Page 85 of Body Count

He didn’t say anything to that.

“Also, bro, what the fuck is up with you?”

Blond eyebrows arched.“Excuse me?”

“This bullshit about sitting around the house in pearls and heels waiting for Emery to come home so you can make him a drink.”

“Yeah, that’s really not what this is—”

“Fuck yeah it is.When the hell are you going back to work?”

“Never.”

“What the fuck do you mean, never?”

“I mean I’m trying to work out a settlement with the city to get my pension and then be done.”A smile tightened his mouth.“My father is making it difficult.”

For a moment, I literally had no words.And then I said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He looked away.Then he shrugged.

“Are you kidding me?Jesus fucking Christ.Are you shitting me?”

“I’d like to drop this.”

“Too fucking bad.Bro, people are waiting for you.We’rewaiting for you.Peterson is a good chief.If you weren’t around, he’d be a great one.But he’s not you.”

He tapped the half-empty can, still not looking at me, and the aluminum flexed and popped softly.“Have you ever heard the expression ‘playing in the ruins’?”

“No.I haven’t.And I don’t care—”

“It’s one way of thinking about what you can do when your life burns down around you.”And he did look at me now, quirking his eyebrows again, in case I missed the point.“We all have these—these lives we build.And sometimes, reality comes along and knocks everything to the ground.Tramples the shit out of everything we thought we knew, everything we believed.And when everything you thought you knew about the world, about yourself, about your place in the world—when it’s all ashes, it’s paralyzing.You can’t move forward.You can’t do anything.”He shifted his weight.The sun touched the side of his face, his shoulder, the hollow of his throat.He was thinner; he’d lost weight.“How did you say it earlier?‘Who the fuck am I?’”

“You’re John-Henry Somerset.”

That made him smile, if only for a moment.“Playing in the ruins is a way of thinking about what comes after.Because it can be—liberating, I guess, if that’s the right word.Once the fires go out, once all the things you believed were true are gone, you’re in the ruins.And you can either sit there, feeling sorry for yourself.Or you can be grateful.Be grateful that you finally get to see the world for what it is, not for what you thought it was.That you get to see yourself for who you are, and not who you thought you were.‘Delivered to reality.’That’s the phrase I read.Like, for example, the reality that you only became a police officer to piss off your dad.”

It took a moment for that one to work its way through my brain.I nodded slowly, taking it in.When I felt like it had landed, I said, “Yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Damn.”I rubbed that aching spot on my cheek.“You were a police officer for, how long?Fifteen years?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s seriously messed up.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Risking your life, getting shot at, pulling godawful shifts, having people spit on you and piss on you and puke on you and shit on you—and I mean that literally, bro—and doing a fucking fantastic job of it, and getting promoted to detective and solving all those murders with Emery—you did all that just to piss off your dad?”I whistled and leaned back on my stool and applauded.“Shit, bro, that isdedication.”

A hint of color rose in his cheeks.“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Fuck that noise.I know better than just about anybody except Emery.The people in this town fucked you over.You’ve spent your whole adult life trying to help them, and they turned on you like a pack of fucking hyenas.That’s shitty, man.I’m sorry.Fuck them.Fuck their faces off.But don’t give me this self-pity jackoff story about how you finally realized you were only doing it to get Daddy to pay attention to you.”

He stared at me for what felt like a long time, the blush rising in his face, until finally he said, “What the fuck kind of motivational speech was that?”

“I don’t do motivational speeches, bro.I do, however, totally know how to throw a pity bone.”

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