The thing is, Al saved my life a couple of times a while back and he has a patch of reddish-brown hair on top of his mostly black head from where a bullet grazed him to prove it. Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other.
Al did a couple of 360s, grabbed an old running shoe, and jumped up on our new couch. The arms of the couch lost their upholstery within seventy-two hours of its delivery because when Al writes in his day planner “Ruin expensive item” and puts A-1 next to it, he makes sure the project gets done. He is committed to his time- management system.
I was wondering if I’d hear from Marcia, my latest nutcase of a girlfriend. Like many of the women I’ve dated over the last few years, Marcia has turned out to be crazy. She seemed okay at first, but lately she’s been weirding out on me. Last Friday she started crying in the middle of a movie we were watching and we had to leave the theater.
It was a Jim Carrey movie.
She said that it was difficult for her to laugh when life was full of so much suffering. I agreed, drove her home, and got drunk at AJ’s. Our sex life has been suffering a bit lately as well, and I believe the condition is known as basset interruptus. The other night it went something like this:
Marcia and I got back to the Blue after a night out for dinner and drinks. She wasn’t too maladjusted that night, so I proceeded to lower the lights, pour some Riunite for her, and, because I was going for that whole James Bond feel, I drank my Schlitz out of a fancy pilsner glass. While Elvis started crooning through “Love Letters” and “Young and Beautiful,” I turned up the Duff love-tron for some steamy action.
Marcia’s breathing quickened, she pulled me down on top of her and we rolled off the sofa and onto the carpeted floor. She leaned her head back and let out a sigh while she undid the buttons on her white blouse and reached for the snap on the top of her Levis. As she shimmied out of them in that sexy but awkward way that women get out of jeans while in the horizontal position, I saw Al standing about ten feet away in the threshold that led to the dining area.
I gave him a dirty look and tried to move my head in a way to point him out of the room and away from us. He just looked me up and down. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to proceed with the matter at hand and pretend Al wasn’t there. I got lost in it and Marcia and I were grooving. During a certain phase of this while Marcia was executing a certain act, I made the mistake of moaning. I don’t like to admit it, but I do occasionally express myself during such activity.
Well, Al didn’t care for the moaning at all. I heard a growl, then successive barks, and then the rough scratching sounds of basset feet and nails. Then came the squealing from Marcia who was knocked back toward the coach with a flying shoulder block from Al the middle linebacker. I sat my naked ass up, looked at my girlfriend rolling over onto her side, and peered down at Al, who was snarling and growling on the carpet in front of me. You may find this hard to relate to, but it felt strange being naked with my naked girlfriend and having an eighty-five- pound long-snouted, short-legged hound between us.
Little things like that would kill the mood for Marcia.
The last three would-be sexual episodes have had similar outcomes, and even when I locked Al in the bathroom, he howled and slammed into the door so much it had about the same effect. Looking on the bright side of the situation, Al kept me free of sexually transmitted diseases and I had few birth-control issues.
I checked the machine and it looked like I had two calls. The first was indeed from Marcia.
“Hi Duff, I’m sorry about Friday. I’ve been struggling with some issues. Call me,” the message said.
I hit the button for the second message.
“Duffy, this is Howard. I didn’t do it.”
That was it and he hung up.
3
Well, that was just swell.
Hey, I wanted the best for good ol’ Howard but I wasn’t really up for being his middle-of-the-night confidant- especially when he was going to leave me these cryptic messages. As bad as returning Marcia’s phone call could be, I wasn’t sure I felt like chatting with Howard either. I didn’t have a phone number for him, and he surely wasn’t at the halfway house because he would’ve been arrested by now.
Okay-so what were my options? Call the police, which was sort of breaking the confidentiality of a client, though in this case you could argue that the community was in imminent danger. Don’t call the police but tell Michelin and let her decide. Or, do nothing and open another can of Schlitz.
The Schlitz went down easy even if my rationalization for doing nothing didn’t. Not telling the cops wasn’t doing right by my friend Kelley, although he’s a beat cop and wouldn’t be in charge of an investigation. So, in effect I wasn’t doing anything against Kelley. That didn’t feel quite right.
Telling Michelin was out for a couple of reasons. One, she’d call in the board, fill out all the forms, and nothing would get done, and two, whenever possible, I try not to tell Michelin anything. Not telling her could get me in big trouble at work, but that wouldn’t be anything new. I was always in trouble at work and I did my best not to let the Michelin Woman intimidate me.
I tend to pull for the underdog, and if anyone was ever the underdog, it was Howard. Life had been a shit sandwich for him and every day seemed like it was another bite. Something told me he didn’t do. It was a notion I knew I couldn’t get anyone else to believe, but sometimes you just got to go with your gut.
Speaking of underdogs and guts, Al had flopped himself off the couch and he let out a big exhale, spun around three times, and went to sleep in front of the television. Apparently he agreed about doing nothing. Though, when it came to doing nothing, Al rarely argued.
The next morning Michelin called for a special staff meeting to go over the agency’s position on the recent turn of events. There was nothing Claudia liked better than an official meeting with lots of official protocol and regulations. If she could add a new form to fill out, that was like multiple orgasms for her. The Michelin Woman probably didn’t get a whole lot of opportunities for real multiple orgasms, what with her being just a corn muffin shy of three hundred pounds (loosely packed on her six-foot frame), her consistent choice of man-made clothing, and the aforementioned Starsky/Hutch coif.
Claudia called the meeting to order and thanked Dr. Abadon for joining in. As a consultant, he didn’t have to be part of impromptu meetings, but he joined this one because of its importance.
“I wanted to bring the treatment team together to discuss the risk management related to the series of events in the community,” Michelin said.
She handed out a form about patients’ rights when a crime has been committed and our duty as professionals to contact the appropriate authorities.
“If Howard Rheinhart is in contact with any of you, I need to know so I can inform the board and the police,” Michelin said.
“Claudia, it sounds to me like you’ve already assumed he’s guilty. Shouldn’t we give him a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt?” I said.
“Actually, Duffy, I have every reason to believe that Rheinhart is responsible for this teenager’s slaying,” she said.
“I don’t think he did it,” I said.
“Um, I can understand your view, but in my assessment he is clearly capable of this murder.”
I wasn’t sure which bothered me more-the fact that she was dismissing my opinion or the fact that she was so arrogant about it.
“I just don’t think he did it.”
“Duffy, you’re not really qualified to render this kind of diagnosis are you?” she said.
She smiled at me in such an incredibly patronizing way that it made one of the tendons in my neck twitch. I decided I better let it go before I did something I regretted.
“I think we have to be realistic. Howard Rheinhart is a disturbed individual who has a history of committing heinous crimes,” Dr. Abadon said.
“You know, I met with the guy and through some real tears he told me he just wanted to live in a world where people weren’t out to get him all the time,” I said.
