OH, IT IS good. It is sooooooooo, soooooooo, gooooooooood. Whatever it is, this stuff in the patch, it drips like honey from the spot on the funny man’s back where it is affixed all the way to his bombed-out foot/ankle. It shuts things down, flips switches to off, presses the mute button. Life is fuzzy. Life is good. The exhaust fumes trapped by the tunnel: gone. The honking: silent. And look at this: The shit is magic because the traffic is loosening and the funny man begins to move more than 5 mph for the first time in a long time. Everything is back on track. Maybe a little lying-down time when they get to the apartment, just so he can enjoy the patch a bit more before they head to the diner. The boy can play video games solo, then they’ll grab dinner instead of a snack. It’s all the same. It’s even better, matter of fact. They’ll order meat loaf, the one where they cook a whole egg in the middle and you get a portion of it with each slice. The boy is going to say yuck, but the funny man will insist that he try it and he’ll fucking love it because there’s a lot to love in that meat loaf, as long as you’ve got enough ketchup poured on top.
The traffic is loosening, but then here’s these assholes pulling up next to him and honking and waving their arms like lunatics. God, it sucks to be so recognizable. All right, fellas, the funny man gestures with his hand, I see you, move along now. But they don’t move along and are in fact joined by another car on his opposite side where some woman is doing the exact same thing. For God’s sake, kill the honking. There’s nothing that harshes the buzz more than the honking.
Oh, thank thank you thank you, the funny man thinks. There’s a cop with his flashers on, come to protect the funny man from these lunatics. Good luck for him this day, finally. This situation could have turned into a real Lady Di thing, but this cop will save him from the shenanigans, and look, there go the lunatics, peeling off as the cop pulls alongside. The funny man salutes; thank you, Officer, and takes advantage of all the traffic in front of them parting from the cop’s siren to go a little faster.
Police escort, sweet, the funny man thinks. Membership does have its privileges. They’re going to get home in no time now. Even if the parade is still going, this guy is going to let them cut right through. The funny man thinks about what it might involve to hire someone like this on an as-needed basis to just sort of grease the wheels for him and makes a mental note to check on that.
He said thanks, so why is the cop rolling the window down and what’s with the gun? It’s a nice gun, pretty big, but why does he need the gun out, and what’s the deal with pointing it right at the funny man like that? He’s shouting something and pointing with the gun, but no way is anybody going to be able to hear what he’s saying. The tunnel just makes all the engine noise echo and swallows up anything under a low roar, and those sirens aren’t helping either.
Because of the patch and its muffling properties, it is not immediately apparent that the cop is firing the gun. They appear to be warning shots, but what the fuck is up with that? Carefully, because there’s a cop there that’s shooting at or at least near him and he doesn’t want to antagonize the man further, the funny man signals his move to the curb with his flashers before stopping.
The cop angles his car in front of the funny man’s, blocking his way, as if that was even necessary, and slams on the brakes, squealing the tires. He’s still carrying the gun and as the funny man exits his own car, he can now hear what the cop is saying, over and over and over. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” The funny man steps up and says, “What is it, Officer?” but the cop blows past him, his arms reaching for the roof and the funny man turns and he sees his boy there, frozen, his fingers gripped on the window edge. His boy, my boy, on top of the car, his hair crazy wild, dried tear tracks visible through the soot on his face.
My boy, releasing his grip only as the cop—who, come to think of it, doesn’t look like a regular cop—takes him into his burly arms, wrapping the boy up so the funny man, so I, can barely see him and stuffing the boy into the back of his cop car, and this is when I fall to my knees and begin to wail.
But this cop who doesn’t look like a regular cop is not done with me. No, when the boy is safe in his backseat he turns and he grips my shirt with two powerful hands and hauls me up and throws me on the hood. The cop is screaming in my face as he roughs me up against the car. “What the fuck, dude? What in the fuck!”
I have no answer.
It is the kind of thing that happens, but for which there is no explanation. We read about it all the time, but there are no answers. The funny man should die. Immediately. On this spot. He hopes that the cop splits open his head on the car’s hood or that the patch is laced with poison. His life should be flashing before his eyes, but nothing comes because he has no life. It has been taken from him. No, that is wrong, he has thrust it away from himself. Underneath the cop’s arm he sees the gun back in the holster, but not snapped down and the thought comes into the funny man’s head, “I need that,” and so he reaches for it, but the cop is way too fast and strong and snatches the gun first and the funny man is staring down the barrel of the gun, which is what he was after with the grabbing. He smells the gunpowder and feels the heat of the barrel, and he can see that the cop, who doesn’t look like a regular cop, is crying and the gun is trembling in his hands. No, his hands are trembling with the gun in them and the cop is screaming, “I should blow your fucking head off!” and the funny man is saying, “Yes, please please do. Please.”