American by Day

by Derek B. Miller

  “Still not eating?” he asks her, nodding toward her take-home Styrofoam container.

  “Your term ‘doggie bag’ is unappetizing.”

  Irv explains that it is common for Americans to bring food home from low-cost restaurants, as the portions are so large now that they cannot reasonably be consumed in one sitting—though many try. Sigrid asks why the restaurants don’t make the portions smaller and simply charge less. Irv explains that more is better than less for anything of value. Sigrid says this is obviously not true.

  “‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ by Leonard Cohen is a great song,” she says. “It would not be better if it went on forever. In fact, the song would be meaningless if it did.”

  “I’ve been on the phone with Howard,” Irv says, changing the subject. He puts his feet up, locks his fingers on top of his head, and prepares to deliver a message that Sigrid can anticipate because she’d given this speech before after talking with politicians.

  “That tall drink of a man has just placed my nuts in a vise. Do you know what a vise is?” he asks. “It squeezes things to hold them in place, unless you just use it for the squeezing property itself. I find myself in the awkward position of all the white people wanting us to throw your brother in jail for killing the black woman and all the black people wanting us to leave her case alone and let the woman rest in peace. The universe has turned inside out, but the consistent part is that whatever I do, I will make lots and lots of people angry at me. I hate this case.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Huh? Oh, I’m just here to complain. I know perfectly well what I’m going to do.”

  “Which is . . . what?” she asks.

  “I am personally going to make it my job to ensure that we send the right souls to heaven and not the wrong ones. How about that for a day’s work?”

  “How about we just solve the case with the facts and let justice have its day?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “No.”

  “I thought it was.”

  There is an unfamiliar and high-pitched tweeting noise that interrupts their conversation. It sounds as though a small bird is trapped inside the jail with them.

  Irv and Sigrid both look around trying to find the source.

  “I think it’s coming from your bag. Is that your phone?” Irv asks.

  “That’s not what my phone sounds like.”

  “Maybe it’s the other phone.”

  “What other phone?”

  “The phone you bought explicitly to receive calls from Marcus, Chief Inspector.”

  “Oh . . . right,” says Sigrid, digging into her bag to find the Samsung. She locates the green button.

  “Hello?”

  “You shouldn’t have come, Sigrid.”

  A Night at the Opera

  On his rock, staring at the darkening lake, Marcus is uncertain whether it is good to hear his sister’s voice. It complicates matters, but he does not regret placing the call. He is obligated through love to send her back to Norway where she belongs.

  “Marcus,” she says, “pappa said you were missing. I came to find you.”

  “You didn’t need to,” he says to her.

  They speak Norwegian. It is a cloak that unites them as it secludes and protects.

  “There is a manhunt for you. The police think you pushed Lydia out a window. There’s an eyewitness who obviously doesn’t know what he witnessed. I know you didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know who you are. Circumstances challenge us. They don’t change us. I also found your computer files. I know about Lydia’s depression,” Sigrid says. “I spoke with her parents. Her mother fears, but won’t admit, that she committed suicide. They believe it’s a mortal sin and subject to damnation. But they’re stuck because if they continue to deny it, they force the case to remain open. The police are looking for a killer who doesn’t exist.”

  “They’re looking for me.”

  “Which is not the same thing. But that’s changing,” says Sigrid. “There’s a local journalist—of a type—named Roger Mandel who has linked your disappearance and the APB to Lydia’s death. The sheriff has been avoiding any public connection between you and Lydia, but that’s now unsustainable. The good news,” says Sigrid, “is that Irving—the sheriff—isn’t convinced you did it. He’s decent and reasonable—in an unstable American sort of way—but he needs convincing. We know about Jeffrey and how much it pained Lydia. I really need you to explain to them that it was a suicide, how you tried to stop her, and having failed, you foolishly but understandably ran away. I’m sorry for you, Marcus. I really am. So let me come get you. We’ll sort this all out and then we should go home. Pappa could use your help. I think everyone needs a rest. Me too.”

  “I heard you killed someone,” he says to her.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Me too,” he says, and hangs up.

  Irv is opening the photo album on his laptop as Sigrid speaks to Marcus in that Elvish language of theirs. He flips to the picture of her he’d taken earlier.

  “Bastards,” he says, loud enough to be sure someone hears it.

  Neither Sigrid nor Melinda looks up.

  “Bastards!” he says louder.

  Sigrid, on the telephone, looks at him the way his ex-wife used to look at him, which is similar to the way his mother used to look at him when she knew he wanted attention. And women in bars, too. They looked at him like that. A lot of women looked at him like that, come to think of it.

  No one pays attention to Irv, so he looks more closely at the morning photo of Sigrid.

  OK, he knew it wasn’t the most flattering picture when he sent it to Frank Allman and—sure—it was a kind of ribbing between cops, especially ones trying to get to know each other better on a case. It wasn’t really that bad, though. If her nose had been that shiny, her eyes that sinister . . . well . . . he would have noticed and not sent it.

  Irv compares the photo he took to the one presented.

  No, Irv thought, she looked OK. Even then. Her neck was still regal and sloped elegantly into her shoulders. It was even more obvious in the picture because he could look more closely.

  “See?” he says to Sigrid when she hangs up the phone. He holds up the unaltered image. “It wasn’t that bad. They manipulated it. You can kill anyone you want. You get even one woman on that jury and they’ll never convict.”

  She doesn’t smile at him.

  “What?” he asks.

  Sigrid looks down at the phone on her lap.

  “Come on. What?” Irv says.

  “It was Marcus.”

  “I assumed that given the language. And?”

  “He . . . ah . . .”

  “What?”

  “He was not happy to hear from me.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Where is he and where do we meet him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not going to do. Give me that phone.”

  Irv clicks and pokes and summons the received calls list. It has one number and he dials it. Four rings later he is connected: “Hi, this is Sheriff Irving Wylie with the county office. You just lent your phone to someone. Where are you? . . . Uh-huh. OK. What kind of phone have you got there? . . . Uh-huh. OK. Open the compass thing and read me your GPS coordinates . . . I’m listening . . . Uh-huh. OK. Listen, if he packs up and heads out, send me back a note to this phone. He’s a good guy but he’s in a bind and we’re keeping an eye on him, OK?”

  Irv hangs up and Melinda says, “There’s a problem, Sheriff.”

  “Now what?”

  “A whole bunch of blacks . . . ah, African Americans . . . have formed a . . . a . . . bunch. And they’re outside the Inferno, and I think we’re looking at some impending violence.”

  “Is this on account of that bullshit from Roger and that fucking video?”

  “Just might be, Sheriff.”

  “And this bunch is blaming the
motorcycle gang for Lydia and they’re looking to do the job they think we’re not doing?”

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate, Sheriff.”

  Irv stands up and adjusts his gun, belt, balls, and boots.

  “Have Deputy Rhineheart go pick up Roger,” he says. “He’s authorized to pick Roger up by his thumbs if necessary. Bring him to the Target parking lot. Roger will talk about his rights. We can ignore those.” Irv points at Sigrid. “And you. Stay put. I’m not fuckin’ around on this one. You go near there, those folks will kill ya because they think you helped murder Lydia, and the bikers will kill you because they’ll think you’re trying to set them up, and the cops’ll kill you a third time because they’ll think you’re an escaped convict. Furthermore, the blacks hate the whites, the whites hate the blacks, and everyone hates the cops. And generally speaking, cops hate everyone. So it’s going to be a delicate triangle of misery and hatred and you’re at the center of it. So stay here, please. Do we have ourselves an understanding?”

  “Yes,” says Sigrid.

  “How did things get this way?” he asks rhetorically.

  “You blinked,” Sigrid answers.

  “It’s constant politics. Isn’t it?”

  Sigrid doesn’t reply.

  “Is it like this for you?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “Where the hell is Cory?” he yells.

  Cory waves his hand like a schoolboy who has found a lost baseball.

  “You call Frank Allman and give him these coordinates here,” he says, handing Cory the note. “You tell him that Marcus is there, he probably isn’t armed or dangerous or anything, but he should still take it slow. And I need you to call—God help me—Joe Pinkerton on the SERT, let him know about the bunch of people heading to the Inferno and tell him this is not a drill but I don’t want guns blazing at the Club House. Oh, and tell him not to use the word ‘target’ for any reason. It’s just that kind of slip-up that can upset the apple cart. Honestly. Who names a department store Target, anyway?”

  Irv withdraws his revolver to see that it’s loaded and—satisfied that it is—puts it back in its holster, only to remove the entire thing and place it in his drawer. He locks it with a tiny steel key.

  “What are you doing?” Sigrid asks Irv.

  “This isn’t a problem I can fix with a gun. Besides, I’ll most likely end up shooting Pinkerton. Melinda?” he says, turning from Sigrid. “Where’s Melinda?”

  “Sheriff.” Melinda’s voice comes from his right. Melinda is a lot shorter than Irv and she habitually stands too close. He thinks she sneaks up on him deliberately.

  “I hate it when you hide there. Go put on a vest.”

  “But, Sheriff . . .”

  “Do you have a problem with that order?” he snaps, and as the room falls silent he gives her a hard stare, long and deep.

  “It’s in the trunk, right?” she says, changing her tone.

  Irv takes her by the arm and gently leads her to the door and then pushes her out.

  “We’re going to see Reverend Fred Green first. At First Baptist on I-Thirty-Seven. I’m driving, so you call.”

  “Is that the place with the big white sign that flickers when it rains?” Melinda asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Get him on the phone and tell him we’re coming because I need to talk to him,” Irv says, starting up the car. “In fact, tell him we’re coming to get him. And tell him to wear the frock.”

  Irv heads them out of the parking lot with the flashing lights switched on but not the siren, and they ride with force and intent toward I-37.

  Melinda turns on the police scanner, and—from habit—switches on the FM radio, too. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” is in full swing about Beelzebub, and Irv tells her to turn it off.

  Matthew 5:9

  A silver drizzle falls on the black hood of the police cruiser parked outside First Baptist. The church is a concrete affair set a hundred feet behind a macadam parking lot that on Sundays sees a mostly African American congregation in glinting patent leather crunching their way to the gray door above three steps. This is Irv’s second time here. The first time, six years ago, was for campaign purposes. His campaign manager—Frida Larkin—had insisted that since he was “open about his faith in God,” he might as well use that to attract key voters in the African American community who might be inclined to vote Democrat but could possibly be swayed by shared conviction.

  “Open about my faith?” he’d asked.

  “You admit it.”

  “It isn’t something to hide, Frida. I don’t have lice.”

  “No. You have faith. For Democrats that’s worse than lice. Because, you know, lice can be cured.”

  “I don’t think faith has a political party. Nor does morality. Let’s just stick with the campaign slogan I wrote and try and be nice to people, OK?” he’d said.

  “Your slogan is too long.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  Irv had a pile of campaign lawn signs in the trunk. They read IRV WILL BE A GOOD SHERIFF.

  Irv had met Fred Green during that visit, but sitting in the police cruiser now, in the drizzle, he can barely remember it. There had been muffins. That part he remembers.

  Fred is supposed to come out and meet them in the parking lot. The church door remains closed and neither he nor Melinda is in any mood to rush the reverend or get any wetter than they need to.

  Radio off, Irv watches the rain on the hood as it dints and splatters.

  He’d read a book by George Smoot years ago about the cosmic background radiation—a relic radiation from the hot primeval fireball that began our observable universe some 13.7 billion years ago. He took a minor interest in cosmology to complement his religious studies. Thinking about both topics felt balancing and expansive rather than contradictory or defeating.

  Even in the nearly perfect thermal equilibrium at the moment of creation, Smoot had explained, there were still primordial perturbations in the early matter and energy distributions, tiny fluctuations in matter density. As time passed and the universe grew like an expanding balloon, those irregularities grew in significance too and those dense regions attracted more mass until they became entire galaxies. And our solar system. And the earth itself.

  They didn’t stop there, though. No. They kept right on going and ultimately resulted in the very imbalances now playing out beyond the raindrops dancing on the hood of the prowler in the Target parking lot, where people are probably not sharing Irv’s thoughts about the awesome improbability of being here but instead are thinking about the inevitability given the kind of forces they have to contend with on a regular basis.

  There really is no unified theory. There really isn’t.

  Irv looks at Melinda, who is staring outside too. In a few moments he—Irving Wylie, MA in divinity from Loyola and second-term sheriff in Jefferson County—and she—Melinda Powell, good small-town kid who wants to help people—are to reverse the course of the expanding universe and bring everyone back together so they might find some common ground.

  Melinda looks worried, and she is uncharacteristically quiet in her flak vest.

  “You OK?” he asks her.

  Melinda doesn’t answer. She may not have heard him but he thinks she did.

  “I told you to stop watching The Wire.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “That show is not good for your brain.”

  Reverend Fred Green emerges from the church holding an enormous umbrella with the red and blue logo of Costco. He holds it with both hands, elbows tucked in, as though it is keeping him up and not the other way around. With the rain falling hard he looks like a man trying not to drown. He wears rubbers over brogues and his face is grave, as though he’d never learned to smile. The blue lights from the cruiser flash over his watery eyes as he bends down to address Irv through Melinda’s window. As she lowers it he places a hand on the door frame and bends low. The water spills off the front of his umbrella as he lea
ns, and the splattering rain sprays the dashboard and soaks Melinda’s pants.

  “Turn off the lights, please,” Green says.

  Irv does as he’s told.

  “Is this really the best idea you have?” he asks Irv.

  “Honestly, Fred, I only have the one.”

  Reverend Green looks away and out toward a row of trees that separates the parking lot from a construction pit that fills like a quarry in the heavy rain. Irv watches his eyes but they reveal nothing to him about the criteria or calculations, politics or learned wisdom that might be helping him make a decision. Without looking back at Irv, Green closes the umbrella, shakes it, and sits himself in the back of the car. He slams the door closed behind him and the sound itself is what confirms that a choice has been made.

  Irv pulls away. The rain and light on the black hood attract every glimmer from the neon store signs as they pass into the commercial zone, but all their messages are distorted and lost in the dark.

  They drive a few blocks from the church before Irv turns on the blue light again.

  For a long while the reverend doesn’t say a word. Irv glances at him in the rearview mirror and sees him staring silently at the wet trees.

  “Thanks for helping us out here, Reverend,” Irv offers.

  Hands on his lap, as though in a pew, Fred Green turns to Irv through the open slot in the bulletproof glass.

  “I’ve never been in the back of a police car,” he says quietly.

  “What do you think so far?” asks Irv, turning right onto Lancaster Road at the Dairy Queen. A club is having an antique car week in the parking lot. A bunch of Irocs, Corvettes, and Z28s are parked out front, glistening in the rain. They’d probably hoped for a better turnout.

  “You can’t know what it feels like until you sit here yourself,” the reverend says.

  The Target asphalt parking lot is teeming with life. The white lines that mark the parking spaces are faded to stripes of gray, as dull as the clouds above. The yellow lamps glow inside a ring of haze. At the edge of the lot, in front of the Inferno, is an angry crowd.