D.O.A.

by Charlie Thomas King

  “Who says I don’t already,” Max answered, eyeing the men before motioning at James. He picked up his glass, tongued the toothpick to the left of his mouth and sipped the cool water without use of his straw.

  “No tea tonight?”

  “Told ya a million times if I told ya once, bro. Don’t do that bagged shit.”

  “Yeah, but you mean there’s a limit to where you’ll bring your little mug?”

  Max shot his friend a smile and chuckled, took in another mouthful of water. James looked at Max, the perfectly postured thirty-something in the ratty green, crew neck tee shirt and worn out dark grey military style jacket as he placed the water back on the table slowly. Locke shifted uncomfortably, waited with his mouth shut, the toothpick rolled along his lips.

  “Thanks,” James said softly, allowing a small smile to creep onto his face. “For the comment. Compliment. Whatever.”

  “Yup.”

  When Locke had gotten the four o’clock call the night of Kent’s movie theater shooting, he had come through immediately. When James called again at four in the morning, Locke came through again, too. No hesitation.

  “I liked it better when we met closer to four in the afternoon, that one time.”

  In a way, Max said he’d always be there for James. Through deed rather than word, he proved himself again and again. He might have been a man of few words, but he said a lot more than did most people in James’ twisted life.

  James’ twisted life. And how everything eventually reminded him of Hallie. “She’d have liked your shirt,” he said in a near whisper.

  Max gave James his full attention. “Your girl?”

  “No. Um, not really,” James answered as he glanced momentarily back at the two old men.

  “Wasn’t your girl? Or second guessing if she’d have liked my shirt?”

  James gave up another small smile.

  “No, she’d have loved your shirt. It was her favorite color. Olive green. Her parents even painted their house that color.” He paused, sighed, continued, “But the girl thing? No. No, she wasn’t mine.”

  “What was her name?”

  James’ lips moved, but no words came. He felt as though he’d have to push out each letter one at a time, each heavy and cumbersome.

  “You don’t wanna say, that’s -”

  “Do you remember being a rookie? When you’d get that rush from rolling eighty-four, strapping your gloves on tight... unclasping the seat belt, the door swinging open. It was…” Kent’s words drifted, his gaze fixated on his wrists, arms outstretched on the table top.

  Max kept chewing his toothpick into dust, put his hands palm down on the small table’s edge and stared evenly at Kent.

  “Yeah. It was unreal. The nights seemed darker, the street lights brighter. Everything even sounded different,” he said, after taking the splintered wood from his teeth. James took a few seconds, stared at the two old men. Max waited, always thought a listener was more valuable in times like this than good advice. Good advice was worthless when the other person didn’t hear it.

  “We’re cops, Locke. Nobody else will ever feel it. They’ll never know what it’s like for us. The decisions we have to make. The responsibility we carry on our shoulders. The life and death choices.”

  Locke took the toothpick out of his mouth, placed it on a nearby napkin and simply nodded in agreement. “What’s this got to do with the girl?”

  James’ stomach roiled, felt like he might add a colorful design to the plain beige tiles below his feet.

  Locke pulled out a three-inch cylinder of wood from his inside breast pocket, popped off the little top and tapped out a new toothpick. He said nothing, just gnashed at the new wood and waited for James to say something more.

  “It’s those little things, ya know?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ya know, I remember my first week on foot. Fuck, I’d get home every night and my hips. My fucking hips. They were as red as apples, bro. Felt like my legs would just fall out the sockets some nights while I walked up and down those damned steps.”

  Max smiled, “Don’t I know it, brother.” He leaned back against the seat, let his friend continue.

  “I’d miss that.”

  Max squinted at James’ use of words.

  “Ugh. I already do. This bullshit with VIPER. I can still feel that gun belt some nights when I get home. I feel like I gotta straighten out my ASP or something.”

  “Yeah, those phantom sensations. I know what you mean,” Max said with a slight nod.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Ghosts of the past, right? I’m haunted bro, friggin’ haunted.”

  “You’re not a perp cop, James.”

  Kent looked up, a tear rolled down his left cheek; he looked at his wrists again.

  “Then why do I feel like I’m in cuffs, Locke?”

  “You told me not to bring up your god tonight, James.”

  James looked wearily across the table at his friend. “That I did.”

  Locke took the glass of water in hand, chugged some more, nearly draining it.

  “Nothing’s the same anymore.”

  “I understand that better than you know, James. I understand death better than you know.”

  James looked at the tabletop. “Yeah, all that war stuff.”

  “No. All that Madi stuff.”

  “Madi?” James said startled, looking up.

  “Yeah. We all got our girl. But this is about you and yours. This is about your loss. Not mine. When the time is right… we can talk more about me. But you? Tell me what else is different, James.”

  James gave him a defiant look, Max shot it down with one of his own. Gave a nod to prod James along.

  “Okay. Okay.” James took a sip of his soda through the straw. “EOT. A real end of tour, like from a real tour. When you finally sign out. When your feet first hit those steps on your way out the command. It’s like…” He looked off to the back of the restaurant, watched a middle aged woman emerge from the bathroom. She walked past the two off duty cops and disappeared behind Kent. “It’s like the world is filled with new life again or some shit.”

  His friend grunted in agreement.

  “Right? Like, all that bullshit you just had beating on your back. Central and all her bullshit sneakin’ you jobs, the Sergeant shaking out when you didn’t even want him on scene anyway. Itchin’ for that perfect moment to go over for your meal.” James’ face curled into a smile. “Heh, I guess that’s something I will not miss!”

  The two laughed.

  “And that’s gone now?”

  “Yeah. It’s gone. But I don’t know if it’s because of VIPER. Does that make sense?”

  “You think it’s all wrapped into… her,” Max said without question.

  “Yeah. Everything wraps back around to her. Always has I guess.” James brought his hands to cover his face, mumbled through, “Ever since I met her. And especially now.”

  Max nodded, as if he knew better than he could say. His eyes turned glassy.

  “It doesn’t really get easier. It gets… different. But you’ll make it through, friend. And you’ll get back to the streets, with me sitting next to you.”

  Kent looked up from his hands, eyes wet with tears.

  “I don’t know, Max. I tried to prove something to God, but I messed it all up.” James cleared his throat. “I lost so much. And I became a cop to show him. But I fucked up and I don’t really know if there’s going back from that. There might… maybe… maybe, I might get back to the car, but what I did? That’ll never go away.”

  Locke nodded, looked at his friend with gentle eyes. Tears streamed down James’ face.

  “Hallie. Her name was Hallie.”

  Friday

  November 30, 2012

  Corner

  James hadn’t slept yet, hadn’t slept since he’d gotten that call from Marc. He thought talking to Max would help. It didn’t. That ended somewhere around six-thirty. Now it was seven twenty according to the Maxima
. It was cold. He blasted the heat.

  Sleep deprived motoring had taken him to the end of Sprague Avenue, a south shore loop with an ocean view. The sky was clear blue, but no sun, typical for New York this time of year. The beach was torn apart. Debris from Sandy everywhere. Nearby houses looked like they’d been bombed. The water up ahead was a stark contrast, calm, and the beach empty.

  From where he sat at the corner, he had a clear view of the three battered benches lining the street, the two that were planted next to an L shaped wall of various colored stones, also hammered by the storm. The water lay just beyond. The wall was pitched at the top, but he had sat on it plenty of times anyway. He’d gone there with Hallie. They’d balanced atop and talked one late summer night not so long ago. Their bikes lay against the wall behind them as they dangled their feet like little kids. The tide was high, water splashed just below their sneakers.

  Hallie had lovingly squeezed his hand in hers, peered into his dark brown eyes.

  “James, silly, God just works in weird ways sometimes. Sometimes you can’t really see Him until the end, when you have nothing holding you back from finally seeing Him clearly. We think he’s beating us up, but he’s just trying to get our attention. That’s just how it works sometimes,” she’d told him.

  Everyone in his life was always trying to correct his perceptions of God.

  James cursed loudly, pounded on the steering wheel, and screamed. He let the tears run free with no regard. He felt as though all he’d been doing for years now was crying and screaming.

  “Did you see things clearly when you slit your wrists?!” he yelled, water and mucus spraying the steering wheel.

  “You get to see your God’s big master plan? When you went to who knows where? Heaven. Pfff. fucking heaven.”

  Hate baked within the vehicle, his anti-God oven. As the tears continued to leak from his eyes, his lids grew overwhelmingly heavy. They began to blink slowly as he leaned his head back, wetness dripping from his lips. He lost focus of the half wall out by sea and sleep overtook him.

  Tuesday

  December 4, 2012

  Another Funeral

  James stood in the back of a dreary room, dressed head to toe in black. His clothes were crisp and clean, fitted to his every inch, but none of it fit right. He felt trapped, itchy, sickened. Felt alone in a room thick with people. Wallowing in pity and regret, he was deliberately deaf to the crowds around him.

  A casket was propped open at one end of the large room. Scarlet hair shimmered from within. A row of young adults lined up, waiting for their turn to kneel before the dead and to pray to a God James was convinced heard not a single thing they said. Heard not, cared not. He didn’t watch to see if anyone noticed him leave, if anyone cared that he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t stay there any longer. He’d come to give his condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Winters and he’d completed that task. He didn’t sign the book, didn’t say hello to another soul, just walked out of the room as fast as he had entered it.

  He hung his head low as he exited. Anything more would have constituted too strenuous an effort. He walked to the back of the parking lot, Nissan in view. He remembered his old car, the junk box, ninety-two Camry. Remembered when he drove Hallie in it for the first time; she’d already been dating Nick a week. James took Hallie shopping. He’d had errands to run. Somewhere along the line, they’d happened upon a quarter machine. He’d offered to buy her a prize from it. It had been a necklace, which was by chance her favorite color, or nearly so anyway, a peculiar version of olive green. It was only a plastic ornament, but it was the first thing he’d ever bought her, and she kept it for years. That was one of many secrets they kept through the years. He had loved their secrets once, but now he hated each one; he hated them all. Above all, he hated the secret that had driven her to do this to herself. In fact, he realized, above all, that he hated himself.

  “James?”

  He jerked around to see the tall, chubby, dark skinned twenty-something who’d called out to him. Marc’s chubby round face rose from the collar of a too-tight white button down shirt, nothing of a definitive neck in view. The shirt was crisp against his complexion. His teeth beamed brightly as he shot a halfhearted smile at his old pal.

  “Hey, J. Haven’t seen ya since forever. I’m glad you came. You never made it for… Nick’s...”

  James’ eyes darted back and forth between his black wingtip shoes and his Nissan. Couldn’t manage to look at Marc.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean...”

  “No. Yeah. I had to work. Cop shit.”

  “I hear ya.”

  “Yeah. And then we kept saying we were going to catch up, too. But, again, The Job and all that…” James said, his words trailing into nothing, eyes fixated on the details of the polished black leather hugging his feet.

  “Yeah. Catch up. Just not like this,” he said thumb in the air towards the funeral home. “Not again, kid. This thing right here, this is just bat-shit crazy. Too much of this shit going around.”

  James mumbled an agreement, fighting back tears. He wanted to disappear, but he didn’t know how to escape. And what was there to say next? A few feet apart, neither knowing how to really go on from there, James looked at the door to his car, longing to flee, but turned back to Marc instead. Still didn’t say anything.

  Marc finally filled the void with whatever he could think to say, “You see Mary today? Shit, that ass.”

  James shifted uneasily, felt his teeth clench, an unintentional glare shot towards his old friend. Marc looked down, obviously embarrassed. As genuinely as he could collect his words, James asked about Jessica and their new baby.

  “They’re both doing great, kid, absolutely great. She’s at home now with little Tyler,” Marc said, looking back up and taking a few steps forward.

  “Good to hear,” James said. “Cute kid, too. Got the text. Sorry I couldn’t make it to the party.”

  “It’s all good, J. It’s all good.”

  The two attempted to maintain a happy appearance, but the hard silence once again consumed them. Marc moved his lips - about to say something else stupid no doubt. Tears welled up in James’ eyes and he looked down, squeezing them shut.

  “I friggin’ loved her, Marc. I think I loved her since I first saw her ride by on that stupid yellow bike.”

  “Uh, yeah. I know, J. We all knew.”

  James’ tears broke through, his body convulsed in tiny echoes as he tried to hold back the waterworks. Teeth gritted tighter, words forced out, “I didn’t think she was capable of doing that. I didn’t think. If I had...” Words were lost to further paroxysms of grief.

  Marc advanced, pulled his friend in close for a hug. The two shared a rare moment between men. They both cried together.

  “No one knows why, J,” Marc said through the tears, “I heard she didn’t even leave a note, man. She just up and... well, point is, no one knows why. Jess said she’d been acting strange, stopped hanging out, but... look, no one could have predicted this, ya know?”

  James did know, but yet, he knew differently. James knew that what drove Hallie to her death was a secret they’d kept – at his urging. A secret they’d both locked away, but that neither could carry particularly well. In a very real sense, he was part of the reason why she did what she did. He shouldn’t have covered it up, he knew. They should have come clean that night, explained that it was an accident. Nick would have murdered him if Hallie hadn’t saved him. It was all she could do. She’d saved his worthless fucking life.

  For all his thoughts, for all that burned away in his head and tore at his heart, James needed to go home. Go home and drink.

  He composed himself, patted Marc on the back three times, stepped off towards the Maxima.

  “I gotta go, Marc. We’ll talk soon. Get together before any more disasters happen.”

  Marc nodded in agreement; James jumped in his car and sped out of the parking lot onto Amboy Road. Only a few blocks until he was home. A crappy couch and a new bo
ttle of gin were waiting for him there. The same hospital bed, the same medicine. Same ones he’d drunk the night that set all this in motion.

  Wednesday

  December 5, 2012

  Fix

  When they reached the same light at Broad Street, his mother had asked if he wanted to get lost. He was eight, wonder eyed, hanging on her every word, just as children often do. She would deliberately veer from their path home, instead take streets they didn’t know, find their way back to their house again. He was designated co-pilot. Stacey rejoiced at the chance adventure from the back seat. The game had taught him the back-roads, some that he didn’t travel again himself until much later in life.

  Here he was again, that light at Broad Street. But Mom was long gone. Stacey too. Now four others had joined them in death. Two at Kent’s own hands. The other two because of him.

  Almost two months had passed and the end of his investigation was still nowhere in sight. Every time he thought it was over, it’d get another breath of life again. The City dragged everything on and on. Kent had resigned himself to it, drove to VIPER every day as if it were normal.

  Red light, black bumper a few inches too far over a faded white line. A junkie made his way across the street, oblivious to the world around him. He stopped in front of the car, defied gravity, stretching his body backwards. Just before the back of his head hit the Maxima’s hood, he snapped back up, completed the precipitous crosswalk. The magical mystery of meth.

  Red relented to green, bumper progressed fully over the line, kept going. He made a right onto Gordon Street, watched another perp make his way across the middle of the street, a usual James knew from his onscreen performances, male black in the appropriate uniform of the neighborhood - white tee shirt, baggy jeans, Jordan sneakers. More punks, already at the deli door, greeted the perp, all in perfect sync. Drug prone location.

  Wheels spun slowly as he passed the deli front. Ruining the Island one neighborhood at a time, he thought. He wanted to get out and kill every last one of them, send them each straight to Hell. They were alive and Hallie was dead. Kent wondered where the redemption of God was that his pastors so often yammered on about. He swallowed hard, clutched the wheel till it hurt. Misdirected anger, a common consolation for a loss someone knows to be their own fault, he tried to tell himself.