Loving Time

sixty-nine

Bobbie left the police station on Eighty-second Street and headed west toward Broadway. He had a lot of things to be angry about—the humiliation of cops coming to get him at work was the least of it. Then, as he thought about it, he got angrier and angrier. The cops had evicted him from his home, from life itself. He wanted to go to work, back to his patients and his old life at the Centre, even headed in that direction. But even as he walked west, he knew he couldn’t risk going back there right now. Maybe later.

He told himself he didn’t give a shit about the tail. He didn’t see a tail, but he knew there had to be one. The cops and the FBI asshole thought he’d killed Dickey. That had to be the biggest laugh of all time when they were the ones who almost killed him. Where was the justice? There was no justice. Had to be cops and FBI behind him. They wouldn’t let him go without a tail.

Whoever it was, Bobbie wasn’t about to give the bastard the satisfaction of turning around. He didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit, craved a drink, wanted to think things over. The temperature was dropping. It felt as if there’d be another freeze that night. Bobbie was wearing his nylon zip jacket. He needed something warmer, couldn’t decide where to go.

If he went to the French Quarter, the Mick might bother him. It wasn’t safe to hang out at the hospital now. Someone might hassle him. He picked up a bottle in a liquor store he never bought from and walked around with it for a while, trying to figure out where to go. He didn’t like not having a place to go. It upset him. He drank from the bottle as he wandered the area. When he was tired of looking at people, he headed over to Riverside Park and watched the Hudson turn into a choppy black oil slick.

He was angry that the only thing the assholes did all day was bug him about old stuff from his life, real old stuff nobody in the world could possibly care about anymore. Who gave a shit what happened thirty years ago? It didn’t matter anymore. No one cared. Bobbie sat on the cold ground and watched the lights in New Jersey, knowing that the old bitch was responsible for all this. She’d given his file to Dickey. She’d talked to the cops. She’d told them things about him that were private, that he’d never told anybody else. He didn’t know why he’d ever bothered to talk to her. He felt hurt and wounded. After all those things she said about loving him, she turned out disloyal, just like everybody else. She talked to a douche bag of a cop who didn’t know anything—anything about life at all—and who tried to kill him. A piece of shit who worked with a slope almost killed him. She’d told the FBI guy that he’d killed Dickey. That really made him mad.

As he sat in the park, he was aware of the dog walkers and joggers running on the paths after work. He knew the old bitch was out there somewhere anxiously trotting around like someone hunting for a lost dog. He was pretty sure if he went one block up Riverside Drive, he’d run into her. He hoped a car ran her over.

As he took some time to think about that, Bobbie was aware of some black guys hanging around thirty yards up the hill from him. The hoods of their sweatshirts covered their heads, and they were smoking dope. The sweet smell of grass drifted out toward the Hudson in the frosty air. The whole thing disgusted him. He’d never smoked dope himself. He thought it was dangerous, made a person stupid. He muttered to himself, really annoyed about these coons menacing people and polluting the environment. For a while he thought they were going to come over and try to mug him. If they did, he knew they’d be stupid, and he’d bash their coon brains in.

They left him alone, and after a while he was mad enough to go home.