PART THREE
After three straight days of ten hour shifts, Ed was more than ready to try anything to create a peaceful retreat from the world – even a date with a scary lady cop. Seven o’clock saw him standing on a cracked sidewalk in Revere, staring at a little diner wedged between two huge, windowless warehouses. He was indeed wearing a flaming-red shirt with red dragons embroidered across the front, a lightweight black jacket, and his only pair of black jeans, which his mother had once called indecently tight.
“This must be it,” he said, trying to get a hint at the interior through the grimy windows. His second thoughts had serious problems with both what he saw, and his actual motivations, but his first and third thoughts were unanimous.
Usually, people described places like this as dingy, or even grimy; the term that crept around Ed’s mind was ‘public health violation.’ He entered Mom’s to find it fronted not by a little old lady, but a big guy with the name Earl tattooed across a heart on his left bicep. Ed sincerely hoped this was the man’s own name, or else his shirt might yet get him into trouble. Scanning the tiny dining area, four booths and a long counter, he saw a pretty good representation of the city’s ethnic mix, but no Catania. But he smelled coffee, and he was early.
“You gonna want a menu, or the Special?” Earl asked.
“Just coffee, for now. I’m waiting for a friend.” Ed made himself look away from Earl’s bicep, and his gaze fell on a large black cat lounging on the counter next to the register. He smiled a little at the cat, who ignored him.
“Your friend got a name?” Earl said.
“What?” Ed jerked his gaze back to Earl’s stubble.
“Never mind.” Earl turned to the order-up window and shouted through, “Pablo! Get a fresh pot out here.” He turned back to Ed. “No decaf, hipster-boy.”
“No problem,” Ed said, and turned to slide into the only empty booth, right next to the door. He kept his jacket on; the bench looked too dirty to risk what was effectively a new shirt. The coffee arrived almost immediately, along with two happily conventional menus. He sipped the coffee, which after Catania’s brew tasted like dirty water. He wondered what it was about the place that drew such a wide variety of people, in the face of the obvious disappointments.
He fidgeted, going over in his mind how he could explain to the beautiful, unstable woman he awaited that while he was certainly attracted to her, he honestly didn’t want anything from her other than friendship and the opportunity to grow. She obviously didn’t believe that a man could think that way, and Ed didn’t suppose he could blame her. He himself had seen opportunists too often behave the very way she was accusing him of acting, but he couldn’t see any way of convincing her of his mild intentions short of repetition and demonstration. He would just have to keep telling her that.
Is it worth it? the traitor part of his mind asked. And are you really?
But then a half hour passed, along with two refills and the confirmation that the restroom hadn’t been cleaned since Earl took over from his Mom. And while the clientele switched over completely in that time, Catania still hadn’t shown. Ed decided that if she didn’t show by the time he finished his last cup of coffee he would just leave, and chalk the whole thing up as a loss to Catania’s skewed perspective. The decision caused no small conflict between the warring factions in his brain, but he ruthlessly squashed them.
*
He therefore almost spilled an entire cup of fresh, hot coffee on his lap when the spotlights on the street outside kicked in and the door burst open, admitting a seemingly endless stream of black-clad figures with what he could only assume were automatic rifles, headsets, and bullet-proof vests with “DEA” stenciled across their backs. There was a great confusion of voices, men and women shouting “Don’t move!” and “Hands where I can see them!” There was also a confusing welter of acronymic identifications, some agents shouting, “FBI!”, “DEA!”, and “BPD!” Ed sat immobile with a gun pointed at his face while other patrons tried to scramble out the back, only to be stopped by the kitchen staff backing very slowly into the dining area followed by more guns and the men and women behind them. Men were stripped of weapons, wads of cash and bags of powder, folded over tables, handcuffed, and read Mirandas in a variety of languages including what Ed took to be, incorrectly, Russian. The whole time, Ed sat with a cup of coffee not quite at his lips and his mind rather preoccupied by the business end of a very large rifle quivering directly in front of his forehead.
And almost as suddenly as it had begun, the episode was over. Ed was alone with his own personal DEA agent, who finally lowered her rifle.
“You can put the coffee down now, if you like,” the woman said. She stripped off the black balaclava and shook out her hair, and Ed surprised himself by being unsurprised to see Catania standing before him. “I’m not actually with the DEA,” she said as she twisted and contorted her way out of the vest. “Just on loan for the operation, sort of a cross-training thing.” She dumped the bulky garment atop the rifle on the seat. “Really. You can put the coffee down.”
“I, uh, don’t think I can, actually,” Ed said. “I’m a little cramped up here.”
Catania reached across the table and unhooked the mug from his fingers. Ed let out a big whoosh of breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“What the hell was that?” he said. There was less venom in his voice that he would have thought warranted. Are you becoming used to this already? His second thoughts smirked.
“Drug raid,” Catania said, and she turned and headed behind the counter. “You want some pie?” She rattled around in a silverware bin. “They did the best pie here. Pity.”
“Why…. But…. I…. You….” He was suddenly hyperventilating, a dozen questions flashing across his mind too quickly to focus on and articulate any one.
“Calm down, big guy,” she said with mock reproach. She came back around the counter with a whole apple pie and a pair of forks. “You were never in any danger. Nice shirt, by the way.”
Ed held his breath, tried to focus on a thought, any single, coherent thought.
“You really have to try this,” Cat said around a mouthful of pie.
One thought finally loomed large. “You held a gun in my face for a half a fucking hour!” A part of his mind was shocked that he was swearing at someone out loud. Another part said it was justified, more so than ever before.
“Please. It was fifteen minutes, tops. Very well-executed operation. They’ve been planning it for weeks, I guess. I was lucky to be invited.” She held a forkful of pie across the table.
“What about the gun? Is that why you asked me to meet you here? So you’d have some sort of excuse? Is this some kind of retribution for something?” He snatched the fork from her fingers.
“Oh, hardly. Just seemed like the easiest way to get to know you. Besides, I’m off shift now that the op is over, so…double convenience.”
His brain locked again, the warring factions all shouting different questions, and he stared at her open-mouthed.
“You’re supposed to insert the fork in that space, big guy,” she said, her voice gentler. She grimaced at the coffee as she sipped it. “I won’t miss the coffee any, but it’s almost a crime to lock up the guy who baked these pies. Can you believe he’s from Peru? Incredible.” She took another big forkful. “Try it; you’ll see.”
Without thinking, Ed finally ate what he held on his fork, and his eyes widened as he momentarily forgot everything except his mouth. “My god. It’s perfect.” He took another bite straight from the tin, already a quarter empty. “How’d you find out about this?”
“Stake-out a couple months back.”
“Right.” Somehow, with a mouthful of heavenly pie, her reply seemed the most natural thing in the world. They ate a few more bites in relative silence.
Then a man’s head popped in the open diner doorway. “Cat? CSI really needs access.”
Catania nodded him out. “You got it, Del. Grab the pie, Ed,” she said, and gathered up her gear.
Ed shook his head free of the pie’s influence. “Wait a minute. I haven’t forgotten about the whole gun thing yet. The pie helps, if I’m honest, but still. I don’t think I’m ready to go anywhere with you.” He looked at her but didn’t stand.
“Well, you see, it’s either me, or the wagon downtown to answer charges of possession and trafficking with the rest of the scum. I’m sure you’re clean, but it could take a while.” Catania started for the door. “Don’t forget the pie.”
The black cat, undisturbed throughout the entire operation, picked this moment to jump down from the counter. The movement broke through the stunned lock on Ed’s brain, flooding his mind with images of what might be found downtown. He shuddered, picked up the pie, and followed the cat out the door.
*
The ride in the squad car back to their building was definitely faster than Ed’s bus ride to the diner, but it was hardly more comfortable. First, Catania helped him into the back seat in the usual fashion: her hand on the back of his head, forcing it down to a safe height – even though he was already bent sufficiently – and he was still carrying the half-eaten pie. Second, Ed discovered the seatbelt situation: like the bus, there were none. Unlike the bus, Catania’s partner drove like a demon on speed. The first time he took a corner at tire-squealing speed and Ed slid from one side of the car to the other, desperately juggling the pie, Raoul’s reply to Ed’s frantic “Where are the seatbelts?” was a chuckling, “First time offender?” to Catania.
“Yep.”
“I never get tired of this,” Raoul said as he took another corner at speed.
“Why not take the long way?” Catania said.
“You’re the boss.”
“Hey!” Ed said.
Catania turned in her seat, peering through the Plexiglas grill. “Don’t worry, babe. This is how I met my first husband.”
“Shit!” Ed said as they rounded another corner, Raoul laughing all the way.
*
They pulled up in front of the apartment five minutes and two applications of the sirens later. Toby was waiting with his phone as Ed crawled out of the back of the black and white, snapping shots to make any paparazzo proud.
“She called ahead, man!” he crowed.
“I’ll kill him,” Ed said.
“Now, now. Not when there are witnesses,” Catania said.
“Right,” Toby said, flashing away. “Gotta be chill, man. Premeditate this thing.”
“Fucking kill him.” Ed handed the pie off to Catania as soon as she opened the door for him, and made a grab for the phone. Toby took off around the corner of the building, hooting. Ed took two steps and stopped. “I’m so fucking pissed right now I might actually do it.”
His whole body twitched as Raoul sped off with a blurt of the sirens, and he turned back to Catania. He trembled with barely suppressed outrage; he opened his mouth to protest when Catania cut him off.
“I don’t usually do this on the first date, but would you like to come up?” Cat asked, and she started up the steps.
Ed froze, his eyes bugged out. “But I live here too.”
“Mitigating circumstances, I’ll admit.” She opened the door and held it for him.
Ed stared up at her, eyes unfocused as his mind locked in a struggle to superimpose the image of her in sweat pants and a cat-eared hoodie over the black BDU’s and sweat-stained DEA tee.
He couldn’t handle the discord. “You know what? No. Not this time. This is too goddamn much.”
“Oh, come on, Ed. You’ve come up aces so far. Don’t fold before the last flop.” Cat smiled and winked at him as he looked back up at her. “I’ll let you finish the pie.”
Again, there was something in her voice Ed could not refuse. He blinked, and shook his head before starting up the steps with a heavy tread. “What in the hell am I doing?”
“You’re making a damn good third impression. So don’t blow it, big guy.” Cat winked once more as he passed her through the doorway.
As he climbed the stairs ahead of Cat, Ed’s mind seemed to be keeping itself blank as a matter of self-preservation, the warring factions of thoughts, second thoughts, and third thoughts having called a truce in the face of the new situation. Hearing her steps behind him, Ed wondered how many firearms the woman had on her person at that moment, which brought him to the memory of the gun that had been in his face for what seemed an eternity. He’d never before been faced so closely by the fact of his own mortality, and the thought was simply too much, too big. Rather than deal with it, his thoughts slipped away from the idea, settling briefly on the image of Toby’s flashing phone. But again, Ed’s mind could not contain the level of anger he’d felt at that moment; he had shocked himself with the depth of his own rage, and his thoughts simply slipped away again. But every direction his mind turned seemed to make him angry, which brought his thoughts back to either Toby or Cat, and once again the unsettling memories. After a few steps and several revolutions, his mind simply shut down again, and Ed continued up the stairs totally numb until they reached Cat’s door.
“Well,” Cat said.
“Well,” Ed said, feeling off-balance as his mind was forced to act.
“I had a really great time tonight, Ed.”
“Yeah, uh, me too.” That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?
Ed found his mind blanking again as the situation strayed one more time beyond his seemingly limited expectations. Cat handed him the pie and unlocked her door.
“And maybe, if you’re not too busy, we could do it again sometime.”
“I’d…like that?” he tried. It sounded like the right thing to say, even if it felt totally wrong.
She stood on her toes, leaning into him, and kissed him on the cheek.
“Good night,” she whispered. She took the pie from him and disappeared into her apartment.
Ed stood in the hallway for a few seconds. “What just happened here?”
