First Avenue Read Online Free Page B

too.”
    “Whiskey,” she repeated.
    In the kitchen, where he kept his liquor, he poured an ample shot over ice for both of them, and then, as an afterthought, added a little more. He carried the glasses out to the deck and handed one to her.
    “This will take the hair off your chest.”
    He sat down in the chair beside her and took a healthy sip. She took a smaller one and then a deep breath.
    “What a night,” she said, her voice nearly flat. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out for this.”
    “Nobody is cut out for that. You did a good job.”
    “Did I? It seemed to me that you did most of it, and I just hung around in the corners, afraid to look.”
    “You did what you were supposed to do.”
    She nodded slowly as she looked past him out to the water. “Maybe you’re right. Anyway, what the hell am I worrying about me for? Do you ever wonder what you got yourself into, with this job, I mean?”
    “I don’t think about it anymore. That’s what I like about the kayak. I sweat it out of me before I get here. By the time I’m home, I’ve forgotten all about First Avenue. It’s a whole different world, and I don’t belong there.”
    “Maybe I should get a kayak.”
    “It doesn’t work very well on concrete.”
    “I’m not sure it would help anyway. Sometimes I can’t forget things.”
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll learn how to do it.”
    He left unsaid the danger if she did not. He had seen that, too. Better to hold it away, to forget.
    He made sure she was comfortable, that she had a fresh glass of whiskey, and then he excused himself to take his shower. He was overdue for that. He shed his clothes, and as he pulled the sweatshirt over his head, the death smell passed by his nose again. It was impossible to get rid of it. He stuffed his clothes into a plastic garbage bag and tied the end into a knot. This time he would not even try to wash them.
    When he returned to the deck, she was asleep—the second glass of whiskey half consumed on the table beside her. He sat down carefully in the other chair. She seemed so small curled up on the recliner, so fragile, her wrists and hands hardly bigger than a child’s.
    Out in the Sound a tugboat was passing. It pulled an empty barge toward the grain terminals, its diesel engines pounding a war dance rhythm across the water. Seagulls swooped down to the barge and squawked their disappointment when they found it empty.
    On his deck a silent guest arrived without invitation. There was no extra chair for her. She sat alone, off to the side, too small to stand. He would not look at her and rubbed his eyes hard with the palms and fingers of both hands. Even so he could not push her away. He squinted into the sun and remembered.
    “
Olivia
.
Olivia
Sanchez
.”
    That was the baby’s name. He mouthed the name silently to himself as his fingers drummed the cadence of the diesel engines on the arm of the deck chair, taking him back, taking him to that other world where he did not belong.

Chapter 2
     
    The edge of the western sky was red with sunset, and a pe
net
rating coolness rose from the water at the bottom of the hill. Gone were the clerks and businesspeople and lawyers with their briefcases who filled the sidewalks during the day and waited impatiently for the lights to change. Also gone were the cars and cabs and buses that clogged the streets. Only the stragglers remained.
    Katherine stood on the hillside a block up from the station. Her uniform was draped over her arm in a black plastic bag. She watched the blue-and-white police cars darting into and out of the garage like bees from the open end of a hive.
    The shift had not begun and she was already tired. She was tempted to turn away. What good would she do if she walked down the hill? She never accomplished anything, and yet there was never an end to what she would not accomplish. Maybe she should go back to her office job and admit that becoming a cop had been a mistake. Nobody would care.