Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,38

scraping the reeking detritus of my stomach off his backseat. Then I asked him if he knew what the word detritus meant. He did not say. Instead, he cursed me volubly. I asked him how he liked his job. More curses flew my way. I laughed at O’Rourke and took pains to let him know I was laughing at him. When I was done laughing, I said: “You fucking loser.” Then I said: “Do you really not know who I am?” It wasn’t like I was really anybody, but I was better than O’Rourke and wanted him to know it. He didn’t answer. I got a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror. He had that look Elmer Fudd gets right before he shoots Bugs Bunny. Then Elmer pulls the trigger and the shotgun blows up in his face. I asked him if he ever watched Bugs Bunny. O’Rourke would be killed in a one-car accident on Route 28 nine years later. If I had known that at the time, I might have treated him better.

When we arrived at the police station, O’Rourke led me into the squad room. There were five officers there and they all looked as if they had just returned from a saturated fat convention. “If this is what the police force looks like,” I remarked, making sure it was loud enough for them all to hear, “no wonder crime in America is exploding.” It was like talking to a painting, but not a real painting by an actual artist—more like the kind where dogs play poker. I sat down and one of the fat bastards requested I blow into a straw attached to something that looked like an old radio. It was a breathalyzer, someone explained. I was bored with the conversation—honestly, it was like throwing a tennis ball at a marshmallow wall—so I did what they asked. This would be a good time to tell you that I received a nearly perfect score on my college boards. I was accustomed to doing well on tests, so when I registered a 0.27 on the breathalyzer, I wasn’t surprised. 0.08 is considered drunk. At the time I found this very amusing, but my laughter failed to move them.

I was allowed a phone call. I couldn’t contact my father who was presumably asleep in our house in Connecticut. He was an attorney at a Wall Street firm and this arrest would not comport with his worldview, in which his son progressed seamlessly from high school to college to law school, partnership, marriage, and high-achieving children, without any detours into jail cells along the way. So I called Bob, the guy from my construction crew. We had been friends when the summer began and I thought if I explained the situation, he would let bygones be bygones and bail me out. Bob was surprised to hear from me and I could tell he was about to hang up until I let him know where I was. He said he’d meet me in court the next day. I’m not sure why I called him other than I was smashed and not thinking rationally. I should have been suspicious when he agreed to come.

The cell was about half the size of my dorm room. Unlike my dorm room, it had a steel toilet and a steel bed. It was down a hallway with several other cells, all of them empty. (Apparently, I was a one-man crime wave.) There was a large metal door at the end of the hallway and when the cop who had escorted me to my cell departed it closed with unsettling finality. For about five minutes I sat there and stared into space, angry, humiliated—no, insulted—that I was being treated this way. Then I began to yell. I cursed, screamed imprecations, made demands. This went on for a while. My throat became raw. I was beginning to feel dehydrated. The brutes in the next room continued to ignore my cries. Eventually, after it became clear that they couldn’t care less whether I lived or died, I lay down on the metal rack and tried to sleep. My mouth tasted like the inside of a sneaker, my eyes were brittle, and my ribs ached from when that ape at the nightclub kicked me. I thought about what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in a cell. I decided I’d rather be dead. Was this where they’d taken Margaret’s brother after he