Page 24 of Forever Endeavor

CHAPTER 8

Billie

Waves sloshed against the sides of the vessel as it glided through the water’s glassy surface. The sun was just beginning to peek above the horizon, soft purplish light flickering across the water and turning the clouds into picturesque ribbons of pink and orange. So, this is what dawn looks like, Billie thought. The morning got off to a bit of a rocky start when Cal laid eyes on his poorly underdressed deck hand. He tsk-tsked and then took pity on her, tossing out a hooded flannel and a puffy life preserver to put over her flimsy vacation wear. Note to self: need to buy clothing better suited for real life.

Otherwise, he’d barely spoken a word since they left the dock. Was Cal preoccupied with the day’s work or were his Spidey senses tingling about his houseguest’s late night shenanigans? Billie had a terrible face for poker, so maybe it was obvious she’d let Sonny poke her. Nah, paranoia was probably a side effect of lack of sleep and having fan-freakin’-tastic sex on the brain. Her mind flashed through a hot reel of X-rated scenes from the previous night, her tingling lady parts cheering for an encore. Getting naked with someone new was a tightrope walk between thrilling and terrifying, but somehow being with Sonny put her at ease and gave her an unexpected confidence. The way he touched her, looked at her, wanted her, made her feel so fucking sexy. Maybe sex really was like riding a bicycle. Or maybe it was because her ride had been on Sonny’s banana seat.

“How you doin’ back there?” Cal called out. “Got your sea legs yet?”

Clinging like a barnacle to her perch, she pushed back the heavy jacket’s hood from her face to peek out. “Aye, skipper.” Better to lie than admit she’d wanted to upchuck over the starboard side a dozen times. “Hey, you promised me that you’d finish your story, remember?”

He pointed to a dark speck on the horizon. “See that island? We’ll drop anchor to have a bite to eat and I’ll pick up where I left off.”

A few nautical miles later, he cut the motor. As Billie listened to the waves lapping against the boat, Cal moved around, preparing a picnic-style ploughman’s lunch of sausage and cheese, crusty bread and a couple of apples. “Remind me where I left off, will ya?”

“I told you about my divorce and how love sucks, but you said that love saves.”

“Right,” he said, sitting down and pouring himself a mug of coffee. “It was 1982, and I was a rookie beat cop in Chicago.”

“Wait, wait…what? You mean, you haven’t always been a fisherman?”

“Oh, no. I’d moved to the Windy City to break out of the shackles of this ol’ shanty town. Once I got there, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I joined the police academy. We were all a bunch of peach-fuzzed kids with badges and guns. I was paired up with my buddy Jimmy. He was the funniest guy, a real prankster. The kind who’d grease doorknobs and talcum powder your car’s sun visor,” Cal said with a chuckle. “But no matter how much of a joker he was, as a cop, he was strictly by the book. I knew he always had my back. Couldn’t ask for more in a partner.”

“Sounds like a good guy,” Billie said, crunching down on one of the apples.

“Late one night, me and Jimmy were on a routine patrol when we got a call about a gang causing a disturbance at a neighborhood park. We told dispatch we’d go check it out, thinking they’d scatter once we flashed the red and blues. When we arrived, there was a dozen kids, all about 13 or 14, playing Horse and fooling around on the basketball court. Didn’t look like they were causing any trouble, other than the ruckus.” Cal ate some sausage before continuing. “Jimmy didn’t think it was necessary to scare the kids with the lights or the loudspeaker. So instead, we got out of the car and went over, you know, to tell them to keep it down because there’d been a complaint about the noise. But as we approached, they freaked out. We told them calmly we weren’t there to arrest anyone, but then one of them…” he paused, “the littlest one. H-he reached into the waistband of his shorts.”

Billie gasped. “He had a gun?”

“Jimmy instinctively reached into his holster and grabbed his weapon. He shouted to the kid, ‘Put the gun down! Just put the gun down!’ I was stunned. Scared shitless, really, but I managed to free my sidearm. I remember Jimmy kept yelling to the kid, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. You know those night terrors when you try to scream but you can’t because you’re frozen? That was me. My voice disappeared. We were caught in this standoff, when suddenly, one of the bigger kids got spooked and yanked the arm of the kid with the gun. A shot rang out. And then another. The first bullet hit Jimmy. Clean through his neck.” Cal’s eyes were glassy as he stared off into the distance, watching it all unfold again. “Ballistics showed that Jimmy’s gun had been fired. Didn’t hit anyone, but at least he’d done something whereas I just…” His voice trailed off and he stopped to clear his throat. “If I’d only fired a single warning shot into the air. Maybe it would’ve scared the kids off. Maybe it would’ve saved Jimmy.”

Her heart clutched. “But you were barely more than terrified kids yourselves. You must have been devastated.”

“It messed me up pretty bad. No amount of training prepares you for seeing your best friend and partner killed right in front of you,” he said. “I got re-assigned to desk duty for a while, but got stuck in a rut of reliving the horror of that night again and again. So, I turned in my badge.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I drank, mostly. I’d drink to go numb then drag myself out to the movies just to feel. That Christmas was the worst. I was alone, aimlessly wandering the streets while the rest of the world was all gingerbread and jingle bells. Everything seemed bleak, and the guilt over Jimmy’s death weighed so heavily on me I wanted to die. I even made a plan. Christmas Eve, I’d catch the crosstown bus to the Paradise Theatre and see Dustin Hoffman inTootsie. Then I’d go back to my apartment, polish off a bottle of vodka, and blow my brains out.”

“Oh Cal, no.” The tragedy unfolded in her mind like a scene fromIt’s A Wonderful Life, with Cal in the role of George Bailey.

“As I left to catch the bus, it started snowing. Giant, fat, Charlie Brown snowflakes. I arrived at the theatre, bought a gluttonous bucket of buttered popcorn and sat through the movie. By time I left, the city was blanketed in heavy, wet snow with wind whipping straight off Lake Michigan. While the storm didn’t deter me from my plan, it caused a serious delay. Traffic had come to a standstill. Without a bus or cab in sight, I waited as the snow piled higher, tiny shards of ice pelleting my face, icicles forming on my eyelashes. I was wet and my extremities were going numb, so I trudged back to the box office to take shelter. And that’s when I saw her.”

“Her…? Her who?”

“She was huddled in a thin overcoat, feet caked in snow. Like me, she obviously got caught unprepared for the weather. She was a shivering mess, wet hair, makeup running, and yet, to me she was an absolute vision.”

Goosebumps tingled Billie’s flesh. “Who was she?”

“An angel,” he said, “with the most enchanting brown eyes I’d ever seen. She was trembling, and I immediately offered her my coat. She said, ‘Thank you, but I couldn’t live with myself if you got hypothermia because of me.’ Isn’t that something? She couldn’t live with herself for borrowing a stranger’s coat. And here I was, about to go home and put a gun in my mouth.”

“So, what happened?”

“I took my coat off and draped it over her anyway. She told me I was out of my mind, and who was I to argue? I was. Then she spotted a diner across the street, grabbed my hand, and we made a mad dash through the slippery slush,” he recalled. “Inside, the diner was packed. We squeezed in with the rest of the drowned rats drying out beneath the lights and twisted strands of garland as Andy Williams crooned about it being the most wonderful time of the year.”

“Sounds perfectly romantic,” she hummed.

Cal laughed. “Not something I was expecting to hear from you, oh skeptical one.”

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