfast.” She seemed shaky suddenly, or even nervous. “Sort of a, you know, peace offering.”

“Peace offering,” Phil stated dumbly.

“Is your head made of bricks?” she suddenly snapped. “I’m trying to apologize! Jesus!”

“Apologize,” Phil stated dumbly. The shave cream continued to fizz. “Uh…apologize for what?”

Exasperation, or rage, thinned her pretty blue eyes. “For treating you shitty this morning. But if you’re going to be an asshole about it, then forget it.”

“Oh. Uh,” Phil brilliantly replied. This whole scene caught him off guard. “Well, in that case, your apology, and your invitation, are accepted. Can I finish changing, or do you want me to go like this?”

“You can go like that if you want,” she said, smiling. “But if that towel falls off, you’ll have to arrest yourself for indecent exposure.”

“Or unlawful display of shaving cream in public,” he said. “Come on in, I’ll just be a minute. It’s the maid’s day off, so you’ll have to forgive the current disarray of my estate.”

Susan Ryder walked in, and immediately went to peruse the bookshelf in his broom-closet-sized den, mostly law enforcement, judicial, and criminology texts from his Master’s courses. “All my Aquinas and Jung are still packed up,” he said, “but I do have every Jack Ketchum novel ever printed.” He quickly grabbed some clothes and slipped into the bathroom. He shaved haphazardly, realizing his own nervousness when he nearly sprayed Glade Air Freshener under his arms. What do I have to be nervous about? he joked. I have beautiful blondes in my room all the time. She was certainly attractive; perhaps he hadn’t fully noticed that when they’d met, considering the circumstances. He left the bathroom door cracked an inch, and in the mirror he could see her stooped over his put-it-together-yourself fiberboard bookshelf: simply dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a faded lime blouse. Yeah, she’s pretty, all right, he acknowledged as he began to brush his teeth with one hand and haul on his jeans with the other. Unfancified white-blond hair shimmered at her shoulders. Nice behind, too, you sexist pig, he noted of the way her pose accentuated her rear end. He knew what it was, though—not her good looks but the whole apology business. Apologies didn’t seem like her style at all, but—

He didn’t really know her, did he? So how could he make a judgment like that, when only this morning he’d ranted on her for prejudging him about the Metro fiasco. Who’s prejudging who? he admitted with a mouthful of Crest.

“Oh,” she commented from the den. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

Phil instantly spat toothpaste into the sink. “What?

“You talk in your sleep,” she repeated, still leaning over his books. “You’re a bigtime ratchetjaw.”

Phil stared into the mirror, toothpaste smeared on his lips like a drunken clown’s whiteface. Of course he knew he talked in his sleep on occasion—the women in his past had always pointed that out—but how on earth could Susan know that?

“Either you’re psychic, or you’ve got a microphone hidden in my room.”

“Neither,” she said. Now, in the mirror, she was flipping through his stack of LEAA journals in a box on the couch. “I rent the room right above yours.”

Phil almost spat his toothpaste out again. “You live here?”

“Yeah. Isn’t Mrs. Crane great? Anyway, eventually you’ll discover that the heating ducts make for a very effective in-house intercom. So you better gag yourself whenever you go to bed, unless you want me to know all your secrets.”

That’s just great, Phil thought, pulling on a Highpoint College T-shirt. He tried to think of a funny comeback.

“The heating ducts, huh? So that explains the loud vibrating sound I hear everyday from upstairs,” which he immediately regretted. He didn’t know her well at all, and certainly not well enough to be making jokes like that.

“If you must know,” she came back just as fast, “I use imported ben-wa balls, not vibrators.”

Jesus. He guessed she was joking, or hoped she was. He came back out then, was about to speak as she turned in the den, but hesitated. Though his pause lasted only a second, it seemed like full minutes to him. God, she really is beautiful. No makeup, just a simple, pretty farm-girlish face, a slender yet curvy body, and high B-cup breasts that looked firm as apples. For a moment her face seemed brightly alight in the frame of pure-blond hair. Her eyes, a beautiful sea-blue, sparkled like chips of gems.

“You can take me out to dinner now, or breakfast, or whatever it is that us night-shifters call the first meal of the day,” he said. “I’ll put on my best sports jacket if you’re taking me someplace expensive.”

“Is Chuck’s Diner expensive enough for you?”

Phil held the door open for her, then followed her out. “Chuck’s Diner? I guess I should put on my tux.”

««—»»

They went in her car, a nice Mazda two-door, for which Phil was very grateful. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed by his dented, rusted, clay-red ‘76 Malibu, it was…well, something probably worse than embarrassment. Immaturity notwithstanding, no real man wanted to drive an attractive woman anywhere in such a vehicle. Susan’s car was clean and unadorned, like her, attractive in its lack of frills. He watched her bright-blond hair spin in the breeze from the open window. “No valet parking?” he joked when she pulled into Chuck’s.

“Only on weekends,” she said. Inside they took a booth in the back. Another blast from the past, Phil considered. It had been over a decade since he’d last set foot in here. Chuck’s Diner was your typical greasy spoon, though cleaner than most. A middle-aged waitress in an apron and bonnet took their orders.

“So what are you packing?” Susan asked.

“Packing?” Phil queried.

Susan, frowning, rephrased, “What kind of weapon do you carry off-duty?”

“Oh, that kind of packing.” But what a strange question. “A Beretta .25.”

“That’s a peashooter!” she exclaimed. The waitress set their orders down, then Susan continued, “What are you gonna shoot with a .25? Gnats?”

Phil appraised his hash and eggs. “Well, actually I’m not planning to shoot anything, except maybe the waitress if she doesn’t bring me some salt and pepper.”

“Cops are supposed to be prepared for trouble round the clock. What if some coked-up scumbags try to take you down?”

“In Chuck’s Diner? Look, if they want my hash and eggs, they can have it.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead with anything less than a hot-loaded 9mm,” she told him, then nonchalantly bit into her cheeseburger sub. “Right now I carry a SIG .45.”

“You carry a gun?” Phil asked.