First Avenue Read Online Free PDF Page B

lingered and read the report she was writing. She explained what had happened: a strong-arm robbery where two kids took a wallet from a man visiting First Avenue for the evening and punched him a few extra times for pleasure. “Visiting?” he asked, pointing to the word she placed in quotation marks on her report.
    “That’s what he said.”
    “I see. Yes, that would be too good to leave out. Maybe you should add, ‘and a good time was had by all.’ They used to say that in my grandparents’ hometown paper when the neighbors visited each other.”
    As she sat smiling beside the typewriter wondering what else was in that hometown paper and where such a newspaper could be, he told her he could always tell when she filled out the log because it was so thorough. It took a moment to realize he had given her a compliment. No one before had ever said “good job.” Since that night, she had thought of him when she filled out the log sheet and made sure he received information that might be useful. On the dashboard of their car, she left extra notes of details that could not be included in the official log or that filled in the gaps on the nights
Mike
had the responsibility.
    Katherine found it pleasant to meet
Sam
in the hallway at the end of the shift. He seemed to acknowledge her as a fellow worker passing on a job that would be passed on and then on again. He accepted the passing from her with unusual courtesy. There were no off-color jokes, no quick sidesteps to make himself seen or to overtake her. There was plenty of that from the other men. His courtesy set him apart. He accepted her without wanting anything extra.
    Did she want something extra? Is that why she met him at the water, knowing there would be talk? There would always be talk. She would worry about talk when there was something to talk about.
    For her there was nothing to talk about—not since the departure of the graduate student who had been her friend since college. He was put off by the hours she worked, by the work stories she had mistakenly told him, by the blue shirts she kept at the far end of her closet along with her gun, which was hidden, but not well enough. How could she hide everything? He said he didn’t want to make love to somebody who had a gun in the closet and could shoot him afterward like one of those spiders who are killed by the female after they have provided their service. “Shoot you?” she had asked. It was a metaphor of their relationship, he claimed. Clearly it was not love he was talking about, but how could she explain the emptiness she felt when he put the telephone down ahead of her, and she heard the hollow buzz on the line? It was just as well, she thought. A spider, of all things. She wished him spiders forever.
    The waitress came for the third time with the coffeepot, and for the second time
Katherine
placed her hand over her cup to ward off any attempt to refill it.
Mike
had another cup. He didn’t have to think about the consequences of drinking it. The waitress, whose name was
Mildred
, managed to pour a good amount of coffee around the cup as well as into it. She was always careless with the coffee on
Mike
’s third cup. He scrambled for napkins to catch it before it ran onto his pants. It was a joke, but he didn’t get it. He swore under his breath at what he supposed was her incompetence, while Katherine stifled her laughter and caught Mildred’s sisterhood glance as she strode away with the coffeepot.
    Mildred was a good soul. She had seen enough cops that they didn’t intimidate her, and she knew when they should be moving on. There were a few she didn’t mind staying longer, but
Mike
was not one of them. When it was
Katherine
’s turn to pay, she always left a generous tip for
Mildred
.
    There was a call waiting for them when they cleared, a continuation of the night’s disturbances. Like troubled waves that broke across the battered wall of civility, these disturbances would build and roll all