Rebound
"John are you here?" Ben calls from the door of the guest house.
"On the couch."
Ben eyes the icepack on John's arm. "What happened? I thought you were off today."
"I was, and so was Lopez, so I was fixing her garage door. I owed her a favor. You know those heavy metal springs that are part of the … no, you wouldn't. Anyway, when those things break and snap back on you, they can do it with a hell of a lot of force. I'm lucky. This is just a bruise. If It had hit me in the face, it could have been a lot worse. I could have lost a couple of teeth, or maybe an eye."
"That sounds like a variation of a safety lecture you'd give to Henry."
John laughs and shakes his head. "It is. You caught me. Lopez didn't tell me things were in as bad shape as they were, and I took her at her word. I should have known better. Clients who hired me as a contractor lied to me all the time. They'd say something just needed a little fix, and it would turn out that it was falling apart from dry rot or termites. Kind of like the people I run into on patrol. Different situation, same behavior. I just didn't expect it from Lopez. After Hawke, I should have learned that cops lie like anyone else, except they can be better at it. Except for me. Hawke said I was a terrible liar. He's right. It's a skill I've yet to master."
"Are you kidding? That's one of the things I like about you, Buddy. If I asked if you ate the last piece of pizza or drank the last beer, you always copped to it."
John pulls himself up and puts the rapidly warming pack aside. "Bad choice of words, Ben. Still, I appreciate the compliment - I guess. It's always seemed to me that sooner or later a lie will come back to bite you in the butt, although in this case, it was Lopez's little omission that got me in the arm."
"Everyone keeps secrets, John. But you're right; they can catch up to you."
"What are you talking about?"
"My trip to China. I didn't just see the sights. I was looking for someone. You remember Lee Na?"
"Your partner in physics lab?"
"She was that, but she was also my partner in the storage closet, under the bleachers, and in the woods behind the dorms."
John stares at his friend. "I had no idea."
"No one did. She was part of a group of students China sent over. The government was paying for her education, so she could bring home what she learned. She wasn't supposed to get involved with a gweilo. She was here to spend all her time absorbing all the knowledge she could. And she was being watched by the other students who were sent over with her, so we kept it under cover. I knew she'd have to leave. I tried to keep things light."
John puts a hand on Ben's shoulder. "But you didn't, did you? You fell in love with her."
"I didn't want to, but I did. I thought it would pass once she was gone, but it didn't. So I went looking for her."
"Sounds like one of those Lifetime movies Sarah loves."
"I don't think so. In those movies don't the star-crossed lovers find each other and a way to live happily ever after?"
John nods.
"Well I found her, but I wasn't the one she planned on living happily ever after with. She was engaged, John before she ever came to the United States. She was the one keeping it light. She had a fling with the dumbass American and then went back and married the person approved by both her parents and the Chinese government. When I found her, they were both working in a lab there, developing tech based on American IP. She wanted nothing to do with me, not even to have tea."
"Ouch! So you came back to be with me so that we could recover from failed relationships together, and you ended up with two for the price of one. I was on the rebound from my marriage and Lucy."
"It wasn't like that John. I'm really sorry about what happened to you and Sarah. You gave up everything you wanted for her and Henry. You should have had a fairytale ending. And I'm sorry about Lucy too. That sucked big time. I just needed a friend, and I figured you could use one too."
"You got that right. I mean since Lucy, I've been thinking about someone else, but that relationship would be even more impossible."
"You mean your captain?"
John's mouth falls open "How did you know?'
Ben gazes upward, shaking his head. "John, since the whole Hawke thing you haven't stopped talking about her; how kind she was to Megan, how compassionate. And you had some pretty nice things to say about her before that; your story about how she stood up for you with those obnoxious detectives. It's obvious that she has your attention."
"Well, it can't go anywhere. Grey's already making snide comments about me being teacher's pet."
"It's good that you realize that. It puts you a few steps ahead of me. But that's not going to keep you from thinking about her, is it?"
"I will just have to behave with the utmost professionalism."
"Good luck with that. You know what we both need, a distraction."
"Like what? There's no game on. Oh God, Ben. You don't mean karaoke. Lucy and Jackson do that together in a cop bar. I don't want to get anywhere near it."
"Then how about a pinball competition like we had in that pizzeria near school? That machine was the only reason we ate at the place. The pizza was terrible."
John grimaces. "Yeah, it was. But where are you going to find a pinball machine now? Video games are miles ahead of that technology. That's what all the kids want."
"You've been hanging around with the youngsters too much. There's an arcade not too far from here that specializes in vintage gaming. They have Pacman, Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, all the oldies but goodies and a whole row of pinball machines. Nothing like leaning hard on the flipper buttons to blow off steam, is there? Low scorer restocks our beer."
"You're on!"
"That should have been a tilt," Ben complains as he brings 12 bottles of Ballast Point IPA to the cash register. "You never used to beat me that badly."
"I didn't have the split-second responses they beat into me at the academy," John insists. "I just never thought I'd use them to smash a little metal ball into the bonus hole."
"Fifteen straight times," Ben grouses. "We really ought to have some chips or something to go with the ale."
John turns toward the back of the store. "I saw a whole aisle of them and…"
"What?"
"Ben, get out of here. A guy with a shotgun just came in the back door, and he's heading this way."
"John, shouldn't you call for backup or something?'
"There's no time, but you should call 911 the minute you get outside. I have my weapon. The guy who came in hasn't seen me yet and has no way of knowing I'm a cop. I'm going to hang back and try to take him without anyone getting hurt. Just go, Ben! I don't need you in the line of fire too."
As Ben leaves, John slips into an aisle of overpriced delicacies and pretends to stare at bottles of upscale olives and baby pickled onions. As the intruder begins to raise his gun and aim it at the cashier, demanding money, John grabs him from behind and chops his arm, hard. The shotgun drops to the floor from momentarily paralyzed fingers. John kicks it away, puts a knee in his prisoner's back and pushes him to the ground, quickly pulling his pistol while the would-be robber is still stunned. He wishes he had cuffs and wonders how long it's been since Ben called 911. Probably less than 60 seconds. Response time in this area tends to run about two to three minutes. They may be the longest minutes on record.
John hears the rising tone of an approaching siren. Thank God!
John feels the familiar twinge as he slides into his chair to sit next to Lucy at roll call, but it doesn't sting quite as much as it did. And after another icing and a couple of ibuprofen, the bruise on his arm only occasionally reminds him of its presence. Sergeant Grey fixes John with his stern gaze. Nothing unusual about that. John braces for the morning's hazing. "Officer Nolan, I hear congratulations are in order."
John's eyebrows rise. "Sir?'
"Single-handedly preventing a robbery and capturing the suspect with no injuries and no property damage. A first for you, isn't it?"
John sighs. A backhanded compliment is better than his usual morning drubbing. "Yes, sir."
"And I hear that you are quite an ace at pinball, a game invented before most of the people in this room were born."
John draws himself up in his seat. "Sir, baseball was invented before anyone here came into the world, that doesn't keep the station from fielding a team. I've heard that you're the star hitter. I'm not a bad player myself."
"Then assuming you're still with us, Officer Nolan, we will see you demonstrate your skills when the season begins in the Spring. Captain Andersen will be catching, and I'm sure she'd like to watch what you can do."
John idly wonders how he'll feel about the captain looking straight at his ass. There could be worse things in the world. "Sir, it would be my honor."