Part 10 (1/2)

Then she reached over and took my hand and gave it a quick squeeze. ”I really am falling in love with you.”

”I'm falling in love with you, too.”

”I know,” she smiled. ”And that's what makes it so nice.”

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Summer came the following week.

That's a local joke, about how you can have summer and winter and summer again all within the same month. Sometimes within the same week.

But it really was sort of like summer, people walking around downtown in their s.h.i.+rtsleeves and dresses.

By noon, the temperature was in the seventies and the sunlight was very warm. Convertible tops went down and everywhere you went you heard loud rock and roll music. It was like the town was having this party.

On my lunch hour, I walked over to Taubman's Cigar Store. That's what it's always been called, but even though they sell cigarettes and cigars it's mostly a newsstand where I buy all my science fiction paperbacks.

The big thing at Taubman's is the skin magazines. Two or three times in the past few years, The Women Of Righteousness picketed the place, but Mr. Taubman didn't give in.

Mr. Taubman keeps the skin magazines in the back of his store, so that's where you usually find the crowd. It's always kind of fun to watch guys go back there. Some of them look kind of sneaky and furtive. Some kind of swagger, as if they're daring you to say anything about what they're doing. And some are just fast, shoot back there, thumb through a few pages, and then shoot back out into the street.

I spent twenty minutes going through the new paperbacks. I bought two of them, a Koontz and a King, them pretty much being my favorite writers.

I was just leaving when I saw Garrett coming through the doorway.

Even though his s.h.i.+ft didn't start for a couple of hours, he was already in uniform.

Any self-consciousness he'd had those first few days was already gone.

When he saw me, he paused in the doorway, nodded for me to follow, and then turned around and walked back outside.

He said h.e.l.lo to a couple of pa.s.sing people, and then gave a long, hard look to a very pretty young mother pus.h.i.+ng her baby in his stroller down the block. She had beautiful ankles.

He didn't say anything to me, just started walking, and I fell in next to him.

It was kind of strange, neither of us saying anything, just walking. We pa.s.sed the Lutheran church with its towering spire; and the First Trust bank building where, according to legend, John Dillinger stopped one day while fleeing federal agents; and the Orpheum theater that closed down after the four-plex went up in the mall.

Then we reached the city park, and it was all pretty women, and little kids playing Frisbee with dogs, and old men on park benches, and motorboats out on the river.

”You eat yet?” Garrett said.

”Huh-uh.”

”You want a hot dog?”

”Yeah, OK.”

There was a small concrete block concession stand. We got two Pepsis and two chili dogs and went over and sat on a bench by the river.

I could tell he wanted to say something.

He said, ”Guess what I read this weekend?”

”What?”

”Four of those old Roy Thomas Conan comic books.”

”Wow, I haven't seen those since I was a kid.”

”They were really good.”

But that wasn't what he really wanted to say. That was just talk. Nervous talk.

He said, ”Went on my first drug-bust last night.”

”Yeah?”

”Yeah. I was scared s.h.i.+tless. The Captain said that these guys would be armed. You know, dealers.”

”Were they?”

”Yeah, they were. One of them even had a sawed-off shotgun. Lucky for us, they were stoned out of their f.u.c.king minds. All we had to do was waltz in there and bust the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.”

He was already a cop. With the att.i.tude, I mean, and hard edge. He'd only been wearing the uniform about three weeks.

But the drug bust wasn't what he wanted to tell me about, either.

We sat in silence a little longer and the little kids laughing and toddling around on the gra.s.s was kind of fun to watch.

He said, ”He's a big hero.”

”Who is?”

”Myles.”

”Oh.”

”You didn't press charges so he could play that game and he goes and scores more points than he ever has and we win the conference champions.h.i.+p so now he's king s.h.i.+t again instead of this creep who beat you up.”

”Well, I got something good out of it.” I looked over at him and smiled. ”Cindy.”

We watched each other for a moment and then looked back at the river. Sometimes it's easy to imagine the days when the big paddle-wheelers plied this river and unloaded supplies here on the sh.o.r.e. The old-timers say that Indians used to run for miles on the sh.o.r.e right along with the paddle-wheelers, waving and laughing the whole time.

He said, ”I've got to tell you something.”

Whatever he was about to say was the real thing he wanted to tell me. Not Conan, not drug busts. This.