Shelter in Place (Page 17)

“I don’t want to run the shop. A lot of people don’t like their jobs. And I need it because I’m going to at least pay for some of my own expenses.”

“Then find a job you like. You’re wasting yourself on sex with men you don’t care about.”

Now Simone had her own tears to knuckle away. “I don’t want to care about anybody right now. I don’t know if I ever will. I can care about you, about my family, and that’s all I’ve got.”

“I think it’s sad I value you more than you value yourself, so it’s a good thing I’m around to bitch and nag at you.”

“You’re really good at it.”

“I’m president of the Bitch and Nag Club. You barely qualify as an honorary member. Take the summer, Sim. We can hang out at the beach until I leave for London. You can spend time with CiCi, even let her take you around Europe like she wanted to after graduation. We can sublet the apartment. Don’t stay here alone.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s what you say when you want me to shut up.”

“Maybe. Look, I’m tired, and I’ve got to be at the shop at eight to do the job I don’t like. I want to get some sleep.”

Mi nodded, dumped the tea neither of them had finished in the sink.

Simone knew the quality of that silence, and it read anxiety.

“Sleepover time?” she suggested.

Mi’s shoulders dropped in relief. “That’d be good.”

“We’ll use your virginal bed for obvious reasons.” She slung an arm around Mi as they walked to Mi’s bedroom. “I got Aaron’s number. Maybe he has a friend.”

“You said he name was Ansel.”

“Damn it.”

They crawled into Mi’s bed, snuggled together for comfort.

“I miss her,” Mi murmured.

“I know. Me, too.”

“I think I’d feel different about New York, just being here, if she were. If Tish were here, we’d be different.”

Everything would be, Simone thought.

She dreamed of it, of sitting with Mi, watching Tish, alive and vital, onstage. In the spotlight. Just owning it.

She dreamed of Mi working in her lab, so crisp and brilliant in her white coat.

And when the dreams turned inward, she saw herself sitting on a raft on a still and silent sea. Drifting nowhere.

She woke to the reality of serving the college crowd fancy, overpriced coffee most paid for with credit cards given to them by their parents—and they still couldn’t be bothered to tack on a decent tip.

When she found herself, for the second time that week, scrubbing out the toilet in the unisex bathroom, she took yet another good look at herself in the mirror.

She knew the fuckhead of a manager dumped the bathroom duty on her twice as often as anyone else because she wouldn’t have sex with him. (Married, at least forty, ponytail, so yuck.)

“So screw it,” she told herself.

She walked out of air that smelled like bleach and fake lemons, into the constant hum of espresso machines and conversations pontificating about politics or whining about relationships.

She pulled off the stupid red apron she had to pay to have laundered, got her purse out of the skinny locker—the rent of which also came out of her sorry excuse for a paycheck.

Manager Fuckhead sneered at her. “It’s not time for your break.”

“You’re wrong about that. It’s past time for my break. I quit.”

She strolled out into the world of noise and color, and realized she felt something she’d missed for entirely too long.

She felt happy.

* * *

Six months after graduating from the Academy, Reed rode patrol with Bull Stockwell. Officer Tidas Stockwell had earned the name “Bull” not only from his physicality, but from his personality. A fifteen-year vet, Bull was foulmouthed, hard-assed, and claimed to have a nose that could detect bullshit from two miles off.

He had several red flags that caused him to charge, including: anything he considered anti-American (a sliding scale), assholes (a wide range of qualifications), and motherfuckers. His top candidates for motherfuckers were anyone who harmed children, beat women, or abused animals.

He hadn’t voted for Obama—he’d never voted for a Democrat in his life, and saw no reason to deviate. But the man was president of the United States and, as such, had his respect and loyalty.

He didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body. He knew assholes and motherfuckers came in every color and creed. He might not understand the whole gay thing, but didn’t actually give a shit one way or the other. He figured if you wanted to get off with somebody built the same as you, that was your business.

He had two divorces under his Sam Browne belt—from the first, a ten-year-old daughter he unabashedly worshipped—and he owned a one-eyed, one-legged cat he’d rescued after a drug bust.

Most days he berated Reed verbally for being too stupid, too slow, a college boy, and a dumbass rookie. And in the six months since he’d been on the job, Reed had learned more about the down-and-dirty and nitty-gritty of cop work than he had in all his college courses or in his months at the Academy.

He’d sure as hell learned, when answering a domestic disturbance call, to put himself between Bull and the offending party (male) before that red flag had his partner pawing the ground and snorting.

So when they rolled up to a potential double D in a townhome they’d visited for the same reason four times before, Reed prepared to do just that.

“She’s got an RO on him now, so his ass is mine.”

Reed recalled the she in question—one LaDonna Gray—had taken her husband—one Vic Gray—back after a black eye and split lip, and again after a broken arm and clear-cut marital rape.

But the third incident—knocking her unconscious, and knocking out two teeth—two months after she’d given birth to their son had been the restraining order charm.

“He better not have touched that baby.” Bull hitched up his pants as they started for the door down a frost-heavy walkway slushy with snow.

A woman ran out of the connecting unit. “He’s killing her! I swear this time he’s killing her.”

Reed heard it now—the screams, the shouts, the wails from the baby.

He had time to think: Oh, shit.

He saw, too, the front door had already been broken in.

He went through the doorway with his partner, noted the signs of violence on the main level, with the overturned table, broken lamp.

Upstairs the baby screamed as if someone had shoved an ice pick through his ear, but the shouts, curses, sobs, thuds came from the rear of the house.

Reed moved faster than Bull—younger, longer legs—and had time to see Vic Gray bolt out the back door. The woman lay moaning, sobbing, bleeding on the kitchen floor.

“I’ve got him.” Reed sprinted out the back. As he ran, he called it in.

“Officer Quartermaine in pursuit of suspect in assault. Suspect is Victor Gray, Caucasian male, age twenty-eight, heading south on Prospect on foot. Suspect is five feet ten inches, a hundred and eighty pounds. He’s wearing a black parka, red watch cap, jeans. Turning east on Mercer.”

Gray cut across a yard, carving a path through the eight inches of snow from the fall the night before, scaled a fence. Reed thought how much faster he’d be if he had his Nikes instead of the uniform shoes.

His breath in visible clouds, Reed went over the fence, dropped into snow. Heard screams, kicked up his speed. He hadn’t lettered in track in high school for nothing.