On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

might reserve for someone who farted at a tea party, “I’m not sure you’re ready for intimacy at all.”
    “I thought I was pretty ready last Saturday night, if I do say so myself,” I said with an exaggerated wink and a loving punch to her upper arm.
    “Uh … that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Lisa rolled her eyes, hunched her shoulders, and sipped her Chardonnay while turning away from me.
    It was one of those unanswerable digs that a woman throws out when she wants to righteously make a statement. The fact that the statement makes no sense is beside the point. The point is, I’m an asshole, unfit for the righteous pursuit of intimacy, who has the nerve to want to have fun and enjoy sex once in a while.
    She hasn’t returned my phone calls since that date and I’m not sure what happened. I’d like to say that it doesn’t bother me and try to pull off the flip “can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em” deal, but I can’t. I like Lisa, I respect her, and I think we could go someplace. I don’t get what I did wrong or what I need to do to make it better. The way she’s been acting, it could be something she just snaps out of, but something inside made me doubt it.
    Anyway, her message was a simple “Duffy, please call me.” It had a weird feeling to it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I have always talked to Trina at work about my various relationships, and right from the start she didn’t approve of Lisa. Trina made it clear that I put up with way too much goofy shit with Lisa. In fact, Trina almost always thought that the women I got involved with were way too needy and that I should choose more carefully. That always sounded good, but when it came to dating women, it’s not like they do a full disclosure when you first meet them. When I first meet them they’re always attractive, interesting, and engaging, and it usually takes time before the psychotic behavior starts. Then I’m left with trying to figure out if their wackiness is an aberration or if they really are funny-farm certifiable. Inevitably they should be getting their mail delivered to One Funny Farm Circle, Wack-job, USA.

    The third call was from Walanda. She was using one of her two weekly calls to contact me from jail. She was not doing well.
    “Duffy, get me out of here, they’re goin’ kill me. He has people in here … they’re goin’ kill me. Duffy, you gotta get me out of here!”
    She was holding back tears and half shouting in that weird way that people sometimes do on the phone when they’re trying to control the volume of their yells.
    Al whimpered when he heard Walanda’s voice.
    Before she hung up, she paused and, as an afterthought, said, “Remember, don’t give Allah-King no pork.”
    No doubt Walanda felt she was in trouble—the difficult thing was trying to get a handle on whether it was real or brought on by withdrawal from the lack of psychotropics, both legal and illicit, in her system. Whether or not the danger was real or imagined, her anxiety certainly was authentic. One thing I’ve learned over the years of working with people like Walanda is that reality has very little to do with emotion. Right or wrong, true or false—Walanda was hurting and hurting bad.
    Her short-legged, overgrown sausage continued to whimper for a few minutes after the phone call. After a minute or two the whimpering must’ve exhausted him, because he laid down on his back with all four paws pointing straight up and went to sleep.
    Even though Walanda was nuts, it didn’t necessarily mean she was imagining the danger. Still, she was coming off crack and who knows what else and probably wasn’t taking her antipsychotic medication. It would be a few days before the jail doctor would see her and prescribe her Haldol, and then a few days after that the medication would work again. The stress of being taken out of her environment, losing Al, the situation with her stepdaughter—real or imagined—and being