I say. “Not except people I work with. They are like me. That is different.”
“Indeed it is,” she says. “Are you thinking of asking someone to dinner?”
My throat closes. I cannot say anything, but Lucia does not keep asking. She waits.
“I am thinking of asking Marjory,” I say at last, in a soft voice. “But I do not want to bother her.”
“I don’t think she’d be bothered, Lou,” Lucia says. “I don’t know if she’d come, but I don’t think she would be upset at all by your asking.”
At home and that night in bed I think of Marjory sitting across a table from me, eating. I have seen things like this in videos. I do not feel ready to do it yet.
THURSDAY MORNING I COME OUT THE DOOR OF MY APARTMENT and look across the lot to my car. It looks strange. All four tires are splayed out on the pavement. I do not understand. I bought those tires only a few months ago. I always check the air pressure when I buy gas, and I bought gas three days ago. I do not know why they are flat. I have only one spare, and even though I have a foot pump in the car, I know that I cannot pump up three tires fast enough. I will be late for work. Mr. Crenshaw will be angry. Sweat is trickling down my ribs already.
“What happened, buddy?” It is Danny Bryce, the policeman who lives here.
“My tires are flat,” I say. “I don’t know why. I checked the air yesterday.”
He comes closer. He is in uniform; he smells like mint and lemon, and his uniform smells like a laundry.
His shoes are very shiny. He has a name tag on his uniform shirt that says DANNY BRYCE in little black letters on silver.
“Somebody slashed ’em,” he says. He sounds serious but not angry.
“Slashed them?” I have read about this, but it has never happened to me. “Why?”
“Mischief,” he says, leaning over to look. “Yup. Definitely a vandal.”
He looks at the other cars. I look, too. None of them have flat tires, except for one tire of the old flatbed trailer that belongs to the apartment building owner, and it has been flat for a long time. It looks gray, not black. “And yours is the only one. Who’s mad at you?”
“Nobody is mad at me yet. I haven’t seen anyone today yet. Mr. Crenshaw is going to be mad at me,” I say. “I am going to be late for work.”
“Just tell him what happened,” he says.
Mr. Crenshaw will be angry anyway, I think, but I do not say that. Do not argue with a policeman.
“I’ll call this in for you,” he says. “They’ll send someone out—”
“I have to go to work,” I say. I can feel myself sweating more and more. I can’t think what to do first. I don’t know the transit schedule, though I do know where the stop is. I need to find a schedule. I should call the office, but I don’t know if anyone will be there yet.
“You really should report this,” he says. His face has sagged down, a serious expression. “Surely you can call your boss and let him know…”
I do not know Mr. Crenshaw’s extension at work. I think if I call him he will just yell at me. “I will call him afterward,” I say.
It takes only sixteen minutes before a police car arrives. Danny Bryce stays with me instead of going to work. He does not say much, but I feel better with him there. When the police car arrives, a man wearing tan slacks and a brown sports coat gets out of the car. He does not have a name tag. Mr. Bryce walks over to the car, and I hear the other man call him Dan.
Mr. Bryce and the officer who came are talking; their eyes glance toward me and then away. What is Mr. Bryce saying about me? I feel cold; it is hard to focus my vision. When they start walking toward me, they seem to move in little jumps, as if the light were hopping.
“Lou, this is Officer Stacy,” Mr. Bryce says, smiling at me. I look at the other man. He is shorter than Mr. Bryce and thinner; he has sleek black hair that smells of something oily and sweet.
“My name is Lou Arrendale,” I say. My voice sounds odd, the way it sounds when I am scared.