didn’t hear the dispatch. I guess my brain’s still at home lying on the sofa watching Jerry Springer. “Sure,” I say. “Still like the uniform calls, huh?”
“Four-Forty’s close.”
“Thanks Four-Forty.”
“I might be wearing a pretty suit now,” Tommy says, replacing the mic, “but I still got the blue on underneath. Cool thing I like about working dicks is that you can pick and choose what calls you want to take.”
“And you like family fights?”
“We’re close, that all. Let’s see, sixteen seventy-two… there, that big house with the paint chipping off it. Look at that, you can’t even tell what color it used to be.” He clicks the mic: “Four-Forty’s arrived.”
“Four-Forty’s there.”
“Yup, this is it,” I say, acknowledging the obvious since we can hear fierce yelling coming from the place even with our windows up. “And you volunteered us for this.”
“That there’s the house,” an elderly white-haired woman calls out from the porch next door as we get out. She jabs her cane at the front door. “Just follow the screamin’ up the steps, that’s all you got to do. You cops, right?”
“We’re on it ma’am, thanks,” I say.
“It’s awful. Drunk as a skunk they are. Mutha fuckers been screaming all night. I haven’t slept a wink. I need my rest. I’m eighty god-damn seven next week.” She jabs her finger toward our car. “You got night sticks in your trunk? Might need ‘em. They’re nasty mother fuckers in that there house, for sure. Get your nightsticks and beat their hides like they’re Rodney King.”
“Beat ‘em like ol’ Rodney. Ten-four, Ma’am,” Tommy says. “We’re on it.”
The voices inside, loud and slurred drown out the old woman as we move up onto the big front porch.
“… shoulda never married your drunk ass…”
“… yabba yabba. You ever stop?”
“… least my first ex husband had all his teeth.”
“Yeah? Well, least my third wife had an ass smaller than a Hummer.
“This reminds me,” I say to Tommy. “Your wife wants you to call her first chance you get.”
Tommy rolls his eyes and pounds the warped door with the bottom of his fist.
“If I’d had a licka sense I would have stayed single,” shouts the man’s voice.
“Well, there you go. You ain’t got a lick of no sense, let alone nothin’ to go on.”
“‘Nothin’ to… That don’t even make no sense.”
“See,” the old lady on the other porch shouts, surprisingly loud for as old and frail as she is. “Drunker than two sailors on shore leave. Where’s your nightsticks? You never got your goddamn nightsticks!”
Tommy turns the handle and the door opens. “Police,” he says through the crack. “Portland Police. May we come in?”
The door jerks open all the way. “Who the hell called the cops,” a pajama-wearing, vomit-covered, fifty-year-old balding man sputters. “That old beater next door? Yeah, it was her. Always bitchin’ ‘bout something.” He leans around the door facing. “You call the cops, Annie? You old witch bitch. Witch bitch, witch bitch.”
‘I hope they beat you like Rodney,” the old woman shouts back.
“Hey you!” coos an equally vomit-covered middle-aged woman, slipping under the man’s arm and heading straight toward me, her well-fed body rolling like thunder under her short, pink transparent nightie. “You’re one fine-looking man. Look like that one on the TV, what the hell’s his name? That good lookin’ guy on… what the fuck is the name of that show? Except you’re thirty years younger. And you’re a white man.” She reaches for my arm. “I’m Hildie, what’s yours?”
I sidestep her and follow Tommy into the living room, or at least what used to be one before a Category Five hit it. There is a five-foot high pile of chairs and end tables against the fireplace. Broken flowerpots, dirt, and ripped-up houseplants cover the hardwood floor, torn curtains dangle from the windows, and at least three lamps lie broken next to a screen-shattered television. Part way up a staircase, a tattered orange sofa rests on its side and a few steps up from that a yellow and chrome upside down dinette table.
“Your housekeeper Typhoon Mary?” Tommy asks, scrunching his face at the old timer’s splattered blue pajamas.
The woman, whose see-through pink nightie leaves nothing of her two-hundred quivering pounds to the imagination, slurs, “Housekeeper? Shit, don’t need no damn housekeeper.” The puke starts in her hair, covers most of the nightie, with splatters here and there on her cellulite-covered legs and the tops of her bare feet.
I’ve seen homes trashed like this before in family fights, but I’ve never seen two people covered in throw-up. How did they even accomplish that? How did the woman puke in her own hair? Some of it is fresh and some of it’s dried from… last night? I’m this close to losing the peanut butter-covered English muffin I had for breakfast.
Hildie, advances on me again, her bloodshot eyes drunk and lusting. “God, you’re handsome,” she breathes on me. Stay down muffin, stay down. She places both palms on my chest and whispers something, but I sidestep away quickly, not hearing it.
“I’m thinking,” Tommy says over his shoulder as he sheepdogs the man next to the pile of furniture by the fireplace, “that you and Hildie could team up with me and that waitress at the Kick Start for a double date.”
“Are you two married,” I ask Hildie, ignoring Tommy.
“Hey, copper,” Tommy’s man shouts louder than necessary. “My wife fancies you. Take her. She’s pretty good; better when she’s cleaned up, I ought’a say.”
“So you two are married?” I ask again, brushing her hands off me. I so don’t want to touch her. Her stench makes my eyes water.
She nods. “But it’s okay. Bruce doesn’t care.”
“What are you arguing about? Has he hit you?”
“No one has hit anyone,” the man calls over to me. “We’re just arguing. Lover’s quarrel.”
“He’s right,” she says, crotch gazing me. “You’re built good. You got a good package, too?”
The man cackles at that. “Yup-a-roonie, Hildie loves a good package.”
“How long you been married?” I ask, feeling my face heat up.
“You like these?” she lifts her ponderous breasts that have been swaying about under her pukey nightie. She could knock someone out with those.
“Since Wednesday,” the man calls over, giggling at his wife. “Those are some big-ass hangers, ain’t they, officer?”
Tommy
