Apathy and Other Small Victories Read Online Free PDF Page B

throat. She sounded like a gagged hostage whimpering for her life.
    “How do you say ‘I am a dentist’?” he asked.
    I eat my shit , I signed, as Doug haltingly imitated me. Marlene couldn’t hold it together. “HMAAA! . . . HMAAA! . . . HMAAA!” she blared in a series of atonal bursts that rose into strange registers and pitches, then went silent before blaring again, like a malfunctioning boat horn signaling to the shore. She hid her face in her hands.
    “Why is she laughing?” Doug asked.
    “I’ll ask her.”
    Why do you have sex with my shit? I signed.
    Stop it! Asshole! I’m going to get fired!
    “She says when we speak sign language it’s like we have lisps, and we use broken phrases, like immigrants. She says we talk like lisping immigrants.”
    “Ha ha, well, we’re in the right country for it!” Doug said.
    I don’t think he even knew what he was talking about.
    I eat my shit , Doug signed slowly to her, grinning.
    And tears rolled down Marlene’s deaf cheeks.
     
    If I could’ve said for sure where I’d been the night before I would have felt a lot better about sitting in the interrogation room of a police station, but even so I didn’t feel that bad. The bright light made the room a little warmer than it should have been, and I was still pretty hung over, but I was getting used to it. I had nothing to worry about. I was probably down at the bar, drinking pitchers of beer and not talking to anyone. I probably was. Everything would be fine.
    Detective Sikes walked in holding a manila file folder, his chest puffed out like a little bird. He sat down in the middle chair and laid the folder on the table between us. Brooks was probably at the tinted window with The Chief saying, “Let’s see how the kid does.”
    “Before we get started detective, can I ask you a question?” I said.
    “All right.” He was immediately thrown off.
    “Why did the other detective call you ‘Sergeant’ at my apartment? I thought detectives and sergeants were different?”
    “They are different. Sergeant is my first name,” he said.
    “Wow. What a crazy coincidence.”
    “Not really. My dad was a detective. Two of my uncles were cops. My grandfather was chief of police back in the fifties.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Yeah. I know,” he said, temporarily human and forlorn.
    “Detective Sikes, can you come out here for a second?” It was Brooks, talking over a speaker that sounded like it was right above my head. He was pissed.
    I tried to keep a straight face as I imagined the shouting that was going on outside. When Sikes came back in his face was flushed and he was all business.
    “All right, let’s start over. How well did you know Marlene Burton?”
    “I knew her all right. I was at the dentist’s a lot. Doug has some kind of banged up narcolepsy from getting his head smashed by a bus door, so while he freaked out in his office me and Marlene used to talk. She taught me sign language.”
    He looked at me the way my mom did the time she caught me officiating the wedding of Mr. Potato Head and He-Man. I had just said, “You may kiss the bride,” and when I looked up she was standing in the doorway. I was fourteen years old, and I was not wearing any pants.
    “We’re in a police station here tough guy. I don’t know if you realize how serious this is. A woman is dead.” I got the feeling he was trying hard not to have a nervous breakdown, just like my mom did.
    “I am being serious,” I said.
    “When was the last time you saw Marlene Burton?”
    “About a month ago, maybe longer. At the office during my last appointment, whenever that was.”
    “Anything happen between the two of you? She seem like she was okay?”
    “Nothing happened. She seemed fine to me.”
    “You ever been to her house?”
    “Nope. Wait once. For a party. She put a sign on my back. It was humiliating.”
    He looked at me like I had no pants on again. It wasn’t my fault. He-Man and Mr. Potato Head were in love.
    “Did