Thursday, August 7, 2008

Cop Fiction is HOT!

Or so declared SP in response to a short story written by my police-officer downstairs neighbor. (The story is actually nonfiction.)

Turns out he became a cop so he'd have time to write. He and I and our building super, JB, were hanging out the other night in our park by the lake. We had the park to ourself, and sat at a picnic table with beers and grapes in front of us. M, the cop, had his guitar and was casually strumming random tunes (The sound of him playing/singing regularly comes up to my apartment from below; it's nice.)

So there we were: me, the cop and his guitar, and our Yugoslavian building super. The night was dark, and the gentle sound of the waves blended with the guitar. It was really nice. I asked the cop if he liked his job. He was sitting with his back 3/4 to us on the other side of the picnic table, and I saw his profile as he stopped playing, turned, and thought.

"No," he said. "But does anyone really like their job?" and he explained about the writing, and how he wants to leave the neighborhood because he knows what we're surrounded by, and what the new-condo collapse will bring in when developers are forced to rent. He'd busted someone carrying a bunch of crack in front of our place one night, and I found out that the reason we don't get parking tickets when we live park in the No Parking zone in front of the building was his direction to his cop pals to lay off the tickets, something I'm grateful for, because parking is so bad at times that if I couldn't live park (flashers on) to unload stuff, I'd be lugging some pretty heavy stuff for several blocks.

He's an unexpected guy: large, somewhat overweight, very blue-collar looking, graying, with an almost ADD-like rapid-fire way of asking brief questions. But then he picks up the guitar, and writes short stories like this one, rescues cats, and comes out with a very dry sense of humor.

You might think, reading this, that I have a crush on him, but I don't. I just like him, and not having a crush makes it that much more enjoyable.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cop non-fiction his HOT!

JC said...

You are so sad.