“How many cops does it take to screw in a light bulb?” he asked.
“How many?”
“Just one, but he’s never around when you need him.”
I gave it a thumbs-up, so he tried another. “So this man has to work late, and when he’s driving home he gets pulled over for speeding. Now the cop notices the driver has these tired-looking eyes, so he says to him, ‘Sir, I can’t help but notice that your eyes are bloodshot. Have you been drinking?’ The driver isn’t happy with the insinuation, so he says to the cop, ‘Officer, I can’t help but notice that your eyes are glazed. Have you been eating doughnuts?’”
It got a laugh out of me, which seemed to please McCord. I decided it was my turn to tell a cop joke. “So,” I said, “how many cops does it take to throw a suspect down the stairs?”
He asked, “How many?”
“None,” I said, “he fell.”
“I might use that,” he said, pulling out a pen and scribbling it down.
McCord struck me as a good sort. He didn’t put on airs like other actors I’d met. It was unusual that Hollywood had actually selected someone right for a cop role. I had heard about one actor who put up a stink over having to wear a Kevlar vest during a shoot because he thought it made him look fat, but I didn’t have a chance to tell the story to McCord.
“I’m afraid I have to break this up,” Maureen said. “We’re already running behind schedule.”
The meeting room hadn’t shrunk any in the ten minutes since I’d last seen it. There were probably a thousand people in the room, some of whom I actually knew. Friends and colleagues came over to pat me on the back and say a few words. It took Maureen a long time to get me to our table, which not coincidentally was in the center of the banquet room. There was a place for Sirius at the table as well, which gave me a little breathing room. He sat to my right, and I offered him a water glass from which he drank.
“I took the liberty of ordering Sirius a steak,” Maureen said.
“I hope you ordered it extra rare.”
Most of those at my table were LAPD brass, which required me to make small talk, but luckily all the well- wishers that kept converging on our table spared me from having to manufacture much in the way of conversation. I was shaking more hands than a politician on the stump.
Finally, the show began. In the front of the room the assistant chief was offering up the LAPD Media Relations version of what had occurred on the night of the fire. His description of events wasn’t like what happened or like my dreams. The police officer he described didn’t suffer from fear and panic, nor did he lose his mind for a time. It was a good war story, but not the one that I lived. I tried to ignore the stares directed my way, just as I tried not listening to what was being said. It was easier to think they were talking about some real hero rather than me.
Kent McCord was the next speaker. After his jokes, he talked about bravery, heroism, and duty. The more I pretended to be having a good time, the hotter the room seemed. I felt on the verge of spontaneous human combustion. That wouldn’t be the kind of PR the department wanted, but I knew it would clear the room fast. I recalled Richard Pryor’s line about racing out of his house when he’d been on fire: “When you’re running down the street on fire, people get out of your way.”
The loud sound of applause interrupted my musing. All around the conference room people were standing and cheering. Suddenly the space wasn’t cavernous anymore; it felt small and stifling.
I motioned for Sirius to come with me, and as he struggled to his feet the applause redoubled. The old show business rule still applied: never follow a dog act.
Gene Ehrlich was the new chief of police. He had inherited a department rocked by scandals. Ehrlich came into town with more than a white hat: he was a cop with an MBA from Harvard. The top cop knew a good photo opportunity when he saw one and stood waiting for us in the front of the room. I tried not to limp but wasn’t successful. Sitting sometimes does that to me; the fire had forever taken some of the elasticity out of my ligaments. Flashes kept going off, and I was afraid that Sirius and I would be the new poster boys for an updated Spirit of ’76 picture. I walked slowly so that Sirius could keep up with me. He was still dragging his left back leg. Television shows to the contrary, you don’t get shot and recover overnight. His vet was confident his leg would come around in time. Sirius’s fur had mostly grown back, but he was bald in a few places where the scar tissue had prevented his hair from coming back in. I was thinking about getting him several toupees. Like me, Sirius had lost a lot of weight. One of the things about severe burns is that you almost always lose weight.
We finally made it to the front of the room, but my torture didn’t end there. I had to stand while the chief offered up more platitudes. Finally, at his signal, I lowered my head and he placed the medal around my neck. Chief Ehrlich didn’t dub me with a sword, but the ceremony still felt knightlike. I found one more use for skin grafts. No one could see me blush. As the medal was draped over me, applause filled the big room.
After the chief was finished with me, he dropped to a knee and draped a similar medal around Sirius’s neck. The crowd went crazy over that and then went even crazier when Sirius extended a forepaw for the chief to shake. I didn’t tell him to do it. Sirius acted on his own volition, but the chief must have thought I directed him. As the moment was captured by the media, the chief was smart enough to know that the picture of top cop and hero dog was going to land him on the front page of every newspaper in the country. He could also count on the spot getting him two minutes on local television, and thirty seconds on national.
In the glow of that coup and while basking in the applause, the chief put his arm around my shoulder and whispered to me, “When you come back, Gideon, whatever position you want, you’ve got.”
CHAPTER 2:
My partner’s muzzle pushed at my face, and my first thought was that he was still alive, thank God. And then I realized that Sirius was there at my side to deliver me from my after-fire. The jolt of awareness that came with knowing I was in the here and now made me feel as I had just jumped into ice water. My flesh stopped sizzling and I gasped, taking in air.
And then there came to mind the image of me standing in front of Chief Ehrlich. What I saw and felt didn’t make me feel any better.
I looked at the clock. It was 3:07. In less than seven hours I had an appointment with the chief. I patted Sirius to show him that I was all right. Because of my dreams, he always slept on the floor next to my bed. Drained from my fire walk, I tried to go back to sleep. I never dreamed of fire more than once a night, or at least I hadn’t so far, and maybe because of that I slept again.
At half past seven I was up for good. Physically, I was almost back to where I’d been before the fire. For more than a year I had never missed a physical therapy session, and I worked just as hard on my own. To a casual observer, the scarring on my face was the only telltale clue of my injuries.
I had thought that my physical recovery would put an end to my burning dreams, but my dreams hadn’t cooperated. There were times when I didn’t wake up burning for two or three nights in a row, but every time I began to hope that my fires were behind me my dreams always returned with a vengeance.
Perchance to dream, perchance to burn.
I kept my condition a secret because I knew bringing in a shrink would derail, or at a minimum delay, my
