Maleeny Tim
The Weight
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Tim Maleeny
The Weight
Copyright (c) 2007 Tim Maleeny
Edward Kinsella III
“I found a dead pimp last week.”
Danny Rodriguez spoke the words without inflection, his eyes flat, utterly devoid of emotion. Sometimes a dead body was a friend, a partner, a fellow cop. But most days it was just another corpse. After eighteen years on the job, he’d stopped counting.
“Anybody we know?” Sam disappeared behind his kitchen counter as he opened the door to his refrigerator, bending at the waist to retrieve another beer from the bottom shelf. He stood and gestured toward the small living room as he handed a bottle to his former partner.
“Gracias.” Rodriguez twisted open the beer. “I needed a drink.”
Sam waved his arm in the direction of his kitchen. “This bar never closes.”
“Never?”
Sam nodded toward the open window across the room, sunlight streaming in. “Some would say we shouldn’t be drinking at all.”
“Only a civilian would say that,” countered Rodriguez. “My shift ended at six this morning. Right now, it’s the middle of the night for me.” He moved his chin in the direction of a clock above the stove. “What time do you pick up Sally from school?”
“Don’t worry, not till three.”
Danny raised his bottle in a quiet toast. “How’s retirement?”
“It’s only been a couple of months, Danny.”
“That bad, huh?”
Sam laughed as he took a seat on the small sofa. “I’m busy as hell but bored out of my mind.”
Rodriguez smiled. “So it’s good I still come over for a drink.”
“Beats watching Oprah.”
“I was worried you were getting tired of my stories,” said Rodriguez. “Hadn’t heard from you in a while.”
Sam shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve been busy lately.”
“Watching Oprah?”
“I prefer Ellen, you want to know the truth,” said Sam with a straight face. “You try playing Mr. Mom sometime.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “I’m not ready.”
“You better get ready,” said Sam.
“Still can’t imagine what it’s like.”
“Like nothing else,” said Sam. “You’ll think your heart’s going to explode. You’ll do anything to make them happy, keep ‘ em safe. How many more weeks till the bambino arrives?”
Rodriguez sighed. “Three. My wife’s as big as a house.”
“Don’t tell her that.”
“Too late.”
Sam chuckled. “You’re too honest for your own good.”
Rodriguez raised his beer. “Coming from a cop, I’ll take that as flattery.”
“Ex-cop.”
“You can always come back, you know, we still got plenty of homicides. We’re up to ninety this year, and it’s not even September.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m not that bored.” He absently rubbed his right pant leg, feeling the hardened plastic of the prosthetic through the denim. Part of his brain still registered surprise at the lack of sensation, though at times he’d swear the leg was itching. Not for the first time, he wondered where the hospital sent all the severed limbs, and whether there was some mass grave where someone’s arm lay buried next to his leg, idly scratching it for him.
Rodriguez broke Sam’s morbid reverie by moving across the living room to the small fireplace. Sam watched a pair of cop eyes soften as Rodriguez slowly scanned the photographs along the mantel.
In the first set Sam was holding a young girl who looked a lot like him, brown hair going in all directions, hazel eyes set wide. Moving along the mantel she aged, each click of the shutter a year or more. Rodriguez chuckled softly when he saw himself smiling back from one photograph, his arm around Sam, their patrol caps askew. The girl was sandwiched between them, almost as high as their shoulders.
“Sally grew up fast, didn’t she?”
Sam smiled but didn’t say anything.
Rodriguez moved along the row of photos, his eyes clouding as he found Marie. Sam’s wife was always smiling, her warmth palpable even from an old photograph. And Sam looked more alive whenever Marie was in the frame, much younger than the man sitting on the couch, even though some of the pictures were only a few years old. Rodriguez turned toward his ex-partner slowly, feeling older