Curt went silent, but I could tell he was checking his watch. Sitting behind the desk for Curt was like keeping a racehorse stalled behind the starting gate. He was born to walk the streets, not type up reports. That's likely why I felt the most guilt; it was one less great cop protecting the city.
"Gimme one hour. Mixins." Mixins was a cheesy singles bar primarily frequented by law and finance professionals who felt eight-dollar beers and weak cosmos were part of the mating ritual. The bar had undergone a total renovation over the last few years, mainly due to its predilection to serving underage girls.
A friend of a friend who used to drink there said the waitstaff would grossly undercharge young women, naturally in the hopes of luring free-spending men to the bar. Soon enough the cops caught on. Though rumor had it they didn't so much as catch on, but an off-duty detective saw a group of girls walk directly to the bar once after finishing class on Friday.
The bar had been shut down, but underwent a classic change in management, and now you'd be hard pressed to find someone holding a glass who didn't take home close to six figures. Neither Curt nor I pulled in anywhere in the universe of that salary, but Curt enjoyed it because, in his words, finance girls were workahol ics in every aspect of their lives. They kept their minds and their bodies sharp, and even though he seemed to always be in a serious relationship-sometimes several at once-he enjoyed having nice views at the bar. When
I asked him about it, his answer was simply that I wasn't pretty enough to hold his attention through more than one round of drinks.
I got to the bar before he did, took a seat and ordered a Brooklyn Lager. The bartender, a tall, rail-thin guy wearing a tight black T-shirt that ended right above his veiny pelvic area, served it to me then recommenced putting his elbows on the table and looking tortured.
The stools by the bar were never full here. It wasn't the kind of place one went to for a quiet drink.
A few months ago I'd gone through a rough personal patch. When Amanda and I were separated for a while.
Being apart from her led me to drink too much and seek out my own solitude. Losing a part of your life can be the most accurate barometer of what matters most. If you love something, being apart from it will haunt you.
If it doesn't, it can't have mattered all that much to begin with.
Being apart from Amanda was a miserable experi ence. I slept at my desk at the Gazette. My personal hygiene fell a rung below your average wino's. I wondered if I was simply the kind of guy who always needed to be in a relationship. Before Amanda, I'd been with my previous girlfriend, Mya, for several years. We also ended badly, and after suffering brutal injuries at the hands of a maniac, she seemed fully recovered, her life back on track. I was happy with Amanda, and I knew the difference between a good and a bad relation ship. Learning it had nearly killed me, but it was worth it.
After waiting fifteen minutes and downing half my beer, Curt strode into the bar. He was tall, black, in great shape, though his recent sedentary work life had softened the edges just a bit. He was wearing a dark shirt made of some shiny fabric. Certainly not what he wore on the job, unless the NYPD was far more fashionable than I'd thought.
Though his posture was perfect and he betrayed no sense of pain, there was still a slight limp evident in Curt's walk. I remembered seeing him lying there in a pool of blood, holding back the pain, unwilling to let anything get over on him. It was as though he was disgusted at himself for showing weakness, taking the maxim "never let them see you bleed" quite literally. If he was limping at all, he was probably in more pain and discomfort than he let on.
We shook hands, and Curt ordered a beer. The bar tender poured it from the tap, eyeing Curt while letting the foam pour over, a thin smile on his thin lips. Once he'd set the glass down and moved away, I said to Curt,
"Now batting for the other team…"
"Don't even start, Henry."
"What? That's a compliment. Any man who can attract players from both dugouts is doing something right. Besides, wearing that shirt, I wouldn't be sur prised if a few new dugouts spring up."
"You know, Parker, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about sometimes." Curt sipped his beer.
"How's the leg?" I asked, slightly apprehensive. It would have been easier to ignore it, to pretend he'd never been shot and there was nothing holding him back. It would have been easier to sit here, drink and carry on, pretend he wasn't limping.
"It's getting better," he said. "Takes a while for the muscle strength to build up, since they had to slice through some muscle to repair the damage to the artery."
Just hearing this made me wince. "Does it hurt?"
"When it's cold out, yeah. Gets a little stiff on me.
Plus, it's a little numb by my toes, on account of them having to go through some nerves, too. Docs aren't sure that'll ever come back. Not a big deal, though."
I wanted to scream at him and ask how that could not be a big deal, but I supposed if you took a bullet in an artery and that was the worst-case scenario, you tended to think on the bright side of things.
"Tell you one thing," Curt continued, "I'm going to have to start wearing gloves, they got me filling out so many forms. Feel like I'm a supporting cast member on The Office or something. The black dude who stands in the corner with paper cuts on every finger.
How's Amanda?"
"She's doing well," I said. "Been a huge help on this thing with my dad. Without her he'd probably still be sitting in an Oregon prison claiming not to be James Parker."
"She's a good one, my man. Glad you finally made amends for all that crap you pulled breaking up with her."
"It wasn't like I was just breaking up with her," I said, taking another pull on my drink. "I thought I was doing the right thing, being noble."
"Nobility isn't about telling someone what you think is right for them. It's doing the right thing, period.
Girls's a grown woman, she can make her own deci sions. What you did was selfish, and it was to alleviate your own guilt over what happened to her and Mya. You felt like if you broke things off, you could feel as if you were protecting them. Just not so. I don't claim to be
Mr. Perfect Relationship, but there's give-and-take.
You're with someone, you're their partner. It was selfish, bro, own up to it."
"Maybe you're right," I said. "And trust me, I know
I screwed up. And I'm atoning for it."
"How?"
"For starters, I cook every Friday night."
"You a good cook?"
"If by 'good' you mean she's able to swallow one forkful without gagging, then yeah, I'm a good cook."
Curt sipped his drink, then shifted his weight, a small grimace spreading over his face. It was a brief reaction and certainly unintentional, but for some reason it made my stomach feel hollow.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"'Course, man. You sound serious all of a sudden, you got a month to live or something?" he said, laughing.
I smiled, drank. "You ever feel like I do more harm than good? As a person?"
Curt looked at me. He could tell I was serious. "Not quite sure why you say that," he said. "But it feels to me like you might be having a little pity party."
"It's not that," I said. "I'm over all that. I just feel like over the last few years…I mean, look at it. Mya.
Amanda. You. My dad. Just feels like all these people
I'm supposed to be close to get hurt. Not to mention this guy who got killed the other day."
"What guy?' Curt asked.
I filled him in on the details of Hector Guardado and the briefcase. He sat there, focused, listening intently.
He nodded when I brought up Detective Makhoulian, said he'd met the guy once or twice and that he seemed like he was on the up-and-up.