| The Waitress |
Karl shuffles into the 24-hour coffee shop at four-fifteen A.M., his
dark blue uniform straining at the seams, his walkie-talkie buzzing
with a dozen disembodied voices. As he steps up to the counter, he
hears the dull clack of his regulation shoes against the shiny purple
tiles.
At the counter, he leans his pendulous torso against the rail. The
man behind the pastry display case says, " 'Evening, Officer. Can I
get you some danish? Looks like you've already got some rolls."
Karl turns crimson even as he nods. He hears a high-pitched giggle
from off to his left. He turns and sees a waitress, resting her feet in
an empty booth. She is young, could be still in her twenties, and
dark-skinned, maybe Filipino or Indian. She flashes him a teasing
wink, and he turns his gaze back to the counter top. No doubt
expecting special police protection, the man does not let Karl pay for
the danishes. Karl doesn't try all that hard to give him the money,
anyway. He is still blushing from the man's comment and the young
waitress' laugh.
Back in the squad car, Karl's partner Eddie tears into the bag and
devours an entire danish in three large chomps. "Not bad, Karl, but I
still don't know why we just can't get donuts."
"Too cliche," Karl answers as they return to their duties, driving in
ever-expanding concentric circles, searching for some form of
lawlessness in somnolent Columbia.
Susan is waiting for Karl in their bed. The kids are up, taking turns in
the bathroom with almost infuriating patience, then filing down to
the kitchen to eat cereal with little marshmallows. Karl crawls under
the covers with Susan and slides his potbelly up close to her soft
back.
"Was it a rough night, honey?" she asks, her familiar voice muffled
by sleep.
"Sure was," he tells her. He slips his hand between her stomach and
her sagging breasts. Years before she had possessed a body that
could stir his lust from across a room. Now, up close and touching,
he could feel nothing.
After their last child, Susan had just not worked to take the weight
off. He didn't say anything about it, but surely she had noticed his
declined interest in sex? As he had pored over this, the thought
came to him: she noticed, but she didn't care. Perhaps she was even
relieved. He found himself wondering if she had always found sex
with him to be a chore. If so, he had decided, she needn't be
bothered with it anymore. He had resolved to wait until she made the
first move. She never had. It was around that time he too had begun
to gain weight.
Now, lying indifferently beside his wife, he remembers the dark-
skinned waitress and her little laugh. He falls asleep wondering if
she had even given him a second thought after he left, a middle-aged,
overweight, uniform cop who never made detective.
An hour later, Susan awakens to the rasping sound of her husband's
snoring against her left ear. She gently extricates herself from his
embrace and heads downstairs for a cup of coffee. On her way down,
she straightens the frames the kids have brushed askew on their trips
up and down the steps. One is a counter-cross stitch she made a few
years ago which proclaims "As for me and my house, we will serve
the Lord." Another bears a similar message in paint and was done by
the oldest of the children in a long-ago art class. Another is a family
portrait taken a few years before at Sears.
The kids don't need Susan's help to get ready in the mornings
anymore. Even the youngest is nine now and can dress herself. The
oldest is sixteen and doesn't mind dropping his sisters at school,
since his school starts half an hour after theirs, and driving them
entitles him to use the car. She brews a fresh pot of coffee and
settles down in the living room to watch television. She is mindful of
the volume. Karl has been working the night shift for three straight
days, and he needs his sleep.
Karl still has trouble understanding his daughters. The son is easy;
Karl is glad he came first. Jim plays football in the winter, basketball
in the fall, and baseball in the spring. Jim dates nice girls and always
brings them home first for introductions. Jim wears tee-shirts and
jeans and keeps his hair short.
The girls are different. Karl had never imagined how difficult it would
be to relate to them. They are always needing new clothes, new
hairstyles, new shoes. They don't date yet, but moon over the boys
on TV and in the movies. They constantly want rides to the mall or
the skating rink, and the older one, Karen, insists now that she wants
to be a vegetarian. Lucy is only nine and has no such desires at this
point, but Karl sees it on the horizon. She has always been the most
daring and outrageous of the children. He imagines that if any of his
kids will ever come home with a tattoo or a live-in boyfriend, it will
be Lucy.
When he awakens in the afternoon, the kids have just gotten home
from school, and Karen is pestering him for five bucks to go to the
mall with her friends.
"What can you get for five bucks?" he wants to know.
"We aren't going shopping," she says, "we're just going to hang out."
"Then why do you need any money?"
"Just in case," she says.
These are his least favorite phrases, "hang out," and "just in case."
To his ears, they always translate as "You're too old to understand."
What he hates most about it is that he doesn't understand. He hands
her three somewhat sticky dollar bills and sends her away.
After he showers and dresses, Karl wanders downstairs, wincing at
his reflection in the hallway mirror. Even his jeans are getting too
tight now. His sweatshirt is positively taut. He pats his belly and
tries to suck it in. No such luck. He relaxes and sighs.
Jim is at basketball practice, Karen is at the mall, Susan is playing
hymns in the living room, and Lucy is playing Barbie in the kitchen
with her friends Sara and Ingrid, all three girls as blond as their
dolls. The girls treat him as a major interruption as he steps over
them to get to the coffeepot. They sit in silence until he leaves. As
soon as the kitchen door is to his back, Karl can hear them laughing
and playing again. He senses that his youngest child's world is
closing to him completely. He goes into the living room and listens
to Susan practicing for church. Seated behind her, he thinks that she
takes up more of the piano bench than she used to. He sips his
coffee, resting the cup on his shelf of a stomach in between gulps.
He watches the minute-hand on their wooden wall clock convulse
every sixty seconds. He swears for the millionth time that he will
begin an exercise regimen tomorrow.
"Tomorrow, I swear," he mutters.
"What was that, dear?" Susan says sweetly, turning halfway around
on the bench to face him.
"You sound lovely," he says.
Jim shows up twenty minutes before dinnertime to get cleaned up.
By the time he sits down with the family to eat, all the healthy athletic
sweat has been sluiced off, and his brown crewcut glistens under the
overhead light. Karen, on the other hand, breezes in just as the milk
is being poured, ignoring her father's disapproving frown. They all
hold hands as grace is said, then fall to their food.
"Who was at the mall?" Karl asks.
Karen turns her fourteen-year-old pout in his direction and says,
"Just some people," as if that should be explanation enough.
Susan leaps in with, "At least we live in a safe area where you can go
to the mall alone, right, sweetie?"
"Yeah," Karen agrees, shoving a forkful of mashed potatoes into her
mouth.
Karl says, "I don't know, I saw a lot of action last night. Bad things
can happen here too, you know." He proceeds to tell a story about a
couple of college kids out driving around drunk at two in the
morning, saved from certain death by himself and Eddie. Jim looks
at him almost worshipfully, and even Lucy seems impressed. Karen
is apparently engrossed by her potatoes. Susan beams and reminds
everyone how brave their father is. Karl can't think of any more
stories, so he returns to his meatloaf.
Karl and Susan have approved most of the Tuesday night sitcoms, so
the family watches TV together during the after-dinner hours. Lucy is
put to bed at nine, Karen and Jim retreat to their rooms to do
whatever it is kids do. Not long after the adults are left alone finally,
Karl gives Susan a dry kiss on the cheek and goes to work.
At eleven-thirty, Eddie and Karl stop a vandal from spray painting his
name on the side of Columbia Mall. They drive around a while
longer, looking for something to be wrong, and nothing is.
Everything is fine in Columbia. Nobody here is poor or unattractive
or unfriendly. Nobody under the age of thirty is overweight. Nobody
comes out this late at night, and nobody really breaks the law. At
least not on Karl's beat. He and Eddie pull up into a favorite speed
trap and watch for the occasional late-night motorist in a big hurry.
Between the hours of one and three, they give two speeding tickets.
They listen to the police-band radio spewing out random bits of other
conversations. They discuss actual crimes they have seen on the
news, and what they would have done differently than the police who
handled them. Eddie says, cracking his neck side to side, "Man, I tell
you, sometimes out here I can feel my hair fall out. Another strand
for every hour of waiting for action."
Karl nods. He tries to crack his neck. There is no popping sound, but
when he turns too far to one side, he gets a cramp and has to knead it
out.
They find themselves yawning and decide to go for coffee. Eddie
drives to the 24-hour coffee shop again. Karl goes in to make the
purchase.
The area behind the counter is deserted. Karl looks around and sees
no one working. He figures if no one shows up, he can always help
himself. It's not as if he pays anyway, and then at least he'd have a
true crime story to tell at dinner, with a few details changed, of
course. Finally, the dark-complected waitress comes out of the back
to help him. Her name tag reads, "Zola." Karl can't guess what
nationality that makes her. Maybe Hispanic. Like "Lola."
"Can I help you, Officer?"
He asks for two black coffees and four danishes, two cheese, two
blueberry.
As she prepares his order, she says, "Why do you take the food to eat
in a car? Why not stay and sit comfortably?" Her faint accent is
driving him crazy; he has no idea what it is.
He says, "We have to keep our eyes open, ma'am."
"Of course," she agrees, setting the wax-paper bag down in front of
him. "But sometime, you stay longer?" She smiles lazily at him.
Close up, he decides she's probably twenty-nine or thirty under the
make-up. Her body's holding up well, though. The waitress uniform
is undone to the third button, and her cleavage is distracting.
Karl forces his eyes to meet hers as he says, "Maybe sometime."
He turns to leave, carrying the bag in one hand, the coffees balanced
in the other. Before walking out, he turns and says, "Zola – what an
interesting name. Where did you come from?"
Her red lips purse as she tells him, "My father is Greek. The name is
from the Greek word for 'alive.'"
"Oh," he says, hurrying out, amazed to find he is suddenly growing
hard inside his dark blue wool pants.
Karl has the next two days off to adjust to sunlight before going on
day shift for four. On his second day off, he almost suggests going
to dinner at the coffee shop, just to get a look at Zola, but he doesn't
want her to see him with his family. He realizes how stupid he's
being, how adolescent. Still, on his first day working, he stops by
twice to see if she's there.
He checks everyday, but apparently, Zola only works nights. He
waits a whole week before seeing her again, and when he does see
her, she is serving a couple of truck drivers in the smoking section
and can't come up to talk to him. Not that she would want to, he
thinks bitterly.
The next night, he and Eddie are sitting in the parking lot of a
McDonalds, sucking down black coffee that could well be four hours
old. Eddie says, "Man, we gotta stop by that diner later, get some
real coffee."
Karl huffs against his frowning upper lip. He thinks again of the
waitress who has been strutting through his fantasies lately, which
wouldn't seem so strange if he hadn't gone the past six years without
even fantasies to get him going. He has been deprived so long that
he had honestly believed he didn't care anymore. Now he knows he
was wrong. Faced with a woman who smiles at him and sends
flirting glances, he can't stand it anymore. He is still picturing her
soft-looking lips arcing up towards his when the black sedan with
fading window stickers of heavy metal bands pulls into the parking
lot beside their cruiser.
The windows are heavily tinted, making it impossible to see inside.
Karl and Eddie instinctively sit up straighter in their bucket seats.
Karl's hand goes to the butt of his weapon, which he has never fired
outside the practice range, but he realizes he's being foolish, so his
hand drops back against his thigh. Eddie is still staring curiously at
the dark windows of the sedan when a tall skinny youth steps out of
the passenger's side.
The young man has shoulder-length brown hair, greasy and
scraggly. His eyes appear bloodshot in the glare of the neon from the
restaurant display. He is obviously on something, Karl thinks,
knowing from years of partnership that Eddie is thinking the same
thing. The youth’s faded and ripped rock and roll t-shirt is illustrated
with an especially imaginative viewpoint of an embalming. As he
saunters past the police car, he waves gaily, mockingly. Karl and
Eddie nod at each other and get out of the car.
They follow the kid into the restaurant and stand behind him in line.
Neither cop knows quite what they have in mind, but they are both
drawn to the boy with his glazed mocking look and unkempt
appearance.
The boy orders ample food for what must be a carload of people. His
voice cracks with youth or intoxication. He counts out crumpled
money with grimy hands. When he has his bags of food firmly in
hand, he turns around to find Karl and Eddie blocking his path with
their ludicrously looming forms.
" 'Evening, Officers," he says slurringly, clearing suppressing a
giggle.
Eddie asks the boy, "Got the munchies, friend?"
"No, Officer," the boy responds indignantly, then adds with a grin,
"Mommy sent me in to buy dinner."
"At a quarter to midnight?"
The boy clears his throat. Maybe he is trying to avoid sounding
adolescent, thinks Karl. "Mommy works late," the boy fairly spits.
Karl looks over at his partner, unsure what is happening anymore.
Eddie seems to be enjoying this maybe a bit too much. He says to
the boy, "Why don't you introduce us to your Mommy, then?"
Karl is mildly surprised to see Eddie go this far, but he supposes the
boredom has taken its toll. Still, something about this situation
seems suddenly ominous, like maybe it could be taken too far.
"Forget it, Eddie," Karl says, but Eddie dismisses him with a nod. He
is gritting his teeth in a parody of a gunslinger's smile.
"Get the coffee, Karl. I'll meet you outside." Eddie follows the boy
closely as they go back outside.
Karl shakes his head. Eddie sometimes takes this cops-and-robbers
thing too seriously, he thinks. He dismisses his feelings as
complacence born of inertia. Nothing can happen outside anyway.
They have no probable cause, and they could do nothing to that car
of delinquents but torment them. Eddie may be in the mood, but Karl
isn’t. He gets back in line and orders another round of shitty coffee.
The gunshot in the parking lot causes Karl to drop his coffee,
scalding himself from thigh to foot. He whirls around to see the
black sedan speeding in reverse to get out of the lot. He can't see
Eddie at all. He runs to the glass doors to see a small spattering of
blood on the sidewalk. When he gets outside, he sees his partner,
crumpled on the ground to the left.
He swings his head back up, looking for the sedan, but it's out of
sight. He runs over to Eddie and crouches on the sidewalk. Eddie
has been shot in the shoulder, at close range. His gun is still
snapped tight in its holster.
Eddie looks up at Karl, bewildered. His mouth opens and closes, and
his eyes betray his fear. Karl is paralyzed with terror for a moment,
then remembers to go to the cruiser to radio for help. He reports
information and quotes codes absently, still staring over at his
partner on the ground. While they wait for the ambulance, he kneels
by Eddie and holds his hand. When the ambo comes, Eddie asks Karl
to go get his wife Angela and bring her to the hospital. His face looks
gray, and he can barely whisper this. Karl looks down at the blood
on his fingers, wipes them on some of the fast food store napkins
and drives to Eddie's house.
After dropping Angela off at the hospital and checking on Eddie's
condition, Karl is uncertain what to do. He knows he is required to
return to the station and file an official report. He figures someone
has called his house by now to tell Susan the news, and she will be
up waiting for him to come home. He wants to drive off and be alone
for a while and think about what went wrong. No, he thinks, scratch
that. I want to see Zola.
He turns the cruiser recklessly across three lanes of the Parkway and
heads for the diner.
Zola saunters over to his table, hips swinging tightly in her powder
blue uniform. Her hair is mussed from her long night of work, and
her lipstick looks dry and dull. The nail polish on her right ring finger
has scraped away against her pen as she's written order after order.
Her eyes look slightly puffy, with indigo circles underneath. There is
a tiny run forming in the foot of her pantyhose. Karl smiles up at
her. He has never seen anything so beautiful.
"Congratulations, Officer. You're my last customer of the night."
"And I get to stay longer this time," he says inanely.
"You are having a danish and coffee?"
"No, just coffee."
Zola sets it down in front of him, asking if he needs any cream. He
tells her he takes it black, and then, to his delight, she sits down
across from him in the booth.
"You don't mind, do you, Officer? My feet are so tired."
"No, not at all," he says. He considers briefly telling her his name,
but realizes he kind of likes the way she calls him "Officer." It's so
powerful-sounding the way she says it, like how he always imagined
it sounding when he was a kid and daydreaming about it.
"Was it a rough night, Officer? You look so sad."
"Actually, it was a very rough night," he tells her, his voice low and
hoarse with grief. "My partner was shot.”
"My God," she murmurs, putting her hand lightly on his for a
moment. "Is he all right?"
"Well, he's at the hospital now, and the doctors say he'll be okay if he
takes it easy for a while. They got the bullet out, and it didn't hit any
major organs. He was very lucky, they said, not to have caught it in
the lungs or the heart. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be telling you these
things. Let's talk about something else."
"Like what?" she asks.
"Anything," he says.
"Well," she says, "how did you become a policeman?"
"How did you become a waitress?" he asks, blushing immediately,
for fear she'll think his question is mocking.
She doesn't take offense, though, she answers him. "My father owns
this place. He doesn't work anymore, though. My sisters and I take
care of him now."
Karl thinks of Karen and Lucy. He wonders if they will be so willing
to take care of him. He asks Zola, "When you were a teenager, did
you and your father get along?"
"Yes, of course. It was my mother I fought with."
"And you and your dad, you've always been close?" he asks
desperately.
"Yes. What about you and your dad?" she teases.
"Oh, well, he's dead now, but yeah, I guess we got along. But that's
different. Men don't have problems like women do. I'd hate to be a
woman. It looks so much harder."
"It is."
"I bet."
Zola leans forward across the table and says, "It is also more
dangerous to be a woman. I have to go home soon. Would you walk
me to my car, Officer? It is still so dark out, and I worry something
will happen."
It has been so long, Karl thinks, so long. He looks at her seriously
and nods.
In the parking lot, Zola stops walking. Karl stops with her, and their
legs press together. Only their sides are touching, for which Karl is
profoundly grateful, because he is beginning to stiffen.
"It is good to see a man who is strong and brave. Policemen are the
last, aren't they?" she says.
Karl is nodding, though he is not sure why. Close up, nearly breath-
close, he sees behind the make-up and notices that Zola is tired, very
tired, and sad. Her eyes and red lips are no longer just seductive to
him but endearing and pitiable. She suddenly seems real, and so
temptingly close. He turns to face her and puts a hand on her hip,
feeling the polyester of her uniform under his fingers. He leans down
and allows his lips to touch hers ever so lightly, and she arches
upward into his arms, fitting deliciously against him. He can't
prevent her feeling his erection, but she doesn't seem disgusted by it
at all; she rubs herself against him. Her hands are stroking his neck,
playing with his inch-short hair, dipping below his tight collar. They
are kissing deeply now, their tongues exploring one another. She is
the first woman he has kissed since 1973, when he met Susan. In
twenty-four years, he hasn't known another woman's touch. In six
years, he hasn't known any.
Suddenly, he grows aware of the heat he would find beneath Zola's
uniform, if he could just take it off, and his own too, and allow
himself to feel it there. Alive, he thinks, I am really alive, I still have
desires and drives. I am still a man.
Zola leans away and whispers, "I want a man who will take care of
me."
Her eyes become deep pools of mud-colored quicksand. He tries to
convince himself that he really doesn't want to do this, he wants to
go home and sleep off his desire beside Susan. He really wants to
return to his life, his routine. He doesn't want to taste this strange
woman's flesh or feel her body writhing beneath his. He really
doesn't want that.
She says a little louder, more aggressively, "I want you."
Suddenly his arousal is a pressing need, and he wills his feet
forward, nodding absently. They reach her car, and she drives the
few miles to her apartment.
She lives on the fourth floor, but he barely registers the climb,
because they are kissing all the way up the stairs. His top two shirt
buttons are undone, and his zipper is lowering from the pressure
behind it.
They stumble inside her dingy home. She keeps it as nice as she can,
but this is a far cry from his suburban utopia just across town. The
sofa material is frayed and stained in patches. The overhead light
flickers three times before springing dismally to life. She fumbles
with the deadlock, and they head through the kitchen to the
bedroom. There are several days' worth of dirty plates in the sink.
When they reach the bedroom, she unbuttons his shirt the rest of the
way and slides it off his shoulders. She pulls his white cotton
undershirt out from his waistband and slips her hands underneath to
feel his chest. At first, he tries to suck in his gut out of
embarrassment, but he realizes he isn't making enough of a
difference, so he relaxes again. She doesn't seem to mind after all,
she is scratching his belly lightly with her nails.
She shrugs out of her own uniform next. Her bra is natty looking,
little threads popping off the fabric. He can see the tops of her dark
nipples through the lace. His hands reach out almost of their own
accord to squeeze her sweet breasts. He leans down to kiss them,
and he can taste sweat and smoke on her skin. He clumsily plays
with the catch on the back of the brassiere, and as he finally gets the
bra off, she deftly removes his belt and pants. He turns his attention
to her cotton panties, and she slides a single fingertip inside his
boxers, tracing a line up his cock. He shudders and sighs. The last
shreds of fabric almost dissolve from their bodies now, his need is
so great. He pushes her down onto the unmade bed with its purple
sheets. She wraps her arms around his neck, and he falls into her,
like quicksand.
When Karl finally gets home, Susan is sitting at the kitchen table
biting her nails. She gave that up years ago, but she still reverts to it
in times of trouble. When Karl walks in the door and sees this, he
knows for the first time that what he has done is not undoable. As he
takes in the sight of her, he finds he is not just comfortable with this
thought, but relieved.
"Karl," she half-screams, "where have you been! I've been so
worried, I heard about Eddie, and I thought they'd gotten the
information wrong and you were dead too!"
The funny thing is, as he stares blankly down at her, he feels dead.
Not physically, just inside, as if he were totally detached from
everything. He feels like one of those creatures in the horror movie
he'd caught Karen trying to watch last week, with all the dead people
eating live people.
He says, "Dead? Eddie's not dead-"
The house becomes ominously silent. He hears the humming of the
refrigerator, the ticking of the clock in the next room. Susan is
staring expectantly at him, looking for some explanation of what he
has been doing these past four hours.
He thinks about the smear of lipstick marking his collar. Susan
hasn't seen it yet, but what will he say when she does? A hooker
lunged at me as we put her handcuffs on, or I ran into an old friend of
ours, and she got her makeup on my shirt as we hugged. The
excuses are ludicrous, but he knows she will accept them, gratefully,
even. Anything is better than the truth. He thinks of sliding into
Zola, how clean and fresh and vital it had made him feel. Then he
thinks of sliding into bed beside Susan yet again, feeling old and
hopeless and undesired. Feeling like someone's security, a teddy
bear or warm blanket.
He says again, "Eddie's not dead."
"Yes, he is," she insists, "I got the call an hour and a half ago. He
hemorrhaged in the emergency room, apparently not long after you
left there. And where have you been since?"
At last, he sees her notice it. She reaches a hand up exploringly,
innocently, like a child reaching up to touch an elephant's trunk for
the first time. She delicately fingers his collar. The lipstick is like an
artifact in a museum, a piece of evidence in a court room, a bright red
badge. She touches it and stares at it.
"Karl," she whispers. It is meant as a question, a plea for
explanation. He can hear the tears creeping in behind her voice. The
tears are what finally breaks him.
"Ah-what difference does it make to you? You don't want me
anyway."
Hurt crumples her face as she says, "Want you? You're my husband.
You're all I want in the world."
"I'm not your husband, I'm your prisoner. And you..." he looks dead
into her eyes, "haven't touched me in years. After a while I stopped
even wanting you to. We've let ourselves go soft, Su, in every sense
of the word."
Susan looks as if she may faint, and Karl instinctively moves forward
to catch her. He stops short and watches her grab onto the back of a
chair for balance. She looks broken, like one of Lucy's dolls after
much experimentation. The tears are snaking down along her clean
cheeks. She wipes them away and asks suddenly, "Who is she,
Karl? Do I know her?"
"No. I don't-" he stops himself. He had been about to say, I don't
even know her.
"Who is she?" Susan says again, her voice going desperately shrill.
Karl doesn't want to share any of Zola with Susan, so he merely says,
"She's my second chance. What's left of me. She doesn't know how
miserable, how lame and useless I've become. She only knows me as
strong and important and-"
He meets her eyes and breaks off. She is giving him that look he
hates, the knowing, imperious, condemning glance that makes him
feel more like her son than her husband. "What are you going to tell
the kids?" she asks.
He thinks about it and realizes that until this very moment, he hadn't
thought of them at all, of their being affected by his actions. Perhaps
he felt that he was such a small part of their lives that he couldn't
affect them. He mumbles, "I don't know yet," avoiding her stare. She
stands there another minute, waiting for him to say something else,
then retreats upstairs.
Karl sits heavily on a wooden kitchen chair. Eddie is dead, he thinks.
The bleakness of this thought is balanced by the vitality of another: I
am alive. I am alive. He sees Susan's coffee on the table and sticks a
finger in it. It is cold. He sucks the liquid from his finger without
tasting it. He is still tasting foreign skin. He thinks that his palate is
forever changed.
He looks at his watch. The kids will be home in another hour and a
half. That gives him plenty of time to get packed. He has time to just
sit here in the kitchen for a while, just stare out his familiar window at
the familiar view before he trades it in.
dark blue uniform straining at the seams, his walkie-talkie buzzing
with a dozen disembodied voices. As he steps up to the counter, he
hears the dull clack of his regulation shoes against the shiny purple
tiles.
At the counter, he leans his pendulous torso against the rail. The
man behind the pastry display case says, " 'Evening, Officer. Can I
get you some danish? Looks like you've already got some rolls."
Karl turns crimson even as he nods. He hears a high-pitched giggle
from off to his left. He turns and sees a waitress, resting her feet in
an empty booth. She is young, could be still in her twenties, and
dark-skinned, maybe Filipino or Indian. She flashes him a teasing
wink, and he turns his gaze back to the counter top. No doubt
expecting special police protection, the man does not let Karl pay for
the danishes. Karl doesn't try all that hard to give him the money,
anyway. He is still blushing from the man's comment and the young
waitress' laugh.
Back in the squad car, Karl's partner Eddie tears into the bag and
devours an entire danish in three large chomps. "Not bad, Karl, but I
still don't know why we just can't get donuts."
"Too cliche," Karl answers as they return to their duties, driving in
ever-expanding concentric circles, searching for some form of
lawlessness in somnolent Columbia.
Susan is waiting for Karl in their bed. The kids are up, taking turns in
the bathroom with almost infuriating patience, then filing down to
the kitchen to eat cereal with little marshmallows. Karl crawls under
the covers with Susan and slides his potbelly up close to her soft
back.
"Was it a rough night, honey?" she asks, her familiar voice muffled
by sleep.
"Sure was," he tells her. He slips his hand between her stomach and
her sagging breasts. Years before she had possessed a body that
could stir his lust from across a room. Now, up close and touching,
he could feel nothing.
After their last child, Susan had just not worked to take the weight
off. He didn't say anything about it, but surely she had noticed his
declined interest in sex? As he had pored over this, the thought
came to him: she noticed, but she didn't care. Perhaps she was even
relieved. He found himself wondering if she had always found sex
with him to be a chore. If so, he had decided, she needn't be
bothered with it anymore. He had resolved to wait until she made the
first move. She never had. It was around that time he too had begun
to gain weight.
Now, lying indifferently beside his wife, he remembers the dark-
skinned waitress and her little laugh. He falls asleep wondering if
she had even given him a second thought after he left, a middle-aged,
overweight, uniform cop who never made detective.
An hour later, Susan awakens to the rasping sound of her husband's
snoring against her left ear. She gently extricates herself from his
embrace and heads downstairs for a cup of coffee. On her way down,
she straightens the frames the kids have brushed askew on their trips
up and down the steps. One is a counter-cross stitch she made a few
years ago which proclaims "As for me and my house, we will serve
the Lord." Another bears a similar message in paint and was done by
the oldest of the children in a long-ago art class. Another is a family
portrait taken a few years before at Sears.
The kids don't need Susan's help to get ready in the mornings
anymore. Even the youngest is nine now and can dress herself. The
oldest is sixteen and doesn't mind dropping his sisters at school,
since his school starts half an hour after theirs, and driving them
entitles him to use the car. She brews a fresh pot of coffee and
settles down in the living room to watch television. She is mindful of
the volume. Karl has been working the night shift for three straight
days, and he needs his sleep.
Karl still has trouble understanding his daughters. The son is easy;
Karl is glad he came first. Jim plays football in the winter, basketball
in the fall, and baseball in the spring. Jim dates nice girls and always
brings them home first for introductions. Jim wears tee-shirts and
jeans and keeps his hair short.
The girls are different. Karl had never imagined how difficult it would
be to relate to them. They are always needing new clothes, new
hairstyles, new shoes. They don't date yet, but moon over the boys
on TV and in the movies. They constantly want rides to the mall or
the skating rink, and the older one, Karen, insists now that she wants
to be a vegetarian. Lucy is only nine and has no such desires at this
point, but Karl sees it on the horizon. She has always been the most
daring and outrageous of the children. He imagines that if any of his
kids will ever come home with a tattoo or a live-in boyfriend, it will
be Lucy.
When he awakens in the afternoon, the kids have just gotten home
from school, and Karen is pestering him for five bucks to go to the
mall with her friends.
"What can you get for five bucks?" he wants to know.
"We aren't going shopping," she says, "we're just going to hang out."
"Then why do you need any money?"
"Just in case," she says.
These are his least favorite phrases, "hang out," and "just in case."
To his ears, they always translate as "You're too old to understand."
What he hates most about it is that he doesn't understand. He hands
her three somewhat sticky dollar bills and sends her away.
After he showers and dresses, Karl wanders downstairs, wincing at
his reflection in the hallway mirror. Even his jeans are getting too
tight now. His sweatshirt is positively taut. He pats his belly and
tries to suck it in. No such luck. He relaxes and sighs.
Jim is at basketball practice, Karen is at the mall, Susan is playing
hymns in the living room, and Lucy is playing Barbie in the kitchen
with her friends Sara and Ingrid, all three girls as blond as their
dolls. The girls treat him as a major interruption as he steps over
them to get to the coffeepot. They sit in silence until he leaves. As
soon as the kitchen door is to his back, Karl can hear them laughing
and playing again. He senses that his youngest child's world is
closing to him completely. He goes into the living room and listens
to Susan practicing for church. Seated behind her, he thinks that she
takes up more of the piano bench than she used to. He sips his
coffee, resting the cup on his shelf of a stomach in between gulps.
He watches the minute-hand on their wooden wall clock convulse
every sixty seconds. He swears for the millionth time that he will
begin an exercise regimen tomorrow.
"Tomorrow, I swear," he mutters.
"What was that, dear?" Susan says sweetly, turning halfway around
on the bench to face him.
"You sound lovely," he says.
Jim shows up twenty minutes before dinnertime to get cleaned up.
By the time he sits down with the family to eat, all the healthy athletic
sweat has been sluiced off, and his brown crewcut glistens under the
overhead light. Karen, on the other hand, breezes in just as the milk
is being poured, ignoring her father's disapproving frown. They all
hold hands as grace is said, then fall to their food.
"Who was at the mall?" Karl asks.
Karen turns her fourteen-year-old pout in his direction and says,
"Just some people," as if that should be explanation enough.
Susan leaps in with, "At least we live in a safe area where you can go
to the mall alone, right, sweetie?"
"Yeah," Karen agrees, shoving a forkful of mashed potatoes into her
mouth.
Karl says, "I don't know, I saw a lot of action last night. Bad things
can happen here too, you know." He proceeds to tell a story about a
couple of college kids out driving around drunk at two in the
morning, saved from certain death by himself and Eddie. Jim looks
at him almost worshipfully, and even Lucy seems impressed. Karen
is apparently engrossed by her potatoes. Susan beams and reminds
everyone how brave their father is. Karl can't think of any more
stories, so he returns to his meatloaf.
Karl and Susan have approved most of the Tuesday night sitcoms, so
the family watches TV together during the after-dinner hours. Lucy is
put to bed at nine, Karen and Jim retreat to their rooms to do
whatever it is kids do. Not long after the adults are left alone finally,
Karl gives Susan a dry kiss on the cheek and goes to work.
At eleven-thirty, Eddie and Karl stop a vandal from spray painting his
name on the side of Columbia Mall. They drive around a while
longer, looking for something to be wrong, and nothing is.
Everything is fine in Columbia. Nobody here is poor or unattractive
or unfriendly. Nobody under the age of thirty is overweight. Nobody
comes out this late at night, and nobody really breaks the law. At
least not on Karl's beat. He and Eddie pull up into a favorite speed
trap and watch for the occasional late-night motorist in a big hurry.
Between the hours of one and three, they give two speeding tickets.
They listen to the police-band radio spewing out random bits of other
conversations. They discuss actual crimes they have seen on the
news, and what they would have done differently than the police who
handled them. Eddie says, cracking his neck side to side, "Man, I tell
you, sometimes out here I can feel my hair fall out. Another strand
for every hour of waiting for action."
Karl nods. He tries to crack his neck. There is no popping sound, but
when he turns too far to one side, he gets a cramp and has to knead it
out.
They find themselves yawning and decide to go for coffee. Eddie
drives to the 24-hour coffee shop again. Karl goes in to make the
purchase.
The area behind the counter is deserted. Karl looks around and sees
no one working. He figures if no one shows up, he can always help
himself. It's not as if he pays anyway, and then at least he'd have a
true crime story to tell at dinner, with a few details changed, of
course. Finally, the dark-complected waitress comes out of the back
to help him. Her name tag reads, "Zola." Karl can't guess what
nationality that makes her. Maybe Hispanic. Like "Lola."
"Can I help you, Officer?"
He asks for two black coffees and four danishes, two cheese, two
blueberry.
As she prepares his order, she says, "Why do you take the food to eat
in a car? Why not stay and sit comfortably?" Her faint accent is
driving him crazy; he has no idea what it is.
He says, "We have to keep our eyes open, ma'am."
"Of course," she agrees, setting the wax-paper bag down in front of
him. "But sometime, you stay longer?" She smiles lazily at him.
Close up, he decides she's probably twenty-nine or thirty under the
make-up. Her body's holding up well, though. The waitress uniform
is undone to the third button, and her cleavage is distracting.
Karl forces his eyes to meet hers as he says, "Maybe sometime."
He turns to leave, carrying the bag in one hand, the coffees balanced
in the other. Before walking out, he turns and says, "Zola – what an
interesting name. Where did you come from?"
Her red lips purse as she tells him, "My father is Greek. The name is
from the Greek word for 'alive.'"
"Oh," he says, hurrying out, amazed to find he is suddenly growing
hard inside his dark blue wool pants.
Karl has the next two days off to adjust to sunlight before going on
day shift for four. On his second day off, he almost suggests going
to dinner at the coffee shop, just to get a look at Zola, but he doesn't
want her to see him with his family. He realizes how stupid he's
being, how adolescent. Still, on his first day working, he stops by
twice to see if she's there.
He checks everyday, but apparently, Zola only works nights. He
waits a whole week before seeing her again, and when he does see
her, she is serving a couple of truck drivers in the smoking section
and can't come up to talk to him. Not that she would want to, he
thinks bitterly.
The next night, he and Eddie are sitting in the parking lot of a
McDonalds, sucking down black coffee that could well be four hours
old. Eddie says, "Man, we gotta stop by that diner later, get some
real coffee."
Karl huffs against his frowning upper lip. He thinks again of the
waitress who has been strutting through his fantasies lately, which
wouldn't seem so strange if he hadn't gone the past six years without
even fantasies to get him going. He has been deprived so long that
he had honestly believed he didn't care anymore. Now he knows he
was wrong. Faced with a woman who smiles at him and sends
flirting glances, he can't stand it anymore. He is still picturing her
soft-looking lips arcing up towards his when the black sedan with
fading window stickers of heavy metal bands pulls into the parking
lot beside their cruiser.
The windows are heavily tinted, making it impossible to see inside.
Karl and Eddie instinctively sit up straighter in their bucket seats.
Karl's hand goes to the butt of his weapon, which he has never fired
outside the practice range, but he realizes he's being foolish, so his
hand drops back against his thigh. Eddie is still staring curiously at
the dark windows of the sedan when a tall skinny youth steps out of
the passenger's side.
The young man has shoulder-length brown hair, greasy and
scraggly. His eyes appear bloodshot in the glare of the neon from the
restaurant display. He is obviously on something, Karl thinks,
knowing from years of partnership that Eddie is thinking the same
thing. The youth’s faded and ripped rock and roll t-shirt is illustrated
with an especially imaginative viewpoint of an embalming. As he
saunters past the police car, he waves gaily, mockingly. Karl and
Eddie nod at each other and get out of the car.
They follow the kid into the restaurant and stand behind him in line.
Neither cop knows quite what they have in mind, but they are both
drawn to the boy with his glazed mocking look and unkempt
appearance.
The boy orders ample food for what must be a carload of people. His
voice cracks with youth or intoxication. He counts out crumpled
money with grimy hands. When he has his bags of food firmly in
hand, he turns around to find Karl and Eddie blocking his path with
their ludicrously looming forms.
" 'Evening, Officers," he says slurringly, clearing suppressing a
giggle.
Eddie asks the boy, "Got the munchies, friend?"
"No, Officer," the boy responds indignantly, then adds with a grin,
"Mommy sent me in to buy dinner."
"At a quarter to midnight?"
The boy clears his throat. Maybe he is trying to avoid sounding
adolescent, thinks Karl. "Mommy works late," the boy fairly spits.
Karl looks over at his partner, unsure what is happening anymore.
Eddie seems to be enjoying this maybe a bit too much. He says to
the boy, "Why don't you introduce us to your Mommy, then?"
Karl is mildly surprised to see Eddie go this far, but he supposes the
boredom has taken its toll. Still, something about this situation
seems suddenly ominous, like maybe it could be taken too far.
"Forget it, Eddie," Karl says, but Eddie dismisses him with a nod. He
is gritting his teeth in a parody of a gunslinger's smile.
"Get the coffee, Karl. I'll meet you outside." Eddie follows the boy
closely as they go back outside.
Karl shakes his head. Eddie sometimes takes this cops-and-robbers
thing too seriously, he thinks. He dismisses his feelings as
complacence born of inertia. Nothing can happen outside anyway.
They have no probable cause, and they could do nothing to that car
of delinquents but torment them. Eddie may be in the mood, but Karl
isn’t. He gets back in line and orders another round of shitty coffee.
The gunshot in the parking lot causes Karl to drop his coffee,
scalding himself from thigh to foot. He whirls around to see the
black sedan speeding in reverse to get out of the lot. He can't see
Eddie at all. He runs to the glass doors to see a small spattering of
blood on the sidewalk. When he gets outside, he sees his partner,
crumpled on the ground to the left.
He swings his head back up, looking for the sedan, but it's out of
sight. He runs over to Eddie and crouches on the sidewalk. Eddie
has been shot in the shoulder, at close range. His gun is still
snapped tight in its holster.
Eddie looks up at Karl, bewildered. His mouth opens and closes, and
his eyes betray his fear. Karl is paralyzed with terror for a moment,
then remembers to go to the cruiser to radio for help. He reports
information and quotes codes absently, still staring over at his
partner on the ground. While they wait for the ambulance, he kneels
by Eddie and holds his hand. When the ambo comes, Eddie asks Karl
to go get his wife Angela and bring her to the hospital. His face looks
gray, and he can barely whisper this. Karl looks down at the blood
on his fingers, wipes them on some of the fast food store napkins
and drives to Eddie's house.
After dropping Angela off at the hospital and checking on Eddie's
condition, Karl is uncertain what to do. He knows he is required to
return to the station and file an official report. He figures someone
has called his house by now to tell Susan the news, and she will be
up waiting for him to come home. He wants to drive off and be alone
for a while and think about what went wrong. No, he thinks, scratch
that. I want to see Zola.
He turns the cruiser recklessly across three lanes of the Parkway and
heads for the diner.
Zola saunters over to his table, hips swinging tightly in her powder
blue uniform. Her hair is mussed from her long night of work, and
her lipstick looks dry and dull. The nail polish on her right ring finger
has scraped away against her pen as she's written order after order.
Her eyes look slightly puffy, with indigo circles underneath. There is
a tiny run forming in the foot of her pantyhose. Karl smiles up at
her. He has never seen anything so beautiful.
"Congratulations, Officer. You're my last customer of the night."
"And I get to stay longer this time," he says inanely.
"You are having a danish and coffee?"
"No, just coffee."
Zola sets it down in front of him, asking if he needs any cream. He
tells her he takes it black, and then, to his delight, she sits down
across from him in the booth.
"You don't mind, do you, Officer? My feet are so tired."
"No, not at all," he says. He considers briefly telling her his name,
but realizes he kind of likes the way she calls him "Officer." It's so
powerful-sounding the way she says it, like how he always imagined
it sounding when he was a kid and daydreaming about it.
"Was it a rough night, Officer? You look so sad."
"Actually, it was a very rough night," he tells her, his voice low and
hoarse with grief. "My partner was shot.”
"My God," she murmurs, putting her hand lightly on his for a
moment. "Is he all right?"
"Well, he's at the hospital now, and the doctors say he'll be okay if he
takes it easy for a while. They got the bullet out, and it didn't hit any
major organs. He was very lucky, they said, not to have caught it in
the lungs or the heart. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be telling you these
things. Let's talk about something else."
"Like what?" she asks.
"Anything," he says.
"Well," she says, "how did you become a policeman?"
"How did you become a waitress?" he asks, blushing immediately,
for fear she'll think his question is mocking.
She doesn't take offense, though, she answers him. "My father owns
this place. He doesn't work anymore, though. My sisters and I take
care of him now."
Karl thinks of Karen and Lucy. He wonders if they will be so willing
to take care of him. He asks Zola, "When you were a teenager, did
you and your father get along?"
"Yes, of course. It was my mother I fought with."
"And you and your dad, you've always been close?" he asks
desperately.
"Yes. What about you and your dad?" she teases.
"Oh, well, he's dead now, but yeah, I guess we got along. But that's
different. Men don't have problems like women do. I'd hate to be a
woman. It looks so much harder."
"It is."
"I bet."
Zola leans forward across the table and says, "It is also more
dangerous to be a woman. I have to go home soon. Would you walk
me to my car, Officer? It is still so dark out, and I worry something
will happen."
It has been so long, Karl thinks, so long. He looks at her seriously
and nods.
In the parking lot, Zola stops walking. Karl stops with her, and their
legs press together. Only their sides are touching, for which Karl is
profoundly grateful, because he is beginning to stiffen.
"It is good to see a man who is strong and brave. Policemen are the
last, aren't they?" she says.
Karl is nodding, though he is not sure why. Close up, nearly breath-
close, he sees behind the make-up and notices that Zola is tired, very
tired, and sad. Her eyes and red lips are no longer just seductive to
him but endearing and pitiable. She suddenly seems real, and so
temptingly close. He turns to face her and puts a hand on her hip,
feeling the polyester of her uniform under his fingers. He leans down
and allows his lips to touch hers ever so lightly, and she arches
upward into his arms, fitting deliciously against him. He can't
prevent her feeling his erection, but she doesn't seem disgusted by it
at all; she rubs herself against him. Her hands are stroking his neck,
playing with his inch-short hair, dipping below his tight collar. They
are kissing deeply now, their tongues exploring one another. She is
the first woman he has kissed since 1973, when he met Susan. In
twenty-four years, he hasn't known another woman's touch. In six
years, he hasn't known any.
Suddenly, he grows aware of the heat he would find beneath Zola's
uniform, if he could just take it off, and his own too, and allow
himself to feel it there. Alive, he thinks, I am really alive, I still have
desires and drives. I am still a man.
Zola leans away and whispers, "I want a man who will take care of
me."
Her eyes become deep pools of mud-colored quicksand. He tries to
convince himself that he really doesn't want to do this, he wants to
go home and sleep off his desire beside Susan. He really wants to
return to his life, his routine. He doesn't want to taste this strange
woman's flesh or feel her body writhing beneath his. He really
doesn't want that.
She says a little louder, more aggressively, "I want you."
Suddenly his arousal is a pressing need, and he wills his feet
forward, nodding absently. They reach her car, and she drives the
few miles to her apartment.
She lives on the fourth floor, but he barely registers the climb,
because they are kissing all the way up the stairs. His top two shirt
buttons are undone, and his zipper is lowering from the pressure
behind it.
They stumble inside her dingy home. She keeps it as nice as she can,
but this is a far cry from his suburban utopia just across town. The
sofa material is frayed and stained in patches. The overhead light
flickers three times before springing dismally to life. She fumbles
with the deadlock, and they head through the kitchen to the
bedroom. There are several days' worth of dirty plates in the sink.
When they reach the bedroom, she unbuttons his shirt the rest of the
way and slides it off his shoulders. She pulls his white cotton
undershirt out from his waistband and slips her hands underneath to
feel his chest. At first, he tries to suck in his gut out of
embarrassment, but he realizes he isn't making enough of a
difference, so he relaxes again. She doesn't seem to mind after all,
she is scratching his belly lightly with her nails.
She shrugs out of her own uniform next. Her bra is natty looking,
little threads popping off the fabric. He can see the tops of her dark
nipples through the lace. His hands reach out almost of their own
accord to squeeze her sweet breasts. He leans down to kiss them,
and he can taste sweat and smoke on her skin. He clumsily plays
with the catch on the back of the brassiere, and as he finally gets the
bra off, she deftly removes his belt and pants. He turns his attention
to her cotton panties, and she slides a single fingertip inside his
boxers, tracing a line up his cock. He shudders and sighs. The last
shreds of fabric almost dissolve from their bodies now, his need is
so great. He pushes her down onto the unmade bed with its purple
sheets. She wraps her arms around his neck, and he falls into her,
like quicksand.
When Karl finally gets home, Susan is sitting at the kitchen table
biting her nails. She gave that up years ago, but she still reverts to it
in times of trouble. When Karl walks in the door and sees this, he
knows for the first time that what he has done is not undoable. As he
takes in the sight of her, he finds he is not just comfortable with this
thought, but relieved.
"Karl," she half-screams, "where have you been! I've been so
worried, I heard about Eddie, and I thought they'd gotten the
information wrong and you were dead too!"
The funny thing is, as he stares blankly down at her, he feels dead.
Not physically, just inside, as if he were totally detached from
everything. He feels like one of those creatures in the horror movie
he'd caught Karen trying to watch last week, with all the dead people
eating live people.
He says, "Dead? Eddie's not dead-"
The house becomes ominously silent. He hears the humming of the
refrigerator, the ticking of the clock in the next room. Susan is
staring expectantly at him, looking for some explanation of what he
has been doing these past four hours.
He thinks about the smear of lipstick marking his collar. Susan
hasn't seen it yet, but what will he say when she does? A hooker
lunged at me as we put her handcuffs on, or I ran into an old friend of
ours, and she got her makeup on my shirt as we hugged. The
excuses are ludicrous, but he knows she will accept them, gratefully,
even. Anything is better than the truth. He thinks of sliding into
Zola, how clean and fresh and vital it had made him feel. Then he
thinks of sliding into bed beside Susan yet again, feeling old and
hopeless and undesired. Feeling like someone's security, a teddy
bear or warm blanket.
He says again, "Eddie's not dead."
"Yes, he is," she insists, "I got the call an hour and a half ago. He
hemorrhaged in the emergency room, apparently not long after you
left there. And where have you been since?"
At last, he sees her notice it. She reaches a hand up exploringly,
innocently, like a child reaching up to touch an elephant's trunk for
the first time. She delicately fingers his collar. The lipstick is like an
artifact in a museum, a piece of evidence in a court room, a bright red
badge. She touches it and stares at it.
"Karl," she whispers. It is meant as a question, a plea for
explanation. He can hear the tears creeping in behind her voice. The
tears are what finally breaks him.
"Ah-what difference does it make to you? You don't want me
anyway."
Hurt crumples her face as she says, "Want you? You're my husband.
You're all I want in the world."
"I'm not your husband, I'm your prisoner. And you..." he looks dead
into her eyes, "haven't touched me in years. After a while I stopped
even wanting you to. We've let ourselves go soft, Su, in every sense
of the word."
Susan looks as if she may faint, and Karl instinctively moves forward
to catch her. He stops short and watches her grab onto the back of a
chair for balance. She looks broken, like one of Lucy's dolls after
much experimentation. The tears are snaking down along her clean
cheeks. She wipes them away and asks suddenly, "Who is she,
Karl? Do I know her?"
"No. I don't-" he stops himself. He had been about to say, I don't
even know her.
"Who is she?" Susan says again, her voice going desperately shrill.
Karl doesn't want to share any of Zola with Susan, so he merely says,
"She's my second chance. What's left of me. She doesn't know how
miserable, how lame and useless I've become. She only knows me as
strong and important and-"
He meets her eyes and breaks off. She is giving him that look he
hates, the knowing, imperious, condemning glance that makes him
feel more like her son than her husband. "What are you going to tell
the kids?" she asks.
He thinks about it and realizes that until this very moment, he hadn't
thought of them at all, of their being affected by his actions. Perhaps
he felt that he was such a small part of their lives that he couldn't
affect them. He mumbles, "I don't know yet," avoiding her stare. She
stands there another minute, waiting for him to say something else,
then retreats upstairs.
Karl sits heavily on a wooden kitchen chair. Eddie is dead, he thinks.
The bleakness of this thought is balanced by the vitality of another: I
am alive. I am alive. He sees Susan's coffee on the table and sticks a
finger in it. It is cold. He sucks the liquid from his finger without
tasting it. He is still tasting foreign skin. He thinks that his palate is
forever changed.
He looks at his watch. The kids will be home in another hour and a
half. That gives him plenty of time to get packed. He has time to just
sit here in the kitchen for a while, just stare out his familiar window at
the familiar view before he trades it in.
