It was now 3 pm, the moment of truth. I had since changed out of my black scrubs and had sat down at the picnic table outside the homeless shelter. Would Harris show? This was hardly the location for any kind of romantic reconnection, a picnic table out on the scorching pavement behind a homeless shelter, the stench of cigarettes wafting from a nearby garbage can. Had Mr. Pepper been the sole reason for this run-in, or had Harris somehow tracked me down here? I hadn't expected to see anyone from the academy on a weekend, due to Harris's new rule. I saw an open ketchup packet under the picnic table, with ants having a party on the red spill it had made. Maybe this was my responsibility to clean as well, but it wasn't officially on my task list.
"There you are," Harris said, appearing from around the corner. He looked more flustered than usual, his silver hair askew from wearing the hairnet. "I started to think I'd seen a mirage."
"Weren't you supposed to be at the academy all weekend with the cadets?" I said. He made a sheepish face.
"Yeah, that ain't gonna happen. It only took a single Friday night dinner for Commissioner Hurst to get wind of my plans." He sat down heavily on the picnic bench. "He told me the city can't afford to feed cadets seven days a week, even if there are only 23 of them. I had to send them all home yesterday morning. My weekends just opened back up. So, you gonna explain how you came to work here, of all places?"
"I applied to several places, but this was the only place that gave me an interview."
"And you didn't know this was my—?"
"Nope. All you'd told me was that you volunteered at a shelter sometimes. To be honest, I hadn't even thought about that when I applied here; I just replied to the newspaper ads I found."
"I see." My answer seemed to disappoint him, but I had more to say.
"Did you know that the supervisor here was my dance partner at the Blue Oyster Bar?"
Harris made a face. He probably wasn't sure how to take that information.
"You mean, Stanley Pepper? You're kidding."
"Apparently he recognized me when I started here yesterday and thought I'd meant to run into you here."
"And he approved of that? Huh. Apparently he's not the proprietor of the Blue Oyster, yapping to the news about their clientele. That kind of tattling's gonna hurt their business. The media loves tattle tales."
I didn't want to tell him all about what Mr. Pepper had told me.
"Sometimes though, the media should know things, like that you volunteer here. Knowing you come here to feed the poor would vastly improve public opinion of you, I'm sure. Why not say something about this?"
"I've already told you; that's not why I do this."
"Then why do you do it? Why feed the poor? I mean, obviously it's a nice thing to do, but why you?"
He sighed.
"Because I made a deal with God."
Now I was lost.
"God?" I asked, blinking with confusion. "You talk to God? I'd no idea."
"Not usually," he replied. "But I did talk to him on a day that I very nearly met him in person! It's the reason I don't like heights. I haven't told you this story?"
"I don't think so."
"Alright, so I'd been investigating the Wilson Heights gang on a scaffold outside a high-rise building with Proctor—"
"I do remember you telling me about the high-rise job," I interrupted, "but you didn't mention almost dying. What happened?"
"I ended up hanging upside down off the scaffold, hundreds of feet above the ground. I got a new respect for bats somehow managing not to piss all over themselves."
"Wait, so they didn't give you a harness? I mean, did you consider suing them for not having safety preca—?"
"No, I had a harness. It's just… I, uh, accidentally unbuckled it. Anyway, have you seen the news lately?"
Clearly the subject embarrassed him. I had tried to catch the news yesterday at work, but had been interrupted by a call to clean up vomit. I shook my head.
"So, after we talked on Friday, I fired Copeland and reinstated Hightower, Hooks, and Jones. And would you believe it, Jones even bought me a new pair of shoes."
I was shocked.
"You did?"
"And late last night, I sent out letters inviting back to the academy all those boozy over-21 cadets and car-bangers. You tellin' me you didn't hear anything about this?"
"No, I didn't," I said. I could only stare at him, amazed and still in disbelief.
"Anyway, I thought for sure you'd come back to the academy right after the news ran on Saturday, but instead you're here. Come back to the academy, Carnegie." With that, Harris scooted down the picnic bench and put his hand on mine, a hopeful smile on his face.
I licked my lips nervously, gaping down at our hands.
"Wanna go back to your place to talk?" he offered.
"Ha, you're even worried about people seeing us here," I sighed. "I mean, what is so wrong with this? I'm an adult; you're an adult. I'm just so tired of these stupid games."
"There's nothing wrong with this," he said insistently.
"Apparently there is, because we've had to ignore each other, stay away from each other, or pretend like we hate each other all the time. And you've done a pretty good job of that. The last time everyone saw me, you had me arrested."
"The main reason we've had to do all that was because Callahan would have tried to call me out on—"
"Wait, is she back?" I cut in.
"No," he said, "although I've heard they've been holding meetings at the precinct office all this week about how to handle it. They've even called in the cadet she tried to screw. I don't know what's gonna happen with that. That's above my pay grade."
Harris drove me back to my apartment. Thankfully, just as before, not a camera or reporter was in sight. I unlocked the door, and he followed me into my dank living room. I could see that my answering machine had one new message. I rolled my eyes, pressing the button to play it.
"Hey, April. We just got your RSVP in the mail!" my sister said. "So happy to hear you're planning to come to the wedding. The dress code is black and white. I'm really curious to know who your plus one is! See you in a couple of weeks."
Ugh. I shook my head, seeing now that Harris was staring at me.
"Listen," I began, "I RSVPed yes to the wedding so that I could treat them with two expensive uneaten dinners, you know, for how shittily they treated us at the engagement party. I'm not going."
I sat down on the couch, crossing my arms, and Harris plopped down next to me.
"Aw, why the hell not?" Harris said, frowning. "The indictment's gonna drop any day now, and I'm sure they'll be pleased as punch to see my face again. You a bridesmaid?"
"No." How presumptuous he was, assuming that all was forgiven and that I wanted to bring him to that mess!
"That's better yet. I'll bet that reception's gonna be something else."
"Why? She's just going to make fun of me again. They're all gonna make fun of me," I countered. "Didn't you see what they said about me on the news? I'm a criminal with a car fetish. I steal cars and have sex in them. They will destroy me."
"Not if I'm there," he said.
"Ha. You don't know what you're up against. You saw what they did last time, getting me to break up with you. I'm not going, Thaddeus."
He made a pouty face.
"Aww, won't you just consider it? Just think about it. When exactly is this wedding?"
"Saturday, the day before the police academy graduation."
His eyebrows rose.
"That's just over a month from now," he said. "Yeah, you got plenty of time to think about it."
"Did Lassard come back to the academy?" I asked. "I saw the video of him coming out of the hospital. He's, uh… a bit out of sorts."
"You're telling me," Harris snapped back. "He still thought that damn goldfish was alive. In fact, he asked me if I'd been feeding Birdie and I told him I had. Speaking of which, I gotta go to the pet store after this."
"You're getting him a new Birdie?" I asked. "That's sweet."
"Yeah, well, even taking care of a damn fish might be more than he can handle," Harris said with a frown. "He can't be commandant again. That hospitalization really set him back."
It was a strange way he'd worded things, and I had to follow up.
"But why would Lassard ever be commandant again? Don't you plan to stay on as commandant?" I asked.
He bowed his head, clasping his hands together. I stared at his messy hair, alarmed by how he was now sitting.
"Well… the thing is, I've been called out for being the antithesis of my big overarching theme of accountability in the police force," he said. "The news has been harping on it, you've been harping on it, and even Proctor has mentioned it to me once or twice. In fact, I spent most of this past week holed up in my office with reporters yelling through the doors about all the mistakes I've made over the years. They've dug up every last shovelful of dirt on me."
"I don't think you should worry about it anymore. Didn't you just tell me that you undid the decisions to let go of the instructors and cade—?"
"Eh, it's more than just that. I've made some mistakes, big mistakes, and I've always managed to get them swept under the rug. When I was a nobody, just some lieutenant or captain, no one cared. But now that I've gotten the commandant position over my statements about accountability and Tackleberry's lack of it, the reporters flipped that rug right over."
"What are you going to say?"
"That's the thing; I can't just say something. I gotta do something. Mahoney and Hurst haven't stepped up to admonish me, even though they could have done so. I figure that they gave me just enough rope to hang myself, and hang myself I did."
"What are you going to do?"
"I gotta punish myself, somehow," he said, wincing. "The thing is, I'm not, uh… very good at that."
"Do you have any idea how you're going to do that?"
He took a deep breath, raising his head but keeping his eyes locked on the ground, shoulders rising and falling.
"I'm gonna resign as commandant."
My eyes went wide in shock.
"W-what?" I stammered. "But that's your dream job. You told me you were born to be a—"
"Maybe I was born to be commandant, but then I fucked it up. I turned it into nothing more than a three-week power trip. Resigning is the least I could do."
"But now that you know what you did wrong, could you not just change your approach, and—?"
"Yeah, but that's not a punishment. That's just learning. If I'm gonna push accountability as my main goal, then I gotta be the poster child of accountability. It's not just about me dismissing cadets and instructors. It's my past mistakes as well… more mistakes than I'd care to admit. They are all on display now for the world to see, like a big rotten smorgasbord."
I touched him on the back, feeling the heat emanating from his plain white polo shirt. Harris was really being hard on himself, which was something I hadn't seen before.
"Would you still work at the academy?" I asked quietly.
"Not sure. I mean, I could appeal to Mahoney, ask him for my old instructor position back. He may be open to that."
"I mean, if you're really planning on going through with this," I began, "then I think you should try to be an instructor again."
"Only if you come back to D squad. So, what do you say? Will you come back?"
He looked so earnest, so pleading. I sighed loudly.
"Okay."
Several hours later, I forced myself to get out of bed, leaving Thaddeus sleeping with a little smile on his face as I thought about calling Mullers to tell her the good news. The mail didn't get delivered on Sunday, so the cadets Harris had invited back would not find out their fate until Monday at the earliest. Would she be willing to come back sooner? She'd always wanted to be a cop, so this news would be thrilling for her.
"Hey, Mullers," I said, at her answering the phone. "Guess what—Harris has sent out letters inviting back the cadets dismissed at the party last Saturday!"
"You're shitting me. You worked on him that quick? How'd you manage that?"
"Apparently it wasn't just me; it was the news, Proctor, everyone, questioning him. He said he mailed the letters out on Saturday, so it should get there by tomorrow, I'd think. He also got rid of that new instructor and brought back Lieutenant Jones, Lieutenant Hooks, and Captain Hightower."
"Wow! That's incredible. I can't to get that letter. Are you coming back to the academy?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I said. "I'll have to tell my new boss at the homeless shelter. I do feel bad quitting there right away."
"You're my personal hero! Seriously. I never thought Harris would see the light."
"To be honest, me neither."
Harris and I drove back to the academy in his car with another Birdie in a bowl, silent now that he'd told me his plans for the next couple of days. He'd decided that if Mahoney allowed him to stay as an instructor, that he was done pretending that we weren't together. After dropping me off at the academy, Harris planned to go over to the precinct 19 office and tell Mahoney his intentions. This would be the deciding moment; would Mahoney allow him to resign, and if so, would he allow him to be an instructor with a cadet girlfriend?
I arrived back at my room to see that Gertrude was already back, polishing rocks once again. I was totally fed up and had to finally say something.
"Gertrude," I said, sighing as loudly as I could over the loud rocks, "where did you get that?"
"It was put in front of our door," she said, turning off the rock tumbler. "It had my name on it. There was no return address on it."
"How weird."
Immediately I presumed that the tumbler was a way for someone to hurt me. But who would have had access to the inside of the women's dorms and reason to want me to stay out of my room? I didn't have any real enemies, save for Brookstone, apparently. It could have been her, I guess. My siblings had been shocked at my being at the academy, but they had no access to the dorms and would have been noticed wandering around. What about Captain Callahan? What if she'd been trying to get me to leave my room so that I'd be caught trying to hang out with Harris in the meantime? It was definitely a possibility, but she'd already been fired, so I would probably never know the actual answer to that question. I didn't want to suggest all of this to Gertrude, because it was super presumptuous of me to assume her loud anonymous gift had anything to do with me.
"I saw when Harris had you arrested last week," she said. "Did you really steal Commandant Harris's shoes? The news said you're… involved with him, so that—"
"I didn't steal his shoes," I replied. "I was trying to get everyone to stand up, which would have stopped him from firing the instructors. Strength in numbers. You know."
"Oh." She seemed surprised at what I'd said. "Well, you should have said that."
"And you think people would have stood up?" I said. "I doubt it."
"Wait, so you're dating the commandant?" she asked. I paused before replying, thinking about what Harris and I talked about. We were both consenting adults here and, more importantly, Callahan was no longer around to bitch about the double standard.
"Yes."
"Whoa." Gertrude blinked. "Okay, I didn't expect that to be true. The news tends to sensationalize things, you know?"
"Yeah."
"Commandant Harris brought back the instructors he'd fired that day, you know. Did you have something to do with that?"
I shrugged, raising my eyebrows.
"I don't know. What all did we cover this past week? I wasn't here."
"Right. We worked all week on arrest procedure," she said. "We're supposed to be tested on it tomorrow. Did you get an extension, or—?"
I rolled my eyes, sighing loudly.
"I didn't know that."
"Do you know the steps, and all that? I mean, yeah, you were arrested, but that doesn't mean you know each and every—"
"No, I don't," I said. "Is it in the textbook? I could just read over it."
"Oh, no; it's a physical process. All hands-on stuff. They talked about different kinds of arrests, like traffic stops and executions of warrants. They even walked us through the process of strip-searching a suspect. It was sooo awkward, especially before we learned that Sergeant Copeland was wearing shorts under his pants. Did you get to learn any of—?"
"No."
Gertrude looked back down at her rock tumbler. She pulled out a clear stone and held it up to me, smiling.
"If you want, I can help you with some basics after I polish this rock," she offered, putting the rock into the tumbler and turning on the switch. I shook my head, my thoughts drowned out by the noise.
There wasn't much more to say, and no way to hear it. Gertrude was so awkward to talk to, that it didn't take another loud rock tumbler noise for me to wander out into the empty hallway. The cadets that Harris had dismissed last weekend had still not received their letters, and so the building was nearly empty. Right now, Harris would be arriving at precinct 19 to tell Mahoney his decision. I tried to picture Mahoney smiling as Harris requested to be allowed to be an instructor again; would Mahoney consider this? I sure as hell didn't want to be under scatter-brained Lieutenant Proctor for the next five weeks. I guess I would find out soon enough what the outcome would be.
I sat on the grass outside of the women's dorms, feeling the night air. Even from here, I could hear Gertrude's noisy rock tumbler going. It was nearly eight in the evening now, and I wondered how the meeting with Harris and Mahoney had gone.
I noticed headlights in the distance, and an unmarked Crown Victoria entered the police academy parking lot. Could that be Harris? I stood up, squinting as the vehicle pulled into an empty parking space mere yards away from me.
"Fancy meeting you here," Harris said, getting out of the car.
"I came out here to get some air, see if you were back. What's the verdict?"
I could see his dark eyes scanning the parking lot before he replied. I turned around to check as well. We were all alone.
"Mahoney will let me stay on as an instructor," he murmured, his voice barely audible. "I'm gonna make the announcement on Tuesday, fall on my sword. By that time, those dismissed cadets will have received my letter and will have come back to the academy. Mahoney will be interim commandant for the rest of this year's academy while they search for a replacement. He agrees with me that Lassard cannot do it alone."
"Wow," I said, letting out a breath, "so this is actually going to happen."
"If I can manage it, yeah." Harris shook his head, looking ill at ease. "I don't know how I'm gonna handle the humiliation of it. I actively try to avoid being humbled."
Just then I thought of something. Last Monday, after my own humiliating arrest, Harris had offered to let me arrest him as retribution. The arrest exam was tomorrow, and who better to teach me it than Harris? I smiled at Harris.
"I have a proposal to make, which I think will benefit both of us."
