William Keaton
Sixty Seconds
CHAPTER THREE
That odd, familiar smell of pencil shavings and disinfectant greeted David as he entered the school. He moved past the pane glass windows that peered into the office, catching a glimpse of his hazy reflection in a blue windbreaker and black uniform over his slender frame. Just off to the side, he spied three dark figures sagging in the orange plastic chairs against the wall.
David walked into the office and was met by Mrs. Whitmore, a slight woman in her 50s with dyed auburn hair and heavy make-up on a wrinkled face. He glanced at the three Teenagers dressed in dark, dingy clothes that were sitting with folded arms and stretched out legs.
“Thank you for coming so promptly, David,” she said, touching his arm as she leaned in discretely:
“I take it you know what they did?" He did. "We’ve caught these three here before. I have no idea why they’d skip school only to come here. We made it very clear to stay away or else we would call you. This is the first time they interacted with a student. We just can’t have this, David.”
David nodded and gave her a soft, “Okay." He stepped in front of the bored Boys, each around sixteen, who were no more intimidated by him than they were inconvenienced.
He recognized The Boy on the end as Charlie Selvie. He looked like his brother Nate, just a little less sickly from his diet of meth and OxyCodone.
Charlie still had a healthy fullness to his face, which made David surmise he hadn’t started on Nate’s diet plan just yet. His greasy black hair hung straight down and curled past his ears. A faded gray shirt with sleeves rolled up to his bony shoulders, showed off skinny, but defined arms, with ripped black jeans and ratty black converse. His fingernails were painted black and eyeliner traced his gray eyes. David was certain there was a pentagram drawn somewhere on his body he couldn’t see.
Charlie glared at David, annoyed and defiant. He reeked of cigarettes. But there was another scent, an intuitive scent David got from Charlie. Of cruelty and sex. Perverted sex.
David suddenly had a suspicion as to why Charlie would skip class to come to an Elementary School. Why he would handle shit with his bare hands and target a little boy who wouldn’t fight back. It made him sick at the thought. He was a predator testing the perimeter. Pushing closer and closer for an opportunity to strike.
David clenched his jaw. The idea stuck in his mind like a piece of gristle in his teeth. He hadn’t cast more than a fleeting glance at the other two other boys whose faces he couldn’t place.
“You boys think what you did was funny?” David asked.
The Boys smiled. The one in the middle, skinny as a rail and covered in freckles with thick curly hair, let out a hissing sound from behind his yellow teeth. The other boy, a pudgy kid in a black hoodie and long black hair that fell past his jaw line, was bent over, picking at his black polished nails and gave a disinterested smirk.
But it was Charlie who got under David’s skin. That grin bore into him. Charlie crossed his arms and cocked his head as if he were amused by David’s attempt at dominance and intimidation. David clenched his fist. The Boy hadn’t said a word but had already gotten in his head. Whatever plan or strategy went out the window. He wanted to hurt this kid.
“I know you,” David said. “You’re Nate Selvie’s brother. Christie Selvie is your sister.”
Charlie’s face went dark at the mention of his siblings. There was a tension in his body that tightened like a cable.
The tension spread to the other Boys as well. But theirs was a different shade. It wasn’t anger, but apprehension. It was a live bomb being defused next to them. Charlie’s hate burrowed into David. And David wasn’t even aware of that trace of a smile on his lips. But Charlie saw it. He saw it very clearly.
“We busted your brother every other week for whatever stupidity he got into. Your sister was always in and out of jail or rehab. You have a lot to live down to, Charlie. Is that what you want out of life? To be a deadbeat...”
Charlie leaned forward in a sudden flash of rage and yelled with a nicotine-gravel, “Fuck you, Cocksucker!”
The air went out of the room. David was stunned by the outburst and the fury in Charlie’s eyes. A small hand grabbed his wrist as Mrs. Whitmore moved close to his ear and whispered, “Nate and Christie are dead, David. Overdoses.”
David swallowed hard. He felt the eyes of the office workers on him, before quickly looking away out of embarrassment. A surge of guilt and anger ran through him. For one horrible moment he thought, “Good.”
He hadn’t realized right away that Mrs. Whitmore was pulling him to the office door as Charlie called out:
“So, are you going to arrest me or what?” Charlie yelled with antagonizing glee. “I just want to know where I’m eating dinner tonight, Barney! Can I call my mommy?!”
The Boys laughed. Whitmore’s hand tightened around his wrist as she opened the door...
“Don’t worry, David. I’ll take care of this.”
“You’ll take care of this?” he thought.
“Sheila took Emory and forgot his backpack. Could you go to Mrs. Valdez’s class and pick it up for her?”
David was quiet, staring at her numbly. Finally nodding, “yes.”
“It’s room 102. Thank you, David.” She gave him a terse smile and shut the door.
David stood outside the office in the quiet hall, realizing he’d been humiliated by a sixteen year old degenerate.
And she was going to handle it. It took less than sixty seconds for him to fail in the simplest of tasks. For his entire reputation to fall apart. In sixty seconds, he was exposed.
Look here, folks: Red Harris’s boy outwitted by the son of a junkie and a prostitute, brother of two deceased junkies and future sex offender and current degenerate loser, Charlie Selvie. There’s our Police Chief! How you like them apples!
David could feel, somewhere out in the ether, in that next plane of existence... He felt Red Harris’s shame.
He walked down the hall, his footsteps clacking against the pea-green tile, shadowing him like the self-loathing and humiliation that he cursed himself for under his breath. He made it to door 102, covered in finger paintings of smiling faces and trees and suns. He knocked and opened the door. As he stepped inside he froze with an ice water shock as he cast his eyes on her.
A rush of vertigo rippled through his body, weakening his legs and lit a cold, burning charge down the base of his skull.
Mia was cleaning a small table, placing paintbrushes in a mason jar of dark water. She was wearing a black dress covered with abstract white patterns that clung closely to her slim frame. Her skin looked slightly golden against the pale daylight seeping through the windows behind her, slightly obscuring her figure.
Her jet-black hair was cut stylishly above her shoulders and he could just make out her almond eyes taking him in at that very moment. She stood straight up, looking at him with a curiosity that made him self-conscious.
She was taller than he remembered. Her once small frame that had been straight and flat as a board, had filled out into adulthood at her hips and her full breasts. Her delicate Asian beauty had matured and lost the softness of post adolescence, having become more defined and elegant.
“David?” she asked softly.
“Hey.”
Mia’s smile spread across her lips and she headed towards him, clasping her arms around his neck as she hugged him.
David gently placed his hands at her hips. Taking in the warmth of her body and the pleasant fragrance of her hair that mingled with just the sweetest hint of perfume. She pulled away, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and folded her arms. She watched him with a familiar tilt of her head and a tender smile.
“Oh my God. This is so weird,” she said. "Seeing you here."
“Yeah,” he managed awkwardly. “I didn’t know you worked here."
"Three years now."
He nodded, "It’s not what I would have pictured.”
“What did you picture exactly?” she teased.
David shuffled in place, “I don’t know... something with art. Something with music, maybe. I remember all our talks about music...”
“Ah, yeah,“ she said with an amused sigh. “I remember those talks.”
“You were really good in explaining why my taste in music sucked.”
She laughed, a warm and lively laugh. And her body eased from the tension David’s awkwardness had created.
“No, that’s not true! I was just trying to expand your musical horizons. Your taste in music was... sweet." She took a breath, with a nervous laugh. "It’s funny, even now I’ll hear one of your songs on the radio and I’ll...” She paused with an insecure hesitation. “I’ll think about you.”
The silence between them was heavy and electric. With regret and unsettled sentiments. If only...
“I’m sorry about your dad,” she said finally. “I wanted to go to the funeral, but I couldn’t talk Manny into going.” She paused before saying, “Manny is my husband.”
David nodded. “So, you got married. Congratulations. Do I know him?”
“Manny moved here after you left. You wouldn’t know him.”
Mia watched him for an awkward moment. There was something that had been simmering and storming in her mind for ten years. It was on her lips and she opened her mouth –-
“David, come in. Over!” his radio screeched. He opened his windbreaker slightly and spoke into the square microphone pinned near his collar. “Go ahead.”
“We got a situation down here at the station with Raymond Anderson. Over.”
“What’s the issue? Over.”
“He’s saying he wants to speak with you about his brother’s farm. Says it’s something about some dogs. Over.”
“I’ll be right there. Out.”
David closed his jacket. Mia was nodding.
“It was good to see you, David.”
“You, too.”
He started to back away, when he suddenly remembered, “The backpack.” She looked at him curiously. “I was supposed to pick up Emory Taylor’s backpack.”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened, before saying, “Oh!” She hustled back to a cabinet, picked up a Snoopy backpack and handed it over to him.
She smiled, brushing that same rogue strand of hair behind her ear. “”Maybe we can... Catch up sometime. When you’re not on duty.”
“I’d like that,” he said, clutching the small vinyl bag nervously in his hands.
Mia’s smile fell, as she leaned in with an embrace, resting her chin on his shoulder. It was tight, sincere and it was full of love. So powerful was that moment David was unaware he was resting his head so tenderly against hers; his hands caressing her back, feeling the smooth polyester fabric of her dress.
They would have never been able to explain this moment had they been caught. It was too overwhelming. Too haunting. No way to pass it off as two old friends no one had ever known had been friends. No reason these two people would have ever known each other. There was no logical way to explain the explicit tragedy of this embrace. The truth of that embrace.
She peeled away from him. Somehow his hand had found its way into hers. Their arms stretched out the breadth of what was that embrace... until she let it go.
David nodded. He turned and opened the door, noticing the drawings plastered over the stained wood. He looked back at her with a little kid smirk that she had forgotten but remembered instantly.
“You kind of did end up doing art stuff. So I was a little right.”
She smiled, “I guess you were.”
David nodded again and walked away. He held that image of her smiling tightly in his mind. It made him feel good. Perhaps it would absolve him of every guilty feeling that had existed in his memory before today. Of the last time he walked away from her. This time, she wasn’t crying.