by DL Barbur
I opened the box and started putting my gear inside. First came the Glock 9mm off my right hip, then my little .38 revolver out of my right front pocket. Next came the knives, a nice Benchmade folder and a pair of Cold Steel Incorporated push daggers. I finished off with the ASP and my can of pepper spray.
Audrey and I got along pretty well, considering we came from the opposite end of a great many things. The one blow-out fight we'd had was over my tools. She hated them, didn't want them in her apartment, didn't want me to carry them when we were out together. We had finally compromised on the lock box. I put my stuff in there when I came in, put it on when we left. When I was off duty, I usually only carried one gun and a couple of knives. No reason to be paranoid.
I stripped off my clothes and got in the shower. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Even though it had been there for over twenty years, I still winced sometimes when I saw the tattoo on my chest. It said “Front Towards Enemy,” the words molded into the front of an Army issue M18 Claymore antipersonnel mine. I’d gotten the tattoo one evening in Fort Bragg after too many beers. It was still my philosophy towards life, but nonetheless, I regretted the tattoo.
I stood there motionless and let scalding hot water play over my back and shoulders for a long time. I let the warmth seep into my skin and tried to focus on the white noise of the shower, let it fill my mind. I always took ridiculously long showers after work. The deal with Lubbock had bothered me more than I wanted to admit to myself.
I couldn't help it. Sometimes I saw Lubbock, and the past grabbed me with a giant hand by the collar, jerked me back to what was it? Ten years ago now? Yeah, ten years.
James Elroy David. Like many serial killers and mass murderers, he had three first names. He got fired from his job as a security guard at Pioneer Place, the mall downtown. Instead of cooling his jets and collecting unemployment, he came back the next day with an AK-47 and a duffel bag of ammo.
By some cruel twist of fate, Lubbock was the first one there. The rest of us arrived all at once, stared at each other in disbelief as we stood in the middle of the street and watched Lubbock yell orders in a voice a couple of octaves higher than normal. We could barely hear him over the heavy knocking on wood sound of that AK coming through the doors of the mall. He wanted one of us to find a place to park the news media, another to figure out where we were going to park the mobile command post and the rest to set up a perimeter. In that order. Meanwhile, people were running out of the mall with blood all over them.
Some guys actually took off to do what he said. After all, he was a Lieutenant. Four of us just stood there, frozen for a second in disbelief. I didn't know the other three. I was new to day shift. Later I would find out two of them were veterans with some Vietnam trigger time. There was me. I had about five years on the job. The fourth guy was even younger than me, but he knew what was up.
The four of us never spoke, never conferred. We just went for it, while Lubbock stood there screaming at our backs.
I remember walking out of the mall, an hour later, into the bright July sunshine. My feet stuck to the pavement from the tacky blood drying on the soles of my boots. My hands and arms were red up to the elbows from a long, and ultimately futile battle to keep a 16-year-old girl from bleeding out from an AK round to the throat. It was summer, and the mall was packed with teenagers escaping the heat.
Lubbock was standing in the same spot he had been an hour before, still waving his arms, yelling orders and being ignored. When he saw me, he stopped flapping his arms like he was trying to take flight. He balled up his fists and walked towards me. He stuck his scrawny chest out and it reminded me of watching a rooster getting himself psyched up to fight.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" He was a couple of inches from my face, almost spitting in my eye.
I contemplated shooting him. The two older guys each grabbed one of my arms, hustled me off and stuck me in the back of an ambulance, told me I was having chest pains and feeling faint, told me I didn't have to talk to anybody until I talked to my lawyer and my union rep.
I couldn't get that day at the mall out of my mind sometimes. James Elroy David had fired 120 rounds that day, four full magazines of cheap, steel cased Russian ammo. He'd been in the middle of stuffing the fifth magazine in his rifle when I lined up my gun sights on his right ear and stroked the trigger. Later we'd find fifteen more magazines in the duffel bag dangling from his shoulder.
The mall had almost as many video cameras as a Las Vegas casino. During the inevitable post-shooting recriminations and Monday morning quarterbacking, the tapes were reviewed over and over. A timeline was constructed. Forty-five rounds were fired before Lubbock and the rest of us arrived. The shooter walked through the mall, picking targets carefully. He hit almost as much as he missed, unusual for cases like this.
He fired another forty rounds while we were standing around and watching Lubbock in amazement. From the time it took for us to enter the mall and find him in the food court, standing over the body of one of the maintenance workers, and coolly stuffing another magazine in his rifle, took another 35 rounds. I remembered hearing each one of them as we ran through the mall, dodging bodies and slipping in pools of blood, almost tripping on dull gray shell casings that rolled underfoot. Time had stopped being measured in seconds. Now it was rounds of ammunition that counted, each one another potential dead body, or even more.
The bullets were steel cored, with a thin copper wash over them. A couple had gone through one person and into another.
By the end, it all came down to the numbers. 121 rounds fired, 120 by David, 1 by me. Eighteen dead, forty wounded. Exactly the same number of dead shoppers as the number of soldiers we lost in Mogadishu Somalia, where I’d had my first firefight.
Six of the dead were killed before we got there, in that first rush of firing into the crowd. Nothing I could do about that. People die. It was the other twelve that bothered me. Who owned them more? Lubbock for not being up to the job? Or me for wasting the time to listen to him? I knew where all their graves were. I never left rocks on their tombstones, although maybe I should start.
The water was getting cold. I shook myself to clear my head of one final image from that day. It all ended in the food court and I'd never forget the sundae the girl had been eating. Blood mixed with chocolate ice cream. I hadn't eaten ice cream since.
This was stupid. Here I was, waiting for my girlfriend to get home so I could take her out for a good time on her birthday, and all I could do was chew on the past.
I spun the taps off and stepped out into the steamy bathroom to find a towel. I heard the front door lock click, then the door swung open. I couldn't help it. My first thought was to calculate how many steps it would take to get from the bathroom to my lockbox.
"Hey, that you?" I asked.
"Of course it is. Who else?" I liked Audrey's voice, husky and strong. I felt better just hearing it.
I heard the rattle of her keys as she put them down by the door, then she was standing in the bathroom doorway. She stopped and leaned against the frame with her arms folded, undid her almost waist-length red hair from a ponytail and looked at me with a frank, appreciative gaze that always did more to turn me on than just about anything she could have done with her hands. No other woman had looked at me like that before. I'd never felt particularly attractive before, but she made me feel that way.
I dropped the towel and went over to hug her. She was tall, which meant I was only a head taller than she was. She hugged me back, and I felt her strong fingers on my back and ass.
"How are you?" I asked.
"Tired," she said, and she sounded it.
"The new pills aren't helping?" I asked.
She shrugged against me. "Not really. I'm going to the doctor again on Monday. I think what I really need is some sunlight. They can't put that in a pill. I'm so tempted just to get on a plane and fly to back to New Mexico sometimes."
"I'd miss you if you did that."
> Audrey had battled depression off and on her whole life. She'd come to Portland for a new job and a change of scenery but hadn't counted on the winters. Last winter had been tough, I'd watched the vibrant, funny woman I loved spend days where she could barely get out of bed. This winter was looking to be better in some ways, worse in others. She was still miserable at times. The medicine gave her just enough energy to think about leaving.
"Yeah, I know," she said. Much was always left unsaid between us. At times I felt like the only reason she stayed in Portland was because of me, that if we broke up she'd be gone in a heartbeat. I wasn't sure how that made me feel sometimes.
"You're getting my shirt all wet." She slid a hand between us, reached down and gave me a squeeze. "Save that for later. I'm hungry."
She stepped back from me and I saw there was indeed a big wet outline on the front of her silk shirt. It made it stick to her in interesting ways. She saw me staring and smiled before turning to go back to the bedroom.
I finished drying off and followed her into the bedroom where I was rewarded with a nice view of a long muscled back as she pulled her shirt off. Two could play at that game. I was of half a mind to try to find out if dinner could wait awhile but didn't. Things were a little funny when she was feeling down. It was hard not to take it personally sometimes.
I dressed quickly, a fresh pair of jeans, a button-down shirt, the official Dent Miller uniform. I may not be stylish, but I am predictable. I checked myself out in the mirror. Everything was tucked in and buttoned, so I guess I looked ok. Audrey looked a damn sight better in her long flowing skirt and the sweater she was pulling on.
"I'll be ready in just a second as soon as I put my hair up." She stood in front of the mirror fooling with her hair and exposing the fine skin on the back of her long neck. It begged to be kissed. I liked the fact that she could get ready to go somewhere almost as quick as I could.
"Something we have to do first," I said as I stuck my head in my closet. I pushed the clothes aside and pulled out a long flat package. Good. The wrapping paper hadn't gotten torn. I'd paid to have it wrapped. I was awful at wrapping presents.
"What's that?" Audrey was still fussing with her hair, not out of vanity so much as because there was just a lot of it. I walked over and kissed the mole on the side of her neck.
"Happy birthday." I held the package up.
She finally got all her hair contained, turned, and poked me in the chest. "I told you no presents, silly."
I shrugged. "Just something I stumbled into at the flea market." At my house, most of the furniture I owned had come from one flea market or second-hand store or another. I had one ex-girlfriend who refused to come to my place because of it. Auds just thought it was quirky and endearing.
“Let's open it in the living room,” she said.
I led the way into the living room and sat down on the couch, casting a glance over by the door as I went. I was relieved to see that her cello was there. Sometimes she left it in her office, which would have made the present I was about to give her no fun. If I had hinted to her to bring her cello home, that would have spoiled the surprise.
"I told you no present," she said again, mock angry.
Or at least I hoped it was mock anger. Money was an issue between us. I made a bunch more than she did and she was determined that I not spend any of it on her. Audrey taught music part-time at local colleges, gave private lessons, played in one of the local orchestras, gigged with trios, stuff like that. She had maybe seven or eight part-time and occasional jobs, usually only three or four of which were paying her at any one time. Somehow, she always made her ends meet, but it was a constant juggle. It would have driven me crazy. I liked my paychecks consistent and as large as possible, a holdover from growing up and not knowing if I'd have anything to eat the next day.
I held out the box and, after a moment she took it from my hands. I was sure the anger was false, mostly. She slid a finger down the wrapping paper and pulled out the long flat cardboard box.
It was interesting to watch her. The look on her face told me that my mention of the flea market had put her on her guard. She was probably expecting something like a rolled up velvet Elvis but steeling herself to pretend to like it anyway. The look changed to one of puzzlement for a few seconds when she opened the box. The sharp intake of breath and widening of her eyes was priceless.
"My God, Dent. Where did you find this?" She was holding a W.E. Hill & Sons cello bow. It dated from 1900, with a silver mounted ebony frog and a silver mounted tip. It had taken me three months to find it. A couple of times Audrey had mentioned that she really liked her cello but was less than happy with the two low-end bows she owned.
"Like I said, I found it at the flea market." I put my hands in my pockets and tried to look innocent.
"Flea market my ass. It must have cost a fortune."
"I got a good deal."
Well, not really. It had cost about six grand, a little over fair market price, but I had gotten caught up in an online bidding war. With only two weeks until Aud's birthday, I had been anxious to seal the deal on a good bow. There were several new empty spots in my gun safe as a result of this little purchase. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. When I cleaned it out, looking for things to sell, I'd found a Belgian Browning Auto-5 shotgun I hadn't even remembered buying.
Aud had a kind of stunned, almost confused look on her face, like she couldn't believe her good fortune, and didn't want to take the gift, all at the same time. I admired her independent streak but wished she'd just take the gift and enjoy it.
I stood up, reached over and put my hand over hers on the bow. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "Just take it, ok? It makes me happy to give it to you."
I realized that it really did make me happy, which was a new idea to get used to. I'd never gotten many presents in my life, so I guess I never got in the habit of giving.
Finally, her face softened, and she smiled. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."
I had a few ideas of things she could do with me but now wasn't the time. Hopefully later. "What you can do for me now is play your cello with your new bow for me."
"Ok. Sit down." She put the bow down on the low table in front of the couch carefully, almost reverently, then practically hopped over to her cello case. This was getting better and better.
This was the next, in some ways more important test. I'd contacted one of Aud's buddies in the orchestra on the sly. He'd checked the bow out for me and told me it was definitely worth what I'd paid for it, and more importantly, he thought Aud would like it, that it would fit with her playing style. I hoped he was right.
She took a few seconds to tune up, then stroked the bow across the strings. Her cello had a tone that for some reason always reminded me of really good whiskey, warm and a little smoky, hard to put into words. I thought it sounded good, but it wasn't me who mattered.
She was tentative at first, as she got used to the new bow. I couldn't tell the difference between this one and a cheap one that really did come from a flea market, but to somebody with Aud's level of talent, the slightest bit of difference was important. She could tell a difference in the way her instrument sounded and played depending on the temperature of the room and how humid it had been the night before. Sometimes I was jealous of her talent. I had way more guitars than I needed back home, but could barely bang out "Stairway to Heaven." I sometimes wished I had a talent beyond shooting guns and hunting down dirtbags.
She played snatches of this and that, her warm-up routine changed constantly. Then she settled into Bach. “Cello Suite No. 1.” I was proud of myself for recognizing it. I'd never known much about classical music before dating Aud, but I was slowly learning. It was after a minute or two of that piece that I realized I had a winner. She flowed into a long improvisation, at times slow and haunting enough to put a chill down my spine, and at other times something that evoked an otherworldly sensuousness that made me want to stop her and make love to h
er right there on the floor. As she played her posture changed. She relaxed. Her eyes closed. Her head tilted back, and she got a dreamy smile on her face. Her fingers seemed to float on the neck.
I closed my eyes and let myself relax much more than I usually did. Since the age of sixteen, when I was old enough to whip my dad's ass if he got drunk and mean, I had lived in a constant state of being ready to fight. It had become like breathing to me. If I let my awareness slip for too long, I got antsy, almost panicked.
The more time I spent with Audrey, the easier it became to relax. She was so calm and centered. I felt the pace of things slow down when I was around her and had come to like it. It was like we were in our own little bubble. I sometimes felt like a different person when I was with her.
She played through a series of long, low, sonorous notes and I knew somehow that she was bringing it to a close. I rode along with her, not wanting it to end, but finally she resolved the passage and stopped. I opened my eyes and found her still holding the cello and the bow. She was slightly flushed, with her pupils dilated, and she was breathing a little heavy. I was struck, as I sometimes was, how much the look on her face, right after the playing went well, was like the look right after we made love.
"You know, Dent," she said. "You're pretty good for me sometimes."
I just smiled. If I'd known giving people presents was this much fun, I would have started sooner.
She put the bow and the cello down carefully, came over and straddled me on the couch.
“Thought you wanted dinner?” I asked.
She kissed me in reply, long and hard. I sat back and enjoyed it, all the more because as the days got shorter and darker, the times that she initiated anything physical got fewer and farther between. On their own, my hands went to her waist, found the band of soft skin where her shirt had come untucked from her skirt.
That's when my cell phone started to ring.
"Mmph," I said, our mouths still locked together. Aud kissed me all the harder for a few seconds, then drew back only to bite me on the lower lip. "Ow!" I said.