Saving Room for Dessert

by K. C. Constantine

  Aw, go on, man, listen to yourself, what are you, thirteen? Thirty years old, just passed the sergeant’s test, they’re goin’ make you a detective, and here you are actin’ like some got-damn thirteen-year-old boy woke up think his dick is broke just ’cause he had a wet dream. Least you can still put a crease in your pants.

  Separate yourself from this woman, William, get her out your head! Stop thinkin’ like some got-damn pussy-whipped boy!

  Rayford managed, briefly, to calm his mind while he put on his socks and shoes. He checked his watch against the Weather Channel’s. Theirs said 2:48, so did his, which meant twelve minutes to finish dressing and get to City Hall. He watched the local weather to see whether he might need rain gear. Sunny and warm, high of 66, low of 50, no rain predicted till Saturday. Too got-damn warm for April, too got-damn dry too. Where these April showers? Need some storms keep these honky motherfuckers out their backyards and in their houses.

  He put on his white V-neck Commander T-shirt, then slipped into his Second Chance Monarch body armor and hooked up the Velcro tabs. Then he put on his short-sleeve black shirt, tucked it in, went to the front door, and checked himself out in the full-length mirror he’d hung the day he’d moved in. He put his cap on, squared it, put his heels together, saluted, and inspected himself up and down, from black cap to black safety-toed oxfords, all cloth cleaned and pressed, shoes polished to a high gloss.

  He got his duty belt from the bedroom closet beside his bed and put it on, adjusting his duty-belt keepers to his buckleless trouser belt, then checked out his duty belt, sight and feel, from left to right around his back: key holder, baton holder, pepper spray, cuffs, glove pouch, flashlight holder, SIG-Sauer 9mm pistol in holster, and double-magazine case. He took out both magazines, made sure they were full, then replaced them in the case and snapped both snaps. Then he drew his pistol, eased the slide back far enough to make sure he had a live round in the chamber, then reholstered it and adjusted the retention strap. He made sure his PR-24 baton and four-cell MagLite flash were still in their holders on top of his black nylon gear bag, checked his wristwatch one last time against the Weather Channel’s clock, turned the TV off, picked up his gear bag and briefcase, gave himself one more inspection in the mirror, and went out, locking the door carefully behind him, ready for Mrs. Romanitsky to bless him.

  After pulling his door shut, he turned around and there she was, peeking out her door opposite his. She came out, eyes dancing as usual, her palms together briefly, and then she made a cross in the air between them. “I’m gonna pray for you today, Officer William. You gonna be safe ’cause God will look out for you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. As always, I appreciate your prayers. I know they’re keeping me safe. Now is there anything you need today? Anything I can get for you while I’m out and about?”

  “Oh no, no no, you just watch out, you be good, God will be good to you, okay? I don’t need nothing, no thank you very much, you such a good boy, your mother’s very proud, I know.”

  “I’m sure she is too, ma’am, wherever she is. I have to go now, okay? Anything you need, you call the station, tell ’em to tell me and I’ll get it for you, okay?”

  “Ouu, thank you, God bless you, you’re so nice.”

  Every day, for nearly six years, it was the same exchange, almost word for word, since the first afternoon he came out of his apartment in uniform and startled her as she was coming back from the grocery. She’d dropped one of her bags of groceries at the sight of him, quickly asking what was wrong. He’d said nothing was wrong, he’d just moved in that morning and would be living there for just a while until he could find a larger, more suitable place for his wife and child. She put her other plastic bags of groceries on the floor, crossed herself, put her palms together, and rocked back and forth from the waist, saying thank you repeatedly while looking at the ceiling.

  “Is there a problem, ma’am?”

  “That man,” she’d said, pointing at the ceiling, “he plays his music so loud, till one, two o’clock in the morning, I can’t sleep, could you maybe ask him, please, not so loud, okay?”

  “You talk to the owner about it?”

  “I tell him, I ask him, please, but he don’t do nothing.”

  “Alright, I’ll check it out when I come home tonight, okay?”

  “Oh, please, would you? I would be so happy, thank you.”

  When he came off duty that night, his first on the job, as soon as he got out of his car, Rayford heard the music, some white-boy blues, some Stevie Ray Vaughan wanna-be. He listened for a moment on the sidewalk, then went inside and listened by Mrs. Romanitsky’s door. Then he went upstairs and had to knock three times before a grunge-ball with a fish belly hanging over his sweat-pants opened the door. He had a vacant grin and was gnawing on one end of a foot-long stick of pepperoni. As soon as the door opened Rayford smelled the pot. It took considerably longer for Grunge-Ball’s grin to dissolve as the uniform registered in his brain.

  “Whoa.”

  “Almost right,” Rayford said. “Woe is you is more like it. Got a complaint about your music, but my nose tells me I got probable cause to look for controlled substances, namely marijuana, which I can smell all over you.”

  Grunge-Ball tried to close the door, but Rayford put the side of his left foot and left forearm against it. When he did he happened to catch a glance through the living room into the kitchen, and his jaw dropped and he started to laugh.

  “Oh-oh, what’s this I see? Are those grow lights I see? In your kitchen? You got grow lights in your kitchen?!”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Oh now what you goin’ say, you growin’ tomatoes in there, is that what you goin’ say?”

  “Uh, no. Huh? Tomatoes? Fuck you talkin’ ’bout?”

  “Oh man, step back inside, turn around, put your hands behind your back—let go that pepperoni.” Rayford snatched it out of Grunge-Ball’s hand and tossed it into the room onto a couch with a broken right leg.

  “Hey, man, that’s Armour brand, man, you don’t throw that around, that’s primo”

  “Well listen to you, my man the pepperoni connoisseur, huh? Do what I tell you, pep con, and the only problem you’re gonna have is with a judge, you hear me? Turn around, I said, put your hands behind your back.”

  “Oh man, you just can’t come in here,” Grunge-Ball said, but he got into a laughing jag from the pot and then, still laughing, tried to push his way past Rayford into the hall. Rayford spun him around, grabbed his left wrist and twisted it back and down, got that wrist cuffed, stepped on Grunge-Ball’s left toes while pushing his right shoulder down and pulling his left wrist up, and before Grunge-Ball knew it he was on his knees, saying, “Man, somethin’ bit me on the toes. Fuck was that? You got a dog?”

  “You don’t stop squirmin’, it’s goin’ bite you again.”

  “That ain’t right, man, siccin’ a dog on people. Where the fuck’d it go, man, you got a magical dog or somethin’? Where’s it at?”

  “Magical dog? You’re trippin’ out. You need to stop smokin’ your own product, my man, you’re growin’ some mutant weed.”

  And so, on his first day of duty with the Rocksburg PD, Patrolman William Rayford made his first drug collar, arresting John Harrold Walinski in apartment 3C at 335 Detmar Street, Rocksburg, and charging him with violations of Act 64, the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device, and Cosmetic Act, Section 13, paragraphs 1, 12, 30, 31, 32, and 33, possession, possession with intent to deliver, and use of paraphernalia for the purpose of planting, propagating, cultivating, growing, harvesting, etc., etc., a controlled substance, namely marijuana in excess of thirty grams. This arrest led to the confiscation of fifty marijuana plants at various stages of cultivation, most about six inches tall under the grow lights in the kitchen but five of them nearly four feet high in a closet. Also confiscated were three cookie sheets full of marijuana leaves and buds drying in the oven, several boxes of Baggies, a carton of Top cigarette papers, and two scales. />
  The arrest, detention, prosecution, conviction, and subsequent incarceration of John Walinski also led to the daily gratitude of Mrs. Romanitsky in 2A, who ever since had greeted Rayford as soon as she heard his door open if she sensed he was beginning a watch, at seven, three, or eleven o’clock. If he opened his door at any other time, she did not appear, but at the beginning of each of his watches, she never failed to appear and bless him with her prayers.

  For a long time Rayford thought she was just some lonely old honky woman, half nuts from living alone for so long, but the more it became clear his wife and son were not moving to Rocksburg to be with him, the more easy it became for him to slip into relying on Mrs. Romanitsky’s prayers. Nobody else was praying for him that he knew of, and even though in his private heart he thought religion was just the way rich folks kept poor folks satisfied with their poverty, he knew in his bones he wasn’t big enough to turn down anybody’s prayers. He’d take all the prayers he could get, even though he believed that as long as all you were worrying about was your immortal soul, you were no threat to stake out a corner of what might be yours in the here and now. And if Balzic was right about how rich folks had played with the emotions of early union organizers in the mills and mines by hiring blacks as scabs—and Rayford had no doubt of that—then religion was just the hammer on that nail in the coffin of poor folks, white, black, brown, red, or yellow.

  Still, after nearly six years in this apartment building—and he’d never signed a lease for longer than a year at a time—Rayford had had no choice but to reassess who was half crazy from loneliness, Mrs. Romanitsky or him.

  Social life for blacks in Rocksburg was nonexistent. He’d heard that at one time there had been a black American Legion post, but that had closed long before he’d arrived. There were two black churches, Bethel AME and Rocksburg Baptist, but Rayford had no interest in church or church socials. It was true that if his mood was right, a good gospel group could get him off his behind and onto his feet, the operative word being “good,” but if you didn’t go to church, the only place you could find good gospel was on the radio or the TV, and given the state of radio and TV ownership in Pittsburgh, the chances of that were slim.

  Still, early on, within a month after moving to Rocksburg, Rayford heard about a black club in Knox, Freeman’s Club and Barbecue, fronted by two blacks for a mafioso with the unlikely street name of Fat Buddha. It wasn’t much. Just a bar, a grill and barbecue pit, a tiny dance floor, a jukebox, a couple dozen tables, and every Saturday night, an open mike for any local musicians who wanted to jam, mostly the blues and rock ’n’ roll but occasionally jazz. Free-man’s was where Rayford had met the women he was unfaithful to, every one he managed to bed doing nothing for him as much as magnifying his memories of Charmane and intensifying his hunger for her.

  Somehow, to his irritation and annoyance, every woman he’d met in Freeman’s who’d looked clean enough to take out into day-light had managed to find his phone numbers, home and cell, even though he’d never taken any of them back to his apartment and had given each one a different misspelling of his last name, Reyford, Raiferd, Reyfird, Rayfer. He thought that should have been enough to protect himself from their prying minds, but the fact that he had a spotless red ’97 Toyota Celica, decent clothes, and a steady income seemed to put a serious jump in their curiosity about him.

  He also never discussed his job with any of them. That was his first rule; he never told anybody he met socially outside of Rocksburg that he was a cop. Too many brothers had been through the system with God only knew what resentments for him to open himself up to any of those possibilities. And the last thing he wanted was any sister to have that information to trade to any resentful brother.

  So he was perplexed that not only one but all four of the ones he’d been seeing off and on had found out his unlisted phone numbers and called him constantly. He had a machine and caller ID and never took any calls without screening, but every day that he came home from work or shopping or eating he would find at least one message from one of the sisters and sometimes one from each of them, and sometimes many more than that.

  On his way to City Hall, he was trying once again to recall if he’d slipped and told one of the bartenders in Freeman’s his numbers after too much Wild Turkey one Friday night. He couldn’t fully convince himself not to worry about it, even though what was done was done and even though he knew it wasn’t like him to slip about things like his numbers. More and more lately he’d been thinking that one of the sisters had a relative or an old boyfriend who was a cop and had run his plate through DMV, then got his insurance carrier off the title, and got his phone numbers from his insurance agent while making up some jive about an accident mix-up. Had to be. Or more likely it was some dude who wanted to be the new boyfriend.

  So either it was time to change his numbers and stop going to Freeman’s for his social life, or else start motoring to Pittsburgh to find a new one. Or maybe he’d just go on a woman fast, no women for thirty days, no pussy and no booze, just eat veggie stir-fries and drink green tea and do yoga and lift and run. Yeah, right. The running and lifting and yoga and stir-fries and no booze he could handle, but thirty days without a woman? Hey, why not, he asked himself as he pulled into the parking lot on the south side of City Hall. Didn’t have a woman the whole time I was in air force basic. Didn’t die or go blind. Just did what I had to do. Why can’t I do that now?

  Stop bullshittin’ yourself, William, he thought. You know what you want. You know what you’ve wanted for five years. You want to make another baby with Charmane, that’s what you want, you ain’t bullshittin’ nobody, man. You want to fill that black hole in your black heart where William Junior used to be. Before that got-damn woman let that boy crawl up on the back of that couch and get up on that got-damn windowsill. That’s what you want, William. And none of those women from Freeman’s is good enough to do that with, none of ’em got the looks or the body or the laugh. That boy looked like Charmane from the day he was born, same velvet chocolatey skin, same healthy body, same perfect fingers and toes, same brown eyes, same laugh comin’ up outta their bellies … great God almighty how they could laugh. And you’re never goin’ hear it again, William. Not in this life. So separate yourself from it. Get it out of your mind, get it out of your heart. Go to work. Do your job. Every second a new one. Every breath a new one. Just do them one at a time.…

  Rayford parked his Celica in one of the slots against the chain-link fence that separated City Hall’s lot from the one used by the businesses in the South Main Commerce Building. He collected his gear bag and briefcase, locked his car, and checked his watch once more as he headed for the door into the station. It was 2:58. At 2:59 he was hustling into the duty room just as Chief Nowicki was coming out of his office, clipboard in hand, to begin the watch briefing. Rayford nodded and exchanged greetings with Patrolman Robert “Booboo” Canoza and Patrolman James Reseta, the two other patrolmen who’d be in the mobile units this three-to-eleven watch.

  Nowicki waited for Rayford to set his gear bag and briefcase on the floor and then said, “Afternoon, gentlemen. Not much happening today, but we’re still lookin’ for the mope that tried to take off Leone’s Pizza yesterday. Detective Carlucci thinks it’s the same one that’s been takin’ off pizza joints in the townships. State guys gave us this Identikit mug shot from the three previous.”

  Nowicki handed out copies of the mug shot and said, “Details of physical description, as you can see, are pretty crappy, the kids were too scared to take more than a glance at anything but his face. But all these kids’re sure about three things, and that’s the gun and the black ski mask and that he’s on foot. No vehicle. So you see anybody on foot near any pizza joint, convenience store, gas station, et cetera, with a black watch cap or black knit cap or anything you think could turn into a ski mask, tell him get on the ground and call for backup, okay?”

  Nowicki paused there and studied Patrolman Canoza. “Booboo, you don’t have y
our vest on, do ya?”

  “It chafes me.”

  “Aw don’t even start with that chafes-me shit, I don’t wanna hear it, okay? You don’t have that vest on by the time I’m through talkin’, don’t even reach for the keys, you hear me?”

  “It chafes me, I’m tellin’ you.”

  “Cornstarch, baby powder, then the Commander shirt, then the vest, that’s the drill—fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “It scares me to wear that thing, just reminds me how many crazies there are out there.”

  “Oh man, now there’s perfect logic for ya, Boo, I mean it, there’re crazies out there, so what you do in all your smartness? Huh? You keep your vest in your gear bag. And why? ’Cause it chafes you. Don’t chafe nobody else, just you. I’m tellin’ you, Boo, you don’t put it on, you’re sittin’ down for ten days, no pay, I swear. I love you like a brother, you know that, but I’m not jokin’ around with you anymore about this. Put it on. Now. Or go home. Up to you.”

  Canoza blew out a sigh from deep in his enormous torso. It sounded like somebody had cut the valve on a truck tire. Rayford glanced over at him, all six feet five and two hundred and seventy or eighty pounds depending on what he had for breakfast, and shook his head, but not so Canoza could see. Rayford knew better than to let Canoza see that. During Rayford’s first month on the job, he’d backed up Canoza at a call to a bar which the owner feared was being taken over by bikers as their favorite hangout. He’d seen Canoza yank two bikers off bar stools by their belts and carry them outside, one in each hand like they were gym bags, and slam them headfirst into the side of his mobile unit just because they laughed when he said the bar’s owner said their presence was costing him business. So it was true they only weighed about one-fifty, one-sixty apiece. Still, one in each hand wasn’t something Rayford would ever allow himself to forget.