Freaky Deaky

The young doctor didn't seem to give a shit about his Mustang. Chris heard the pen tapping.

"Anyway Phyllis, we start out, was always a little nervous about what I do. The last couple months she's gotten more and more paranoid I'm gonna lose my hands.

It's not what if I get blown up, it's just the idea of losing my hands that seems to worry her. How would I eat? How would I dress myself? I told her I'm not gonna lose my hands, I'm very careful in my work. But if I ever did, I told her she could help me out. See, at first I tried to kid about it, tell her different things she could do for me. Like when I go to the bathroom, things like that. But I realized it was the wrong way to handle it. She'd turn white. You could see her imagining different situations. But she brought it up so often I started looking at my hands. I'd be looking at them," Chris said, holding up his palms, looking at them now, "without even realizing I was doing it.

I'd see things in my hands, lines, I never noticed before. I finally decided it wasn't worth it, talking about it all the time; I'd transfer to another section. Also, you have to understand, it isn't all that exciting. Most of the time you're just sitting around." Chris waited.

Then glanced over his shoulder.

The doctor was busy making notes, shielding the pad with his left arm.

"How long were you on the Bomb Squad?"

"Six years. I started out in radio cars, Twelfth Precinct.

Sometimes I worked plainclothes. You know there's quite a gay community there, around Palmer Park, and when you have that, you have fairy hawks, muggers that specialize in gays. I'd dress up like a fruitcake and stroll through the park, you know, asking for it."

"That sounds like entrapment."

"It does, doesn't it. I transferred to Arson, I had some experience in that area from before. Three years I worked for an insurance company as a claims investigator. But I didn't care much for Arson. Walk around in water in burned-out buildings, your clothes smell all the time. I think that might've been the reason the second young lady walked out. I had to hang my clothes by an open window.

So I transferred to the Bomb Squad."

"Why did you do that?"

"I just told you, to get out of Arson."

"I mean why did you choose the Bomb Squad?"

"I knew the guys there, I'd run into them."

"Was there another reason, a motivating factor?"

There might've been. Chris wasn't sure if it made sense or if he should bring it up.

"Something you wanted to prove to yourself?"

"Like what?"

"Say a test of your manhood."

"My manhood?" Chris looked over his shoulder at the doctor in the lab coat, head down, writing away.

"Why would handling explosives be a test of your manhood? It can end your manhood in a hurry, blow your balls off."

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it.

"That's why I suggest you might have approached it as a test, a challenge."

Chris said, "You don't stay on a job six years to prove something. You have to like it. There's risk, sure. You accept that going in and you handle it, or you get out."

Chris waited. The young doctor was hiding back there writing again, drawing conclusions, making judgments about him. Chris said, "I don't know what attracted me… There was something I've wondered about that happened in Vietnam, if it had anything to do with it. You know, like in my subconscious mind."

The voice said, "You were in Vietnam?"

"It doesn't seem to have a direct connection, though."

"What doesn't?"

"See, when I was over there I was assigned to a Recon Intelligence platoon, working with mostly a bunch of ARVNs. You know what I mean?

South Vietnamese, supposedly the good guys. One of my jobs was to interrogate prisoners they'd bring in and then recommend their disposition."

"Meaning how to dispose of them?"

"Meaning what to do with them. Let 'em go, send 'em back to Brigade..

. but that's not what I'm talking about.

Well, it is and it isn't."

There was a silence. Chris tried to think of the right words, ways to begin. One sunny day I was sitting in the R and I hootch at Khiem Hanh…

"The day I'm talking about, I was sent out to question a guy the ARVNs believed was working for the Vietcong.