Back then I was struggling with insomnia, and I would go to the gym right when it opened, at five a.m. The doctor had told me that regular exercise would help. She told me a lot of things would help. Hot baths. Blackout curtains. Reading. Chamomile. I took long baths, I read before bed, I drank cup after cup of chamomile, but most nights I still lay awake, listening to the clock on the bedside table ticking in the silence. I’d tell myself, If you fall asleep now, you could still get four hours of sleep, or three hours, or two. As if I could reason myself into sleeping. Then, a little before five, I’d get up and head to Desert Fitness.
That morning, I had finished my cardio and was doing my crunches when Fierro came in. The gym was mostly empty at that time, so I was glad for the company, though he wouldn’t stop talking about his ex. This was right after he and Mary separated, and I think he was still in denial about it. His chattering made me lose count, and I had to stop and start twice before I was sure I’d completed my set. Fifty regular, fifty reverse, fifty double, fifty bicycle. I had another twenty minutes before I had to leave for work, but just to be safe, I skipped the biceps curls and went to the bench press. I liked to take my time when I lifted weights. Still do. I set myself up with two hundred and fifty pounds and settled down on the bench but, without so much as asking for permission, Fierro added fifteen pounds on each side of my barbell. “What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Dude, come on. No point in doing it if you’re not doing it right.” He stood behind the bench, ready to spot me. Waiting, really. He was in a gray One Shot, One Kill shirt, with the short sleeves rolled up to show off his muscles.
“Doing it like you, you mean.”
He leaned to the left, giving me his good ear. “What’s that?”
“Never mind,” I said. I could argue with Fierro, or I could start lifting and get to work on time. I started lifting.
“Anyway,” he said, “last night I found out Mary didn’t change the spark plugs on the Mustang, even though I reminded her about it three times. She’s going to ruin that car. Dude, take a break if you need one.”
I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead, but I pressed on. I didn’t want to give Fierro the satisfaction. We could be competitive with each other about certain things, going back to our days in the Marines. A blonde in a black leotard walked in and Fierro’s eyes instinctively tracked her all the way to the locker-room doors. He sucked on his teeth. “So I told Mary I wouldn’t sign the divorce papers until she gave me the keys.” He said this like he was proud of it, like he’d finally taken a stand.
“Isn’t it her car, though?” I asked. I’d ridden in that Mustang a few times, after Fierro and I came back from Iraq. I’d sit in the back, sipping on whiskey from my flask, while Mary drove us to wherever we were going, a bar or a club. Whenever she turned or changed lanes, a silver-plated angel ornament swung from its chain on the rearview mirror. I remember one time, she was talking about the bachelorette party she’d gone to while she was in Vegas with her friends from work when Fierro interrupted her. You never told me about no bachelorette party, he said. That was one of their earliest fights, and the fighting had never stopped, even after they’d split up.
“Her car? Who put the down payment on it? Who replaced those crappy hubcaps with chrome wheels? Who installed redline tires just this last summer?” Fierro turned his thumb, crooked because of an old fracture, to his chest. “It was me. I did it.” Now he put his hands over the barbell. “Come on, Gorecki. Take a break.”
“I’m fine,” I said. I didn’t have much time for a break. If I was late to work, Vasco would chew me out. For a while now, he’d been waiting for me to slip up, just so he could say he needed to look at the schedule again and why didn’t I take a different shift? I couldn’t figure out why the guy hated me so much. I finished my last few reps in silence, then sat up on the bench to catch my breath. My shirt was soaked and stuck to my chest. “Didn’t you tell me she was seeing someone?” I asked.
“What’s that? Man, the music is so loud in here.”
“You told me Mary was seeing some guy.”
“Yeah.”
“So she’s not coming back. Just sign the damn papers already.”
“Fuck, no. She thinks she can just move on. Erase the past like it never happened. Like I never happened. Well, she’s wrong.” He added twenty-five more pounds on each side of the barbell and sat down to do his reps, lifting in a steady rhythm, breathing in and out effortlessly.
I wiped my face with my towel and watched him for a minute. He’d been spending a lot more time at the gym since he’d separated from Mary. Sometimes, he worked out twice a day. “So my sister is having a barbecue,” I said. “Wanna come with?”
“Sure. If it’s okay with her.”
“Of course it’s okay. I don’t want to go alone. You’d be doing me a favor, really.”
“All right. When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
Ten minutes later, I was in my Jeep, the engine rattling in the quiet of the morning. The rising sun colored the sky a rusty red and as I drove down the 62, I lowered the window so I could feel the last of the cool morning air. Lights came on in coffee shops and diners like eyes blinking open. At the station, I changed into my uniform and rushed to the conference room, only to find I was the last one there and the sergeant’s briefing had already started. I settled into a chair and avoided eye contact with Vasco, who was halfway through reading the previous night’s reports in his monotone voice.
“Stabbing on the 5500 block of Shadow Mountain Road. The suspect was upset that his mother was moving out to go live with a man she’d just met. He pulled out a knife and slashed the boyfriend’s arms three times. Dog attack on the 3200 block of Bermuda Ave. The owner had repeatedly been warned about his pit bull, but he let it loose in the yard and it jumped over the fence and attacked the neighbors’ kid. Fatal hit-and-run on the 8300 block of Chemehuevi, corner with Highway 62. Nothing yet on the runaway car. Tagging at the high school overnight. Second incident this week. That’s about it.” As he gathered his papers into a file folder, he looked around the room at all the deputies. “One last thing. There’s been a lot of chatter on social media about the Bowden incident. People see ten seconds of cell-phone footage and they think they know what happened. Don’t pay attention to that. We’re not here to be distracted by what people say online. We’re here to do our job. Stay focused.”
Vasco must have been in a rush because he left the conference room without commenting about my tardiness. Must be my lucky day, I thought. My shift was pretty quiet, too: a noise disturbance; a parked vehicle check; a dropped 911 call that turned out to be a butt dial; Marci Jamison once again trying to report her Ativan and Percocet stolen so she could get a replacement prescription. As I changed out of my uniform at the end of the day, I found myself making a mental list of everything I still had to do that night. Read for my ethnic studies class. Go over my history text to prepare for my final. Turn in my English paper by email. On my way out of the station, I walked past the dry-erase board where active cases were listed. One name made me stop. Guerraoui.
Efraín