Читать книгу Dukkha the Suffering - Loren W. Christensen - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

I lunge diagonally away from Alan’s roundhouse kick and manage to shield my upper body with both forearms a hair of a second before his padded shin slams into them hard enough to jar loose my bone marrow. Before he can retract, I give him some low pain with a snap kick to the shin of his support leg and then split his attention with a brain-jarring palm against his forehead. I drive his head back and down until he plops onto his back. He jerks away from my attempted elbow lock, rolls up onto his knees, and launches a barrage of punches at my legs, two of which land hard enough to send biting shock waves into my thigh muscles.

I teach my students that training in the martial arts is a metaphor for life, with ups and downs, wins and losses, and pain and pleasure. Alan’s T-shirt reads: “Get knocked down ten times, get up eleven.” That’s a good one, too. Actually, sparring with one of my most skilled and inventive advanced students is a metaphor for the way my life has been going for the past few weeks. Just when I think I know what’s coming next, he throws something unexpected that jars my brain and forces me to regroup.

About a week ago, I was watching a reporter on the news interview a woman about to turn one hundred and seven years old. When the old gal was asked what it was like to have another birthday, she said, “Life is a gift. Everyday is an opportunity.” That was almost an epiphany to me. It’s definitely more positive than “life sucks,” which is where my head has been for the last sixty days and nights.

I step back to lure Alan into thinking that it’s safe to get up. My quickly formed strategy is to let him plant his weight on one leg, and then seize the opportunity to lunge in and unleash a category five all over his unbalanced body. Okay, there’s the foot plant and—

He springs off his foot, tucking his head into a fast somersault that for an instant I think is going to bowl right through my slow-to-react body. At the last instant, his legs shoot out from the ball and scissor one of mine. So much for that opportunity metaphor. I wonder if that old woman ever sparred a third-degree black belt. He traps my ankle with one foot and hooks behind my knee with his other, sending me to the mat face-first. I slap out, roll up on my side, and shield my chest against another hard roundhouse kick. Those are getting old, fast.

His shin stays on target a hair of a second longer than it should—a gift, perhaps—allowing me to trap his ankle with my hands and snake my leg over his knee. He tries to sit up to punch, but he’s a tad tardy because I’ve already seized the opportunity to put a crank on his ankle and a hyperextension on his knee. He winces and taps out.

How about that? Maybe the old woman’s metaphor is just fine after all.

I’m up first and help Alan to his feet. I lightly punch his shoulder. “You got one nasty roundhouse. Where’d you come up with that somersault? You Tube?”

He places his weight carefully on his foot. “Thanks,” he chuckles. “And double thanks for not breaking my ankle and knee.” He studies me for a moment. “When was the last time we sparred? Five weeks ago?”

I nod, knowing what he’s thinking. Five weeks ago, when apathy ruled my days, only his respect for me as his teacher kept him from handing my butt to me in a basket. Thankfully, the indifference has been dissolving progressively as my old, charming self reemerges. I’m not all the way there yet, but I will be. “About that. Thanks to you and the others, I’m getting better.”

He nods with a faint smile. “Good,” he says, testing his weight on the ankle. “I think.”

“Is it okay?” I ask with concern. Hitting each other hard is one thing but you have to go easy on the parts that keep you moving. That might be another metaphor but I’m too tired for any more philosophy.

“It’ll be fine. Just trying to make you feel bad.”

I snort a laugh before turning to watch the others spar for a moment.

They call themselves “Sam’s Bloody Dozen,” ten males and two females, all wearing black pants, sopped T-shirts, and salt-stained black belts. The “newest” has been with me for ten years, the oldest for eighteen. Each one knows that to be at this level in my school, they have to push their muscles and minds past fatigue, past exhaustion, far beyond that place where other supposedly advanced martial artist whine, “This is bullshit, I quit.”

I slap my hands together. “Okay, people. Fall in.” The couples stop immediately, bow to one another, and form into two rows.

They see me as a stern father, one with a twinkle in his eyes. Unlike my newer students in the white and colored belt classes who stutter and blush when I look at them, these veterans know, like kids in a loving family know, that their “father’s” sternness is at once bluff and genuine. I reprimand them and I give them positive strokes; I encourage them to do more when their enthusiasm wanes and I rein them in when its overabundance risks their health; I push them to find their individuality in the fighting arts and I give them subtle hints when they lose their way.

They know that I care about them in and out of the school. I’ve been there for them when they’ve lost loved ones, lost their jobs, bled through divorces, and suffered a host of other miseries. Tillie, my twenty-nine-year-old second-degree, used her skills a couple of years ago on a jerk who apparently failed to notice her muscular neck and calloused knuckles before he tried to date rape her. She did such a job on him, that while he might have fantasies of doing it to someone else, his equipment was no longer up for the task. Or as she put it, “The little guy is permanently down for the count.” His Oregon State Prison cellmate was either happy or sad to find that out.

Tillie was all bravado when she first told me how she thumped the guy inside his car and out on the sidewalk, but only her mouth was smiling as she kept shifting her weight from foot to foot and tugging on her belt ends. Being the victim of a sex crime can leave a major gouge on a person’s psyche, even when the victim is able to defend against it. But when you train at this level together, you learn when to step in and when to step out. So I went along with her play and I stepped out.

A week later, after Tillie and I had wrapped a children’s session that we co-teach, Tillie stepped in. As we cleaned up the studio I asked how things were going. The forced smile she’d been wearing all week disappeared, and she began to weep and twist her belt ends again. Not a shoulder shaking cry, but the kind where the tears creep slowly down the face, gathering pain with every inch of travel, and turning me into mush in their wake.

She didn’t answer and I didn’t push for one. We sat quietly, stretching a little, and just being together. After about ten minutes, she sucked in some air, and whispered, “He grabbed my breasts… and between my legs.” Her jaw was trembling as she talked and, after a few seconds, I was struggling to control mine. “He grabbed me so quickly and so out of the blue that it caught me completely off guard. It was our second date. I’ve known him for about a year at work, a quiet guy, attractive. I didn’t expect this and when he did it, it took a couple of seconds for it to sink into my head what was going on.” She started to say something else, but instead thinned her lips and swiped the back of her hand across her teary eyes.

Again, we sat quietly. When she hadn’t said anything after several minutes, I cleared my throat, and said that there was no way that I could relate to what happened to her and to what she was feeling. I did know that she should not blame herself for this man’s actions. He was the lowest form of vermin, a sick creep and a bully. I said that she was a wonderful young woman and I considered her a blessing in my school. I told her that she had acted as a true warrior by fighting back fiercely, conquering her assailant, and holding him for the police.

It haunted her that she hadn’t acted faster, that the guy had grabbed her before she was able to respond, that she hadn’t suspected. I tried to assure her that that was perfectly normal and that’s why it was called a “surprise attack.” But I knew that the words weren’t helping, and when she asked if we could work on a defense against the way her date had grabbed her, I was ready. I knew she was perfectly capable of defending against what he did. What I think she really wanted was to recapture some sense of control that was lost when the guy took her by surprise. What she wanted and needed was to stop the offense on its way in.

So I let her beat on me. I grabbed at her repeatedly, each time a little harder and faster than the last. She blocked my attacks easily and followed with fierce counters that landed all over my body. After half an hour, I was bleeding from my nose and the corner of my mouth, I had a bump on my head the size of a walnut, and my jammed left index finger was swelling. Tillie was feeling great and that was good enough for me.

The next day I connected her with a counselor who works with the PD and within two months she was her old self again, although my finger took about four months to heal.

My senior black belt, my oldest at forty-two and a Multnomah County sheriff deputy, went into a Seven-Eleven one night when he was off duty to buy a quart of milk. When Fred came out, he found his pregnant wife fighting desperately with a teenage street creep trying to carjack their Subaru with her still in it and his six-year-old daughter screaming in the back. Fred yanked the thief out and commenced to go rat-a-tat-tat all over his body, breaking the man’s jaw and thighbone, and inflicting a dozen knots and abrasions. Turned out that the carjacker’s old man had bucks and the mayor’s ear. Within a week, Fred was standing before the district attorney who claimed his actions were too rough on the street thug who, after all, didn’t really steal his car or his family. Fred hired a good attorney and managed to come out of the mess without a record and without losing his job, although he was ten thousand dollars poorer.

I talked with him a couple days after the incident to get his take on what happened. I was a little concerned because Fred has a temper, and although it has mellowed over the years he’s been training with me, I wanted to be sure that all the damage he inflicted on the guy was needed. I’m all about dishing out necessary force but I’m not in the business of teaching people to be assailants.

I was satisfied after talking with him that he had acted responsibly. In fact, I praised him for his restraint considering that his wife had been injured, a detail the police-hating Oregonian newspaper had omitted.

These guys have been there to help me, too. They were there for me when I got divorced in my early twenties, when my mother died in a traffic accident, when Tiff and I ended it a couple of months ago and, just recently when I was placed on administrative leave, they’ve filled in for me when I felt like lawn fudge and couldn’t bring myself to leave my house. They know that in the weeks since I fired a nine-millimeter round into that tweaker’s acne-splattered face, that some days I’m up and some days I’m down.

“Fighting positions!” I center myself in front of them, stagger my feet, and raise my fists. “Okay people, let’s get fast. We’re going to punch out as hard and fast as we can, but only half way. Half reps only. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!” they chorus.

“Don’t think fast. Think explode and fast will happen.”

“Yes, sir!”

“It was a tough class tonight but pay no attention to how your body feels; it’s all about right now, this moment, and creating energy within your mind. It’s within you and it’s dynamite, and it’s about to explode all over that big, fat, ugly imaginary assailant in front of you. Feel your energy starting to boil over, Fred? Dave, you feel it? Cathy, you see that ugly predatory beast in front of you? Good.”

“The fuse is lit folks! It’s burning down, shorter and shorter and shorter… Readyyyy… Explode one!”

Whump! Twelve punches slam forward in unison toward mine.

“On-guard. Half punch… readyyyy… two!”

Whump!

I pace along the front of them again. “You’re not exploding. You’re punching hard, but you must explode. This drill is about fooling your brain.”

Twelve voices: “Yes, sir!”

I move back to center and assume my stance. “To fool it, you must explode.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Feel it, feel it, feel it. Explode! Three!”

WHUMP!

“Excellent! Four!”

After training with both back-to-back ninety-minute classes and sparring hard with Alan, my energy is still good, still focused. My black belts watch me closely, rep after rep, as if I were a conductor of a symphony orchestra, an orchestra of controlled violence.

“Ten!”

WHUMP!

“Switch sides. Readyyyyy. One!”

An orchestra of controlled violence. Hey, that’s pretty good. Reminds me of something an old hung gar teacher once told me. “Fighting is chaos,” he said. “And as a trained martial artist, your job is to bring order to the chaos.” I’ve always remembered that. Now as a teacher, I’m trying to orchestrate my black belts into a masterpiece.

“David, stay focused,” I say to myself as much as to David. “Three! Don’t think about work or that cutie you saw at the mall today. Four! Your whole world right now is a half punch. Five! Not your fatigue, not your aching shoulder. Six! Not the sweat in your eyes. Seven! Just the punch. Eight! The punch. Nine!”

My training, especially the extra training I’ve been doing for a few weeks, is helping to bring order to the chaos that’s been my life these last couple of months. It’s been more helpful than the sessions with the police shrink. Neither is working as fast as I’d like, but I’m better now than I was.

Okay, practice what you preach, Sam: focus.

“Ten!”

WHUMP!

I’m pacing in front of them. A student once said that I pace like a panther at the zoo. Maybe I walk like one, but I don’t feel captive here. I have at home recently and I was starting to on the job. But here in my school? Here I feel free. Here is where I can be me.

“Full-rep punches! You just put all you had in those half reps and they were fast. Now let’s bring that same speed to your fully extended ones. It took a quarter of a millisecond to punch out half way. Now let’s punch all the way out in that same quarter of a millisecond. Think half punch, but extend all the way. You can do it!

“Yes, sir!”

I again center myself on them. “Nothing else exists right now. Not the half reps you’re still panting from or all the other drills we did tonight. Your drive home doesn’t exist, nor does that welcoming shower. There’s only the punch that you’re doing right now. Got it?

“Yes, sir!”

“Reeeeady… Explode! One!”

WHUMP!

Two minutes later, we collectively ram out the last punch with a sharp exhalation and then come to attention. They’re exhausted but they know that if they were to sag their posture or blow out a gush of fatigue, I’d give them more. Since they were white belts, I’ve drilled in them the old saying “Hide your broken arms in your sleeves.” Never show that you’re hurt or tired.

“Very good, everyone. Thank you for teaching me.”

“Thank you for teaching us!”

“Fred, would you please close up?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, though my asking and his response is merely a formality since I’ve been asking him to see everyone off for several weeks.

“Ready!” We simultaneous slap the sides or our legs. “Salute!” In unison, we cover our right fists with our open left hands and extend them forward.

“Thank you, everyone.” We applaud.

As the group moves toward the dressing room, chatting affably and teasing one another like the old friends that they are, I head quickly toward the small room next to my office. In the twenty-some years that I’ve owned this school, it’s a first not to always be available to my students or be able to teach all my classes. I’m missing fewer than I was a month ago and I’m guessing—make that, I’m hoping—that I won’t be missing any by the end of the month. I’m feeling better, a lot better than last month, and a heck of a lot better than in those awful days right after the shooting went down.

I step into the room, close the door behind me, and stand motionless for a moment to collect myself and enjoy the feeling of being in my private space. I like the sparseness and simplicity in here. A hundred-pound heavy bag hangs from a low beam in the center of the room and a large mirror covers most of the opposite wall from the door. That’s it. I might not have a simple life outside my school right now but I still have it in here, and I savor it.

Within a minute or two of coming in and locking the door behind me, I get a small bump in my pulse rate and begin sweating. The only time I’ve experienced that outside of class was two weeks ago when I drove through that intersection for the first time since the shooting. The power of the mind never ceases to amaze me.

Being in here is all about my head. When I attack the bag, I do so with all the frustration, rage, fear, and pain that I can bring up from the depths of my being—“the bowels of hell”—as my friend Mark calls it. Five minutes into the sessions, I feel an explosion of emotions coming from somewhere deep, fueling my punches and kicks with high-octane energy. Ten minutes in, I’m a machine, one with arms and legs slamming my bulk into the leather with blows that, in this empty room, sound like bursts from a sixty-caliber machinegun. When I can’t punch or kick any longer, I clinch the bag and slam it with my forehead, elbows and knees, and I keep going until I collapse to the floor or power vomit into the toilet. When I’m fresh, it takes an hour before I slump into a heap. Times like tonight, when I’ve trained hard along with two classes, I’ll crash after about thirty minutes.

After the first couple of these insane sessions, I realized they weren’t for my body; they were just too harsh to be of any physical benefit. Head-wise, they were helping me to… what? Cope? Yeah, that’s it, and to not dream the dream so much. To not see the man’s exploding face every damn night.

I strip off my sweat-sopped T-shirt and drop it to the floor. Seeing my reflection reminds me of a line I heard Bill Cosby say once on one of his TV programs. He looked into his bathroom mirror, nodded smugly, and said to himself, “Not bad. Not bad at all.” Well, these extra bag sessions have been etching in a nice six-pack on my two-hundred pound frame. Actually, I’ve lost some in the past weeks, so I’m probably more like one ninety. Yup, not bad at all for a dude pushing thirty-five years old.

The face, well, that’s a different story: skin tight, dark circles under the eyes, a couple days growth, and a head in need of a haircut. On the positive side, it’s an improvement.

What does the other guy look like? Not so good. He’s covered with six feet of dirt.

I step over to the big bag, give it a little push and commence to go totally ape shit all over it.

*

“If you’re a burglar,” Tiff calls from the kitchen as I come in the front door, “please don’t hurt me. I’m not wearing a bra.” If she hadn’t parked her Honda in the driveway I would have probably jumped a foot. I forgot she was coming over tonight. She steps around the corner, wiping her hands on a red hand towel, wearing blue sweat pants, a brown tank top and, yup, no bra.

“Have you no decency,” I ask, shooting her a mock evil smile.

She bobs her eyebrows. “Nope.”

“That works for me,” I say, following her back into the kitchen. Two months ago we would have done the hug and kiss greeting. Not doing it feels awkward. Doing it would feel even more so.

“How were your classes tonight, Sam?”

She doesn’t give a rip about my classes. She used to be a little interested; at least I think she was, unless that was just more role-playing. I was role-playing, too. Looking back now, I’m amazed at how easy it was to slip into pretending, to be both the performer and the audience. My shrink said that a couple pretending does not make for a meaningful relationship. Got that right.

I drape my jacket over a kitchen chair, move over to the sink, and begin washing my hands. “Classes were good.”

“You stay after to beat the bag?”

“Yes. Sorry I’m late.” I hope my tone hides the fact that I completely zoned about her coming over. We made plans for it on the phone just this morning, but when I got to my school, it escaped my mind, ffft, like that. It’s not that I have a bad memory, it’s just that my brain has been bouncing around like a ball on a spinning roulette wheel these last few weeks, and when it stops—sometimes it doesn’t—it lands on whatever my head is going through at the moment. It skips over other things, even critically important ones, like a booty call.

She shrugs. “It’s not a problem. I just got here, anyway.” She looks at me for a moment, somehow managing to get curiosity and disapproval on her face at the same time. Thing is, I don’t care about the disapproval part. I used to, at least until it became abundantly clear to both of us that we were the mismatch of the century. Still, we went on pretending for about three more months. Maybe maintaining the status quo was easier than facing a breakup. Married couples do that all the time. For me, I liked the idea of someone wondering where I was when I didn’t get off work on time, even if that person was just pretending. That seems nutso now but that’s where my head was at the time. Why we were attracted to each other is one of those mysteries of the universe. The physical attraction was a biggee and we both enjoyed the same kind of humor. We were an attractive and professional couple in our thirties so it seemed like a logical pairing. Of course, logic doesn’t always make things right.

Tiff works part time as a legal advisor with Children’s Services Division and part time with the Public Defender’s office, the latter being part of our conflict. The other part is because I’m a cop. Now, I like to think that I might—might—have eventually learned to tolerate her defending the kinds of people I arrest, but I know that she would never learn to tolerate that my job was to “oppress the already oppressed,” as she put it about twenty times. A lot of old hippies and young granola eaters say that stuff, wave their signs at protests, and call law enforcement the “Gestapo.” Some actually believe it while the majority just want to protest something and raise a little hell. Tiff is one of the believers, a hardcore one.

Tiff took the first step to end our “relationship.” One night, when neither of us had much to say to each other and the quiet was not a comfortable one, she came right out and said that we needed to stop this, that it wasn’t healthy for either of us. I knew she was right, but since I was still in my Lawrence Olivier mode, I protested, though not all that hard. There was no more pretending for Tiff, though, not even to soften it for me. The more she spoke, the more bitter she became. She didn’t shout or call me names, but spoke quietly using words that burned into me.

“I can’t deal with what you do,” she said. “I understand it on an intellectual level, I get that we need police, but it scares me. Not that you might get hurt—”

Gee thanks.

“—but I’m scared of what it will do to your psyche. It frightens me to think what being exposed to so much violence will do to you. I’m worried that you will become bitter and angry and a racist. I hate that cops have to put on that swagger and macho bullshit air just to survive their job. I think it’s only a matter of time before you’re that way.”

I started to tell her how weak and ridiculous her argument was, how she was charging me with a crime I had yet to commit, and how she was worried about my swagger all the while she was turning into the Thought Police. Also how—

“Sam?” Tiff says, waving the hand towel in my face and bringing me back to the moment.

“Huh?”

“I said I’m still painting my place.”

I’d already determined that since she’s got gray paint smears on her fingers and tank top.

She tosses the towel to me, a move that launches her unencumbered breasts into glorious motion.

Her breasts! The sex. It was the kind that’s so frighteningly intense that you’re convinced that it’s okay to die after because life couldn’t possibly offer you anything better. It’s also why we’ve been seeing each other for booty calls. “Friends with benefits” one of my students called it when telling me about his setup with an old girlfriend. Good name. Good deal, too. So far.

About three weeks after we’d stopped seeing each other she called to see how I was doing. I couldn’t tell if she really wanted to know or if she was just feeling me out for a conjugal visit. When it comes to sex she thinks like a man, which I’ve always thought to be a real solid attribute. Whatever her reason, I was glad she called.

“Got the den to do and that’s it,” Tiff says, as I lean against the sink drying my hands. I have to think for a second what we were talking about. Oh yeah, painting her place. When we were both in the glow of the first few weeks of our relationship, we talked about her moving in with me. Dumb, I know, but we were both enamored and blind. The idea was for her to spruce up her condo to sell. Apparently, she’s still painting. My friend, Mark, would argue that she hasn’t given up on us cohabitating, but that’s not it. She knows and I know that there’s just no way. I think she just wants different colored walls.

Tiff walks over to me and places a hand on my chest. “You look better tonight than you did last week. I’m thinking the sessions with Kari are helping.”

“So are the sessions on my heavy bag. Maybe even more than the shrink.” I touch the back of her hand and smirk. “And the sessions with you, too.”

She smacks my chest. “You’re impossible. No matter how down you feel you’re always up for that.”

“Cute pun. And you’re not?”

She moves toward the refrigerator. “When do you see Kari next?”

“Tomorrow at noon. Gotta do it; she’s got the power to release me.”

Tiff pulls out a plastic bowl, pries off the lid and sniffs the chicken I made up last night. She looks at me questioningly. “There wasn’t much enthusiasm in that. Thinking twice about not going back?”

Is that hope I hear in her voice?

“No, I want to go to work.” I think I do, anyway. “It’s been two months and I’m feeling better about the idea. It’s just that… you know…” I turn around and fill a glass of water. “… my head.”

“Kari said it takes time. Are you still having the dreams? Last time I came over you were shouting in your sleep. Scared me half to death.”

“It was pretty intense on my end, too.” I pick up a chicken leg, look at it for a moment and drop it back into the bowl. Sometimes it’s hard to get food down, which is why I’ve lost weight. “The dream always starts out the same… first it’s his face, then it changes to mine. To my face. I’m shooting… my friggin’ face. Can you believe that?”

Tiff shakes her head without comment. I can’t tell if the gesture is out of empathy or disgust. The couple of times I’ve brought up the shooting during her sleepovers, she’s never said anything, which is more annoying than if she’d shout her disapproval that I killed someone.

I turn back to the sink and begin washing my hands again. “I’ll get through it.”

“You will, Sam,” she says, stepping up along side me and frowning as she watches me rinse off the soap. “I know you and I know you will.” Her attempt at being supportive is almost funny; I give her props for faking it. Actually, we’re both continuing to fake it. Oh man, I don’t want to get back doing that again.

I pick up the towel and rub at my hands. “Thank you,” I mumble. “You hearing anything new at the defender’s office?”

Tiff shrugs. “My friends always ask me how you’re doing.”

Suuuure they do.

“I heard some cops in the courthouse a couple of days ago talking about you. They said it was a ‘clean shoot.’”

Clean shoot. Man, she had to struggle to utter those words. If the cops had said “righteous shoot” she would have probably needed the Heimlich maneuver.

“That’s nice,” I grunt. I turn back to the sink and twist on the faucet.

“Your hands are clean!” Tiff snaps, reaching around me to turn off the spigot. She tugs my arm to turn me toward her. “They—Are—Clean.”

I look at her for a long moment. Where did that come from? Why does she care? Or is she just irritated?

Her face relaxes, looking like it was a struggle to do so. “You know, I’m tough enough to kick your butt all the way to Fifth Avenue.”

I widen my eyes in mock fear, happy that she brought us back to the task at hand.

“So you want any chicken or not?”

“How about I take a quick shower first then I’ll have a couple of pieces?”

Thirty minutes later, Tiff ’s in the bathroom and I’m sitting on the edge of the bed freshly cleaned, wearing black boxers and a red T-shirt. I’m looking at a page in my checkbook, though I’m not seeing the numbers. Can’t concentrate. If I could just get a good night’s sleep, I’d feel like a million bucks. Well, maybe a hundred bucks. I do feel a little better after the scalding shower, a fresh shave, and some chicken.

As good as Tiff looked in her tank top a while ago, I’m not sure if I’m in the mood. We’ve done this booty call thing about three times over the past month or so and while it’s been a nice distraction during my so-called recovery, the irony of it isn’t lost on me. Tiff hates what I represent and what I did that day. In turn, it angers me that she can’t see that the tweaker decided his fate. She argued early in our dating about the police and their use of deadly force. She believed, absurdly so, that officers should never use it. She said that shooting someone is always a choice and that too many cops choose to shoot. I argued that perps put officers into grave situations that compel them to respond with deadly force. She wouldn’t buy it. After a while, we agreed to disagree and the elephant in the room grew larger and larger until it began knocking things down.

A few days after we ended whatever we had, I got into the shooting. Two days later, she called. She said she’d been out of town, and then she asked if it was necessary to shoot the man. I started to snap the lid shut on my phone but her fast apology stopped me. “That was out of line, Sam,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She sounded legit but who knows. “I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.” That was about it. It could have been worse, I guess.

Three weeks later she called again, to see how I was doing. After I lied that I was doing fine and she pretended to believe me, we had an animosity-free talk about how each of us was feeling about our failed relationship. When it looked as if we had exhausted the subject, she said quietly, as if feeling me out, “The sex was good. In fact, it was great.” I affected an official tone and concurred with her assessment, which made us both laugh. We talked another half hour about sex until I couldn’t stand it any longer and asked her how long it would take her to come over. She said ten minutes if she didn’t stop for traffic signals.

Three weeks earlier, I sent a guy to hell and three weeks later I had sex that nearly blew my head off. I even had to take an Excedrin after. “Where did that come from?” Tiff asked breathlessly, looking at me as if I were from outer space. I decided it was best not to mention that I had been thinking about the shooting the whole time.

So here we are again. I have no idea if this is good for me, or us, but for now my inner caveman says to go with the flow and I’m guessing Tiff’s inner cavewoman is thinking the same thing.

I listen to her doing whatever women do in the bathroom. I liked those sounds when we were together and she would stay over on weekends. Then it gave me a sense of togetherness and stability. Now the sounds make me feel uncomfortable and unsure about what the hell I’m doing.

Tiff walks into the room, my pale blue terrycloth robe cinched tight around her waist. Even in an oversized, bulky robe, there is no hiding those dangerous curves, scrumptious peaks, and ultra-hot valleys. That’s what I’m talking about.

“What are you lookin’ at?” she says with a grin, moving over to where I’m sitting. She stops by my knee, looking down at me.

“You know what I’m lookin’ at.”

“Yeah? You just a looker or are you a doer?”

The phone rings.

“It’s Kari,” she says, looking down at the ID screen.

“Nine at night?” I pick up the receiver. “Hi Kari.”

“Sam. You doing okay?” Kari is the shrink I’ve been seeing since the shooting. A tough woman who never wastes words.

“Doing pretty good.”

“Got a conflict at noon tomorrow. Let’s meet at one-thirty instead.”

“Yes, sure.”

“One-thirty it is. See you.”

“Good bye,” I say, wasting my breath since she’s already hung up. I turn toward Tiff. “Kari’s got a conflict and we’re changing the appointment to…”

She’s rummaging through her overnight bag on the end of the bed. The bathrobe has fallen open a little revealing all kinds of good things. I have no choice but to lunge for her like a shoot wrestler diving at an opening. No choice at all.

“Help! Police!” Tiff calls out, as she falls back onto the bed laughing.

“You’re in luck.” I say, pulling the robe from her shoulders. “I am the police.”

“In that case, “Heeeeeelp! I thought you were exhausted.”

“I’m going to feel better in a minute.”

“It’s going to last a whole minute? Oh lucky me.”