GODD
I miss Arson. It doesn’t matter to the agency if I’m working homicide or arson, the hotel room stays the same, although this one is a long term furnished room, it’s the same layout, same lamps, Gideon bibles, knee high coffee table next to a bland and clean couch that’s rarely used, “who would invite a guest back here?”
Dressing in the dark, I feel fine. I wanted this I tell myself while switching the lamp on. Light turns the dark shapes on the identical empty bed next to my own, into black pants laid out in a row. There’s more opportunity for advancement working federal sex crimes heels, hair tie, white button up, the closet is 8 carpeted steps away, 5 suit jackets on wooden hangers. Besides, I needed a change after six years. I strap a taser to my belt on the right side, my suit jacket buttons in the front. It’s better to dress in the dark anyways, less faces and none of them speaking. I’d say I was burned out, but I’d only make my sister laugh, and she’s mold.
I switched jobs but not bed size. Arson investigations take care of themselves. In the last six years I never had to deal with the backstabbers, the secret serial predators the public obsesses over. Yeah, there’s always a case or two sensationalized in the media, of firefighters lighting their own fires to be heroes until they're caught. Who else? The kids always burst into tears when brought in for questioning, they just want to go home like it never happened. The pyromaniacs, the fire obsessed bug chasers aren’t backstabbers at all. There’s nothing sneaky about derangement. Serial arsonists look like you might think, unkempt, wild hair, hearing voices. And now? It amazes me, how sex crimes can be kept separate, compartmentalized from a person’s everyday life. You can be talking to anyone and just never know.
I open the door to the shared balcony, she’s standing there, back turned to me like she always is. “Morning Jess,” I say.
“Morning Lady,” she responds. I join her at the red railing, she comes to my shoulder, her hair brushes my waist with a swish that ripples from front to back. We stand on the third floor of an anonymous building, facing west. In a single moment, the light creeps over the roof, across the parking lot, sparkles the pool, glints the highway, and gives shape to the shrubby dots on the rolling hills outside Vegas. “Where’s your badge?” she chuckles, smoke drifts out of her mouth like a casual furnace. “My very own FBI agent, you doing anything exciting today?”
I tap the laminated ID clipped to my belt. “Federal Women’s Prison isn’t like TV,” I respond. “It’s very… boring and nobody is getting stabbed. ‘Well’ I think, ‘Unless it’s with a penis’ then it’s rampant, ‘E tu Brutus?’ an epidemic, a frenzy of stabbing. ‘E tu Officer Macarson? Have you been rendering unto Caesar in the laundry room? Have you been sexually assaulting prisoners in the law library? cafeteria? shower stall? We’ll know once the baby is born. But I’ll find out first, I'll find out today-
“-Too bad,” Jess utters, she tracks the light stretching the shadows west. “I told the ladies you’re my Julia Roberts.” She turns to me, eyes like pools hidden in a gorge.
Is she crying? What is she crying about? She wears her own badge but doesn’t need to flash it to anyone. The FBI rents out this whole hotel to the various departments investigating federal crimes against infrastructure, sabotage, the state. Her investigations take her to the mountains, inspecting utility poles and corroded metal, ignoring safety procedures or green extremists reading anti-civilization guide books on stopping progress through arcing power lines. Sixty linemen a year are fatally electrocuted, but who’s fault?
“Some of it,” she’ll whisper, “is bad luck, Things you can’t account for.
“Is it bad luck to be stabbed? I say, “or is that someone’s fault?”
She’s the only neighbor I know, the people keep to themselves for their stints out here.
Jess flicks her cigarette towards the pool. It falls towards the parking lot and lands in a pothole. The snap of her lighter and she breathes out.
“You can’t ever really solve anything,” she revives our daily disagreement.
“And why’s that,” I say, “everything is solvable with time”
“Because you work people,” she looks me in the eye.” They don’t know, I mean really know why they do anything.”
“And you can always solve every single case of electrocution?”
“It’s around us all the time, sometimes a crow’ll cross wires, freak accidents but they’re rules to our world, if something doesn’t follow one law, then it’s another, so yes, I have a 100% success rate. Investigators should stick together, especially at our age.”
I look down at the security tag pinned to my uniform. I think she’s decades older. I twirl my car keys and leave. Her door is slightly ajar, a long dark cut against the wall, faint glow of a TV. I think about winning the argument, shoving her off the balcony to maybe land in the pool or a pothole but that would only prove her right, I don’t even know why I thought that let alone actually do it.