Loving Time

sixty-three

Bobbie Boudreau closed the door to the fire room he now called home in B3 of the Stone Pavilion. He had spent the last four nights here. It was dark, and all that could be heard was the machinery—the electrical relays of the elevators clicking and throwing off sparks one after another all day and all night long, as the buttons were pushed upstairs and elevators in the bank right next to him moved from floor to floor; the thud and creaky whir of the mammoth belts and gears on the pumps that drove the water; the hiss of the steam escaping from dozens of safety valves. It was very hot, like Louisiana in the summer, but none of the sounds there were animal or human. He liked that. He was in a hurry to get upstairs, though. He needed a bathroom, a hot cup of coffee, and a doughnut.

He had just turned the corner into the main corridor near the elevators when he saw a guy in a gray sports jacket and a female slope coming toward him. Bobbie looked at them warily, kept going. His bladder was full. He had to take a leak.

The man spoke. “Robert Boudreau?”

Bobbie thought of turning the other way and bolting, but he decided he didn’t give a shit. He kept moving toward them, his eyes fixed way ahead on a better future. The man was nothing, one of those little Hispanic clowns like the building workers, shorter than he and at least thirty pounds lighter. He could knock the guy over with one hand. He planned to brush past them on the slope’s side and just keep going. It didn’t work out that way, though. When Bobbie was ten feet from them, the man opened his jacket and casually reached for the gun in his waistband.

“Stop. Police.”

Stunned, Bobbie stopped short and put his hands up. “Hey, man, you got some kind of problem?”

The man shook his head. Bobbie was the one with the problem. “Are you Robert Boudreau?”

“You gonna shoot if I am?”

“No. Just getting your attention. I was addressing you. Didn’t you hear me?”

“No.”

“Do you hear me now?”

Must be some kind of undercover cop. Bobbie glared at him. Asshole never took the gun out of his waistband, but he kept his hand near enough to it for the display of power to piss Bobbie off. What kind of shit was this? Bobbie felt like peeing all over the spic.

“Yeah,” he said. “I hear you.”

“Good. Put your hands against the wall and spread them.”

An electrical engineer from the maintenance staff turned down the hall. He came to a stop when he saw them. The blood rushed to Bobbie’s face. Now he was being humiliated in public. He looked at the cop’s gun, then at the slope. Her jacket was open and she had a gun in her waist, too. What kind of shit was this? He hadn’t done anything to deserve this. This was an outrage. This was beyond an outrage. He didn’t want to put his hands on the wall and spread them. He didn’t want that slope touching him. But he’d seen people killed by cops before. He was clean. He didn’t have anything to hide, so he spread them. It was a good thing the male patted him down. He would have lost it if the slope touched him.

A few minutes later the two cops had him in a cop car headed for the station, and it was happening to him all over again.