Saving Room for Dessert

by K. C. Constantine

  “Wait wait wait—what’d you call me?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said tell this effin’ gorilla.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “I ain’t deaf. Hey, Lois, what’d he call me, huh? You heard him, what’d he say?”

  “I didn’t hear anything, honest.”

  “You’re both fulla crap. I heard what you said, Jimmy.” Canoza jumped up, stretched over the bar, and grabbed Jimmy’s right ear and squeezed. “I’m tellin’ you for the last time, Jimmy, you ever call me gorilla again? Or anything like it? You’ll spend the next nine months in rehab learnin’ how to write with a pencil in your teeth, you got that?”

  “I got it, Robert, I got it, let go my ear, man, that hurts!”

  “Not half as bad as it’s gonna hurt you ever call me that again. Or I ever hear anybody tell me you called me that again, you got that?”

  “I got it, man, I got it, let go, please!”

  Canoza let go of Jimmy’s ear and sat back down. Jimmy rushed away to put some ice in a plastic bag and hold it to his ear.

  Canoza turned and said to Lois, “I’m tryin’ to stick up for you with this prick and whatta you do? You go deaf. You wanna work here for nothing’ but tips, that’s your problem. Don’t ever complain to me about it again.”

  “I wasn’t complainin’ to you about that. I was complainin’ ’cause you hurt my feelings.”

  “Aw please, hurt your feelings, Jesus.”

  She took a deep breath, started to say something, but couldn’t.

  Canoza saw tears running down her cheeks and swung around on his stool. “Okay okay, look, I’m sorry, alright? Don’t cry, okay? C’mon, don’t! I didn’t mean to make you cry, aw Jesus—here, take my napkin, c’mon, take it, here.”

  She started to take the napkin and they both saw the red stains from where he’d wiped sauce off his mouth. He folded the paper napkin so that the stains were on the other side and tried to dab her cheeks, but she pulled away.

  “C’mon, Jeez, I was tryin’ to stick up for ya, you know? What, you havin’ your period or something’?”

  “No! Jesus, you think the only reason I might be cryin’ is if I’m havin’ my period? Screw you, Robert, okay? Just screw you.”

  Canoza’s shoulders sagged as he watched her hurry away. Jesus Christ, he thought. Come in here, all I’m askin’ for is a little peace to eat my sub. And what the fuck do I get? Grief. Everywhere I go today, I’m in a fuckin’ grief storm. Fuckit. I’m outta here.

  Canoza picked up the rest of his sub and walked out the door, taking another bite and chewing as he walked.

  “Hey, Jimmy, look at me,” he called out over his shoulder. “I’m walkin’ and chewin’ at the same time.”

  He finished the sub in the MU, and was starting to call himself back into service when he noticed that he’d slopped sauce on his shirt and tie. “Fuck,” he said. Then he remembered he was out of Moist Towelettes. “Double fuck.”

  He started to drive to the Giant Eagle out on Route 30 in West-field Township but thought he better go to the Foodland up on Pittsburgh Street, even though the last time he went there they were out of Moist Towelettes. So he’d had to go to the Giant Eagle in the township, but some piss-and-moaner from the city spotted him and called the station. Chief Nowicki had just relieved the dispatcher so he could take a piss break, and Nowicki took the ear assault from the P&M about city cops being in the township when they were supposed to be patrolling in the city.

  The geopolitical fact was the city was one large land island and two smaller ones surrounded by the township, so city cops were always driving through parts of the township to get to other parts of the city, a geographical fact complicated by the political fact that the township had no police department of its own and was supposed to be patrolled by state police from Troop A Barracks, which was located in the city, two blocks east of Pittsburgh Street. But since Troop A—like the entire state police since the early 1990s—was pitifully undermanned because nearly a third of the force took early retirements offered by the state legislature to balance a budget at that time, Rocksburg PD was called to respond to incidents in the township more often than the state police. Troop A dispatchers were in fact doing most of the calling. Because it irritated and annoyed Chief Nowicki to repeat these geographical and political facts to every caller who pissed and moaned about city cops wasting their taxes shopping in township supermarkets, he appealed to his officers to try to avoid doing so.

  “Fine,” Canoza had reminded him. “What are we supposed to do when they want an escort to the bank, huh? Sit outside and blow the horn? We ain’t allowed to go in and tell ’em we’re there? And I can’t buy somethin’ while I’m waitin’ for the manager to get his shit together? Always waitin’ on ’em, they’re never ready. This is stupid. The P&M can shop there but he gets pissed ’cause I’m there? Tell him to shop in Foodland. They never have Moist Towelettes. And they never have any spicy V-8 either.”

  “You can’t put Red Hot in the regular and spice it up yourself?”

  “That ain’t my point.”

  “Hey, forget your point, okay? My point is, avoid it whenever possible, that’s all I’m askin’. I know these people are fulla shit, but it’s how it looks, you know? How many times I gotta tell ya, it ain’t the reality, it’s the perception of the reality, c’mon.”

  “Hey, how’m I supposed to know how other people perceive what I’m doin’? I ain’t no mind reader,”

  “Booboo still can’t understand those ladies perceivin’ that he’s a big meanie. Makin’ ’em cry all the time, Boo, you oughta be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Aw fuck you, Mr. Personality. Next one locks her keys in her Toyota, it’s all yours.”

  So Canoza, with that conversation still in mind, drove to Food-land and tried but failed to find Moist Towelettes. He knew that if he didn’t find something wet soon, the sauce stain was going to set and he’d have to buy a new shirt and tie, and nothing annoyed him more than spending his clothing allowance on clothes. He went in the public rest rooms near the office and tried to get the stains out with wet paper towels. He couldn’t tell whether the stains were coming out or whether he was just spreading them around. Fuckit, he thought, screw the P&Ms. I’m goin’ to Giant Eagle.

  He went back out to his MU, hoping that, even though he hadn’t called himself back into service yet, nothing was happening so dispatcher Stramsky wouldn’t start squawking about where he was. He loved Stramsky like a father, and Stramsky loved him like a son, but sometimes that relationship got too real to suit Canoza. Sometimes Stramsky acted like he was, if not Canoza’s actual father, then his police rabbi, which had been more than okay when Canoza first joined the department. Stramsky had had ten years in by then, and he’d been Canoza’s training partner.

  Back then, when Mario Balzic was chief, rookies rode with training partners for six months before Balzic would let them take an MU out by themselves. He didn’t care what their experience was, or how well they did in the Municipal Police Education and Training classes or where they ranked when they graduated. Balzic was obstinate: there never was a book written or a class taught that could substitute for on-the-job training. If you didn’t know how to do it when it mattered, he didn’t care how well you could write or talk about it in response to a tester’s question.

  The thing about Stramsky was that sometimes he acted like he was still Canoza’s training partner, a relationship that had ended more than twenty years ago. Enough was enough, Canoza thought, and tried a dozen different ways to tell Stramsky to lighten up. But every time he felt like he’d thought of exactly the right way to approach Stramsky, he’d remember the times Stramsky had saved him from making an ass of himself, and Canoza couldn’t do anything but give Stramsky some jokey put-down, like telling him that no matter how much pasta he ate he’d always be a Polak. Or that no matter what part of Poland the pope came from, he still had to move to Italy. No matter what the Polaks thought, the Vatican was never g
oing to be in Warsaw. It was always jokes. Funny put-downs. The stuff that passed for conversation among men.

  There were times Canoza wished Stramsky was his real father. And sometimes he wished even harder that he could leave the jokes behind and sit down with Stramsky and have a real conversation. About real shit: courage, manhood, life, death, the fear of getting your balls shot off by some idiot crackhead who was just passing through on his way to Pittsburgh and thought Rocksburg might be a good place to boost a car.…

  By the time Canoza pulled into Giant Eagle’s parking lot off Route 30, he had the uneasy feeling that something was wrong. He’d made up his mind he wasn’t going to call himself back in service until he got the Moist Towelettes, but he knew he was pushing it just being at this Giant Eagle. Even though he hadn’t been in Jimmy’s more than twenty minutes at the most, it was now 1729 hours and if he didn’t call Stramsky right now, he was going to get his balls busted real good. But that wasn’t what was bothering him. Something wasn’t right, he just didn’t know what it was exactly.

  He hustled into the Giant Eagle, found the Moist Towelettes, bought two containers, had to wait behind only two women in the express line, and made it back out to the MU by 1732 hours. He’d purposely not turned on his shoulder radio until he was back outside, but as soon as he did Stramsky was squawking at him.

  “Repeat, thirty-three, you 10-8 or what? What’s your 10-20? Repeat. Hey, thirty-three, what’re you doin’?”

  “Thirty-three here. I’m 10-8. My 10-20’s Route 30 West.”

  “Thirty-three, 10-91.”

  “Roger that.” Canoza switched to Channel 3. “I’m here, Vic, what’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s up, you fuckin’ meatball sub you. You missin’ anything?”

  “Huh? Missin’ anything? What?” Canoza looked around on the seat. “Oh shit.” Now he knew what hadn’t felt right.

  “Oh shit is right. You better get down there fast, you hear?”

  “Aw man, Vic, it was just one of those things—”

  “Don’t aw-man me—and don’t give me that one-of-those-things shit either, just get your ass down there and get it. And go light a candle I wasn’t takin’ a dump. ’Cause Nowicki woulda answered that call? Man, Boo, you really push it sometimes, no shit you do.”

  “I’ll get it, I’ll get it, don’t worry.”

  “What should I be worried for? You’re the one should be worried. Fuck’s wrong with you—what’d you take it off for anyway? We just talked about that, man, remember?”

  “C’mon, Vic, get up, alright? It musta slipped off my lap when I grabbed Jimmy.”

  “When you did what? Grabbed who?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “Fuck you grab him for?”

  “Never mind, it was personal.”

  “Hey! You’re in uniform, you got a shield on, it’s crowded, it’s never personal—”

  “How’d you know it was crowded?”

  “Oh for crissake—it was 1700. What do people usually do at 1700, Boo, huh? Honest to God—hey, enough! Get down there and get it, you hear me? And put it on!”

  “Alright, I hear ya. Can’t make a mistake with you anymore, Jesus. You ain’t my TP anymore, Vic, you know that?”

  “Hey if I was, you wouldn’t be pullin’ this kinda happy horseshit, believe me.”

  “Well you ain’t, okay? So get up. Startin’ to weigh about a ton more than I wanna carry, okay?”

  “Ohhhh so that’s how it is, huh?”

  “Yeah that’s how it is. I ain’t been a rookie for twenty-four years, which you can’t seem to remember.”

  “Oh I remember alright. I remember plenty. You’re the one havin’ the trouble with his memory, buddy boy. Booboo.”

  “Hey, Vic, don’t use that tone when you call me that.”

  “Tone? I used a tone with you? Oh excuse me, Booboo.”

  “Hey, Vic, knock it off, man, I mean it.”

  “You knock it off! I saved your big dago ass so many times, Jesus—I saved your fuckin’ job for you. Your fuckin’ career! You wouldn’t’ve had one it wasn’t for me.”

  “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  “Oh you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about? End of your pro period, everybody wanted to cut you loose.”

  “What’re you sayin’?”

  “You heard me, I ain’t stutterin’.”

  “I know I heard you. Spell it out, man, draw me a picture.”

  “I’ll draw you a picture alright. How’s this? Everybody, Balzic, everybody senior to you in the department, the Safety Committee, they all said the same thing—let him go. He ain’t worth the trouble he gonna cause. Me, I’m the only one talked for you. I talked my ass off for you. I convinced ’em. All of ’em. Wasn’t for me you’d’ve been gone. Is that enough of a picture for you, you fuckin’ meatball you.”

  Canoza didn’t know what to say. He felt a terrible, queasy feeling in the middle of his stomach. It spread downward, upward, and outward. He felt humiliated. Embarrassed. Exposed. Shamed. He’d been driving the whole time he’d been talking to Stramsky, but suddenly he didn’t know where he was going or why. Then he saw the over-pass, the one for the Amtrak lines, and he knew as he drove under it that he was on Pittsburgh Street. Then he saw the L-shaped strip mall ahead, and the red and yellow sign for Jimmy’s Suds and Subs, and he knew where he was going. But for the life of him, at that moment, he couldn’t have said why.

  He pulled into the first open slot he came to, turned off the radio and the ignition, and just sat there. He thought for a second he was going to start bawling. He almost wished he could. He couldn’t, but he wished he could because he thought if he could he might be able to get rid of this awful queasy feeling spreading over his whole body. The queasier he felt, the more he tried to comprehend what Stramsky had said.

  Everybody? The whole Safety Committee? Everybody who was senior to me in the department? Fuck, man, there wasn’t anybody who wasn’t senior to me. Even Balzic? Jesus, I thought Balzic liked me. He never said anything, he never told me he didn’t like me, never told me I shouldn’t be doing this or that or whatever. Did he tell me somethin’ and I just can’t remember? ’Cause I don’t want to remember? Or am I too fuckin’ stupid to remember? Not Balzic, I can’t fuckin’ believe that. He’s the last guy would’ve fucked me around like that. Uh-uh. Never. He was too stand-up to fuck me around like that. That would’ve been really chickenshit, and if there was one thing he wasn’t, he wasn’t chickenshit. He would’ve called me in and told me faceup. I don’t believe this. So why’s Vic saying it? Man, that is really a ball-bustin thing he did, sayin’ that. Jesus Christ, why the fuck’d he do that? He didn’t have to do that. That fucking hurt, man. That was chickenshit.…

  Somebody rapping on the window startled him.

  “Yo—what? Oh. It’s you.”

  Lois the waitress stood there holding his vest, saying, “Well I can’t give it to you if you don’t roll the window down.”

  Canoza pushed the power button. Looking toward the dash, he said, “I could’ve come in for it, you didn’t have to bring it out.”

  “Jimmy made me bring it out. He was scared you were gonna come in and blame it on him that you forgot it. He says he’s gonna have to go to the emergency room, you almost tore his ear off—”

  “Aw what’s he talking’ about, almost tore his ear off, Jesus, he’s so fulla crap sometimes. All I did was squeeze it, I didn’t twist it. What’s he care anyway, it ain’t like he uses it to listen to anybody.”

  “Well you gonna take it or not?” Lois said, shifting from one foot to the other. “Why don’t you—I mean, ain’t you supposed to be wearin’ this thing?”

  “What’re you—on the Safety Committee now? I got enough people bustin’ my hump about that—gimme that thing.”

  “Okay okay, here, that’s what I been tryin’ to do, sheesh.”

  Canoza took the vest and tossed it on the seat beside him.

  “Ain’t you gonna put i
t on?”

  “Hey. You delivered it, okay? So thanks. Now go back inside, go back to work for that creep. For nothin’, go on.”

  “Well that’s none of your business, who asked you anyway? You don’t have to get all huffy.”

  “If it’s none of my business, why’d you bring it up in front of me, huh? Sure sounded to me like you were tryin’ to make it my business. And who’s huffy? Not me.”

  “Well you just happened to be there when he said somethin’, I wasn’t bringin’ it up in front of you!”

  “Hey you don’t want certain somebodies to know your business, you don’t talk about it in front of those somebodies.”

  All this time Canoza had been staring out the windshield. Now he turned to her and said, “Hey, Lois? What’re you doin’ here, huh? You got somethin’ you wanna discuss with a cop? Or with me in particular? ’Cause if you don’t, I don’t understand why you’re still here. You brought me my vest, I thanked you, you’re still here. What’s up?”

  She looked around, looked at her Keds sneakers, looked at him, and said, “Um, this is not official, okay? I mean it’s not about me—”

  “Yeah yeah, okay, it’s about your girlfriend. Okay, what?”

  “How’d you know it was about my girlfriend?”

  “Just psychic, I guess. So, uh, she in the middle of a divorce, custody battle, what?”

  “No. Nothin’ like that. It’s this guy, he keeps comin’ to where she works. She never led him on or nothin’. And she never went out with him. She was just nice to him like everybody else, ’cause, you know, that’s like, part of her job. They’re not married, he’s not anything to her.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, he just, uh, I mean, he’s like he’s followin’ her around.”

  “Does he touch her?”

  “No. He’s just, like, I mean, everywhere she goes, she looks around and there he is.”

  “That’s harassment and stalking. Tell her file a complaint, that’s all. She doesn’t have to put up with that.”

  “Well she’s scared if she does that, he’s gonna really do somethin’, you know?”