services has found a dozen reasons to be anywhere he is; every woman in the place is after him, and he’s gay. Come on, that’s funny.”
“Not every woman,” he said, and he looked at me.
“Nothing personal, Brice, but my dance card is way beyond full.”
He smiled. “If half the news reports are true, you’ve got your own harem, hisem, whatever. But it’s more than that, you aren’t attracted to me.”
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s not bad, it’s good.”
“Wait,” Zerbrowski said, “you wanted to go to dinner with the one woman in the entire department who isn’t attracted to you?”
Brice nodded.
Zerbrowski frowned, and then grinned. “Sorry, Brice, you’re a doll and all, but I don’t think you’re attractive either.”
Brice grinned, then chuckled. “Good to know.”
“Your sexual orientation doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the job,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t, but if it comes out I’m gay, it will.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I’d just like to come out in my own way, not be outed, that’s all.”
Would I have been less sympathetic if I didn’t have Jade in my life? Maybe, but I did, and I hadn’t been out in public with her yet; part of that was that I didn’t enjoy shopping, or most of the girl stuff she wanted to do. “That’s your choice,” I said.
“Since you’re not attracted to either of us, doesn’t really matter,” Zerbrowski said.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“But now what?” I asked. “You didn’t just want to come to dinner to tell us your big secret.”
“I’m looking for some advice on how to handle the women at work without getting them pissed at me. Detective Arnet is being particularly persistent.”
I sighed. “I’ll need food if we’re going to talk about girls.”
Brice smiled. “What does that mean?”
“It means I had some problems with Arnet wanting to date one of my boyfriends, and I need food before we get into it.”
“Fine with me,” Brice said.
Zerbrowski just reached for the door handle.
We all got out and just headed for the lighted windows of the restaurant. Straight, or gay, or being a girl, it didn’t matter; we were all just cops eating food and passing time while we waited. I’d tell Brice a short version of Arnet’s crush on Nathaniel, and then we’d pass time talking about Brice’s personal life. Fine by me, it beat the hell out of talking about mine.
15
ZERBROWSKI SURPRISED ME by getting a salad with grilled chicken on it. “You’re not getting a burger?” I asked.
“Had my cholesterol checked. No burgers for a while.” He looked glum as he said it.
“So, no more fast-food burgers?” I asked.
He shook his head.
I patted his back. “Dude, I’m sorry.”
Brice said, “Am I missing something? You’re acting like he’s lost a relative.”
“When you ride in Zerbrowski’s car, you’ll understand. He lives on fast-food burgers, and throws the wrappers into the backseat.”
“Will there be room in the backseat for me to sit with all the fast-food wrappers?” Brice asked, laughing.
I looked at Zerbrowski. He shrugged. “I can clean out the back.”
“I was joking,” Brice said, looking from one to the other of us. “Are you serious that the backseat is so full of fast-food debris that no one can sit in it?”
“We’re serious,” I said.
“I’ll clean it out. The smell of the wrappers will just make me hungry.” Zerbrowski picked up his tray with its healthy salad on it; he looked sad.
There were plenty of tables to choose from, because we were late for dinner and hours too early for breakfast. We needed plenty of seating choices, because we were all cops and that meant that none of us wanted our backs to a door, or to the restaurant in general, and especially not a busy area where people would be walking back and forth behind us. We didn’t really like windows where people on the outside could just walk up to where we were sitting, especially not if we had to put our backs to the windows. Yeah, the chances of someone walking up and just starting to shoot at us was small, but small wasn’t the same as not ever happening. Police aren’t paranoid because of some psychological disorder, they’re paranoid because real bad things have happened to them, and in our job paranoia was just another word for staying alive.
So, where to sit?
There was a booth that sat back in a corner with a wall that backed the kitchen so there were no windows, and as many as four could sit comfortably with enough room to get to weapons without crowding each other. We also had a clear line of sight to the door. It was perfect. We slid into the booth, with me in the middle, which would have trapped Brice or Zerbrowski, but I was small enough that if I had to, I could go under the table and be shooting at people’s legs and be shooting them in the chest and face as they dropped to their knees, because that’s what happens to most people if bullets shatter their leg bones. Yes, that is how cops think, that’s how anyone who lives by the gun thinks. We don’t talk about it, but we are totally into preplanning our survival.
We got settled into the booth, portioned out our food, and started eating before we started talking, because we could talk in the car, but we couldn’t eat most of the food we’d gotten in the car while driving. Have you ever tried to eat a salad in a car? Of course, I hadn’t ordered a salad, I had a burger, but you can’t eat Jimmy’s burgers in a car either unless you want to be wearing all that yummy condiment goodness.
“Red meat is bad for you, you know,” Zerbrowski said, sort of forlornly.
“My cholesterol is fine,” I said, stacking the bun higher with all the layers of vegetables on the burger.
“Mine, too,” Brice said, as he took his first bite.
“You should have said something when we were ordering, if you were going to pout, Zerbrowski.”
“Would you have ordered a salad to keep me company?”
“No, but I would have felt guilty about it.” I took the first bite of the burger. It was juicy and cooked to perfection. The veggies were crisp, ripe, and yummy. I tried to keep the look of bliss off my face, but I think I failed, because Zerbrowski looked like something hurt.
Brice and I ate in happy silence for a few minutes, and then I said, “Sorry, Zerbrowski, but I eat salads at home because Nathaniel decides the menu; when I’m not at home, I eat what I want.”
“Nathaniel is your live-in boyfriend?” Brice asked, after he’d swallowed another bite of burger.
“Yep,” I said, and took another bite of burger.
Zerbrowski gave me a pained look.
I ignored him.
“You said he does the menus; what does that mean?”
“He does most of the cooking, as either head chef or sous chef to one of the others.”
“You make it sound like a restaurant,” Brice said.
I shrugged. “The men started it; whoever is the main cook for a meal is designated chef and the others are sous chefs. It’s their system and it works, so I just work with it. I figure if I’m not doing the cooking, I shouldn’t bitch about how they want to do it.”
“Very reasonable,” Brice said.
I shrugged again and took another bite of my burger.
