Chapter #7Into Character by: Seuzz   Nothing more of interest happens at the station before your shift ends at four-thirty. You fight the traffic and the heavy snows all the way back out to your subdivision, wishing you could blow past everyone with lights and siren. Three blocks from your house park you park behind a gym.
It may be a little less crowded than usual, thanks to the weather, but there's enough activity: Lotsa cursing and heavy THWOCKing noises from the handball and racquetball courts; from the boxing rooms comes the rattle of gloved fists against speed bags. In the locker room you change into a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers, and gratefully lap up the sour, tangy perfume of dirty socks, workout clothes, and rubber-soled shoes. Ray Sullivan may not notice the slight change he makes in his swagger as you walk into the weight room, but you do: less gorilla and more cat.
Marcus, Ray's usual spotting partner, isn't in, so you start with curls. The gym recently got some new weights, and the discs are shiny and undented, a marked contrast to the somber, grey workout clothes you're sporting. You watch your form carefully in the mirror as you cycle through a short number of very heavy reps. Your lean, taut face grows redder and redder, and your hair bristles slightly. Muscles bulge and flex and run with fire as you pump and push your way from the free weights to the machines and finally to the barbells. Marcus never shows up, so you slap one guy on the back of the shoulder, and with a jerk of the chin pull him over to the benches to spot you. With soft murmurs he encourages you, and when you're done you return the favor for him, after stripping the bar of a quarter of its weight.
Your session is brisk and efficient, and you're done inside of forty-five minutes; you spend the balance of the hour you've budgeted for exercise on a stationary bike, more to unwind than to accomplish anything. Then it's a three-minute cold shower with plain soap for your body and scalp, and a change into jeans and a clean shirt. Before leaving, though, you go up to the third floor, to the one big studio given over to the women members.
It's a corner loft, lined on two sides with mirrors and on other two with windows. Given the weather, you're not surprised that the current class has only three people in it. You don't recognized any of the trio, but you're not there for them. You're there—as Ray is almost every night—for Ms. Bellbottom.
"Why, does she wear bell bottoms?" Danny had asked when Ray pointed her to him and shared his pet name for the yoga/aerobics instructor.
"No. Just look at the hard curves of her ass. And don't tell me they don't ring your chimes."
Danny had laughed, and said nothing more until Ray was through burning holes in her bell-like bottom with his eyes. But then he'd said, "She looks like Marnie. Hey, I'm trying to give you a good reason for eye raping her."
"You think Marnie looks that good?"
Danny had guffawed. "Like I got a good answer to that question!"
But Ray had seen Danny's point, and you do too as you sear your retinas with her image. Like Ray's wife, she is short and rounded; unlike Marnie these days, she is also firm and strong. The unpleasant word "troll" has occurred to Ray in connection with her, and with her flying brunette hair she does look fierce enough to leap from the underbrush and wrestle a man on horseback to the ground. My God, but you'd love it if she wrenched you to the ground and into the grass and let you plant a hard stalk inside her bush. You bet she's a screamer, too. As for her face—
Well, you've never gotten a good look at it. She leads her classes with her back to the door, and she faces a wall with windows. Which is good. If she saw the way you stop by the studio three times a week to stare at her, she might complain to the management.
Not that Bobby would likely do anything about a complaint, not after the way you hospitalized that creep who'd been bothering his daughter.
Your eyes are starting to hurt by now, so with a grunt and a hard swallow you shuffle back to the stairwell and leave for home.
* * * * *
Marnie is there by the time you arrive. "Oh, my love-munchkin brought me dinner," she says—as she says every night—and takes the cardboard takeout box from you. "Rotisserie chicken and mashed potatoes and— Oh my God, is that—?"
"Stoltzfus was open, can you believe it?" you say as she rubs a finger over the two slices of chocolate cake.
"Yum!" She sets the box on the countertop and gives you a quick full-body hug. Her crown barely touches the bottom of your chin, and she kisses you just below the breastbone. "Oh, someone's getting lucky tonight, and it isn't just me!" You bury your face in her hair so that she won't see your grimace.
You eat in front of the TV, watching a reality show that she'd recorded, scooping up food off of paper plates. She talks all during the meal, about her day at the elementary school—where she's an administrative assistant—and complains about her colleagues and the students and their parents while keeping her eyes glued to the screen. You don't even bother to grunt during the pauses, for you don't think she expects you to listen. Certainly, it's been years since she asked Ray how his day was. If she did, her problems might shrivel into triviality.
After you're done eating, she curls her feet under her and reads a book with one eye while watching the muted TV with the other. You take out the garbage and stand on the stoop, smoking a small cigar while watching the snow fall heavily and blackly under the orange-hued street lights.
While you're thus occupied, your cell rings. "Hey, how're things on Planet Sullivan," Danny drawls.
In the background you can hear honky-tonk music. "Christ, are you at a bar?"
"Sure! Come on over, I'm at Harry's. Take your face off, Knotts, lemme buy you a round of beers and take you home with me."
"Can't you find one there that's willing?"
"It's dead, man. Fuckin' snow."
"Go home, Danny. We got a big day tomorrow." You hang up, and ignore it when it rings again. And again.
At nine-thirty you peel down to t-shirt and briefs and slip into bed; Marnie follows twenty minutes later after the usual extensive scrubbing session in the bathroom. You lie on your back with your arm behind your head and watch as she puts out the light and walks in front of the brightly lit window toward her side of the bed. She was once small and lithe. Now she's small and chubby. She's also entirely forgotten her promise to you about getting "lucky" tonight, and curls up into a small ball.
You stare at the ceiling, almost unblinking, for a good quarter hour.
You remember when erections used to happen without trying, when they happened at the worst possible times. You remember when you didn't have to work yourself up to one. You bore a pattern into the ceiling with a very hard stare. It's a tight, firm, rounded pattern, a very animated pattern, a silhouette that screams with ardor when you touch it with imaginary fingers.
You turn onto your side and grip Marnie hard by the shoulder, wrenching her onto her back. She groans sleepily, but you ignore her. You peel your underwear off and clamber onto her with your eyes squeezed shut. She groans more softly as you rub up and down her, and she makes a little rumbling noise in the back of her throat when you guide your member inside her. But she gets no louder than that, which is fine, because then her moans don't interfere with the lusty screams from Miss Bellbottom you hear in your head.
* * * * *
"So I said, show me your sombrero and I'll tear up the ticket."
Mike Andrews's eyes glint as the other cops bust out laughing. His eyes glint a little harder as he turns them on you. "The fuck're you still doin' here, Ray? Don'tcha know there's laws against loiterin'?"
"Cap'n asked me stick around. Something to do with the VIP."
"So why aren'tcha in his office?"
"It's to do with Danny, actually. When they're done—"
"Awww, Lamarque says you can't go walkies without Danny holding yer leash?" Andrews crosses his arms and jerks his chin at you. To the others, he says, "I guess the day Barone loses his pooper scooper is the day they have to put the big dog here down."
You laugh along with the others, though you put no force behind it. You're too worried about how long your partner has been wrapped up in the captain's office. And after that drunken call last night ...
But after ten more minutes of soul-killing banter with Andrews and his buddies, the office intercom summons you.
You stop in the bathroom first, though, and rub icy water over your face and head. You stare at yourself in the mirror: the skin stretched tightly over your skull, the close-cropped hair, the hazel eyes. You rub the water away and take a closer, harder look. You can see no seam in your disguise, no crack through which another personality can be glimpsed. So why has your heart been beating faster ever since the briefing yesterday afternoon? Aren't you the perfect doppelganger of Ray Robert Sullivan?
And then you realize where the crack has been all this time: You're too much worried about being the perfect doppelganger.
You let your lids fall shut, and breathe in and out slowly for a county of sixty until all your limbs have loosened up. When you open them again, your eyes are relaxed and hooded. You calmly push your cab back onto your scalp, and press it into place.
You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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