Rescue
By Bill Bernico

Jeff sat back in my easy chair, staring at the television set.  He had his feet up on my coffee table and the heels of his boots rocked back and forth across the surface of the table.  He held a beer can in one hand while the other hand was busy shoving potato chips into his mouth.

I returned from the kitchen with my own can of beer and threw my head back and took a swallow.  “Dogs off the table,” I yelled, pointing at Jeff’s boots.  “You do that at home, too?”

Jeff looked down at the scratched and scuffed table, which had been scratched and scuffed when I found it at the second hand store.  He looked back up at me.  “If I had this table at home, yeah, I’d being doing just this.  But Linda keeps the place like a museum, so no, I guess I wouldn’t be doing this at home.”

He kept his feet where they were and grabbed for some more chips, dropping crumbs down into the couch cushion.  He looked back up at me and smiled.  Through the mouthful of potato chips he managed to mumble, “that’s why I like coming here.  No rules.”

I shook my head and took a set next to him on the couch.  I reached over and yanked the bag of chips away from him and set it next to me.  I reached over and picked up the remote from the coffee table and clicked the movie off that Jeff had switched to while I was in the kitchen.  My thumb pressed a few buttons before I found the channel with the football game on again.

“Do we have to watch this macho crap?” Jeff asked, pulling his feet off the table and heading back to the kitchen for another beer.

“My house, my TV,” I said.  “Don’t like it?  Go back to that sterile museum you call home and watch Martha Stewart with the missus.”

“All right, all right,” Jeff said.  “Is that damned game almost over?”

“Last thirty seconds,” I said, downing another gulp of my beer.

Jeff hovered around the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards for something to eat.  The game ended and I clicked the television off again and joined Jeff in the kitchen.

“What are you doin’ here?” I asked.

Without turning back to look at me, Jeff said, “looking for a snack.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t mean here, I mean HERE.  What are you doin’ at my apartment again?  You’ve got a wife and a house and material possessions up to your armpits.  Why would you wanna hang around with me?”

Jeff found a box of cereal and pulled it from the shelf.  He reached inside and pulled a handful of the sugar wheat puffs out and tilted his head back and let them drop into his open mouth.  In the middle of the first few chews he said, “here else would I be?  You’re my best friend and we’ve been hangin’ out since the seventh grade.”

“I know,” I said.  “But I think if I was you, I’d be spending more time at home.  You got it made, ya know?  Linda’s a great gal and you have what I’ve always wanted – stability.”

“It may look like matrimonial bliss from where you are,” Jeff said, “but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  We have our bad times like everyone else.  No you, you’ve got the bachelor’s life, you dog, you.”

I walked back into the living room and slumped onto the couch.  Jeff followed, still holding my cereal box.

“It’s not the same,” I assured him.  “Girls come and go in my life, but there’s no one permanent.  No one to settle down with.  And I have trouble meeting girls in the first place.  I can never seem to meet anyone who shares my interests, my life.”

Jeff munched on another handful of cereal and wiped his crumb-laden hand on the top of his pants leg.  “Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have broken up with Sharon.  At least she was someone.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “There was a winner.  She smoked like a chimney and was always trying to make me go to her family functions.  I hated her family.”

“So whatcha gonna do?”  Jeff rolled the cellophane back into the cereal box and brought it back to the kitchen cupboard.  He made a hundred and eighty degree turn and pulled the refrigerator open and stuck his head in.  “Bill,” he yelled.  “You take that last beer?”

“I’m serious now,” I said.  “I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life chumming with you.  I need a partner, a soul mate.”

Jeff returned to the living room and stood over me.  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

I nodded.  “I just can’t seem to come up with a good reason to introduce myself to a woman.  Any line I’d use would sound corny or insincere.”

Jeff snatched up the remote and clicked the television on again.  I gave him the look I always save for moments when words can’t say, “are you even listening?”  He knew that look and gestured with his head toward the TV.

“Look at this,” he said.  “The movie I was watching before you so rudely switched back to football.”

My look continued.  “So?”

“So wait a minute,” Jeff said.  “Just watch and maybe you’ll learn something.  It’s just getting to the good part.”

I watched and sighed impatiently, waiting for a miracle to appear on the screen.  There on the screen were two people—a girl and a guy.  The girl was walking down a city sidewalk, her purse slung over her shoulder.  It was nearly dawn and the streetlights had begun to shine.  The guy was waiting in a doorway a little further up the block.  The background music made it clear to the viewer that he was up to no good.

“Now just watch,” Jeff said.  “This is the part where you might learn something.”

“What are you…”

“Shhh,” Jeff said.  “Just pay attention.”

The girl passed the doorway where the guy lurked.  She looked at him but continued on her way, staring straight ahead.  The camera showed us a close-up of her face with the sounds of footsteps in the background.  The music increased its tension and the footsteps quickened with the pace of the music.  With the violins’ crescendo the guy caught up with the girl and grabbed for her purse.  She held fast to the purse as he tugged even harder.  She screamed.  From out of nowhere, a second guy appeared and punched the purse-snatcher in the jaw.  The snatcher let loose of the purse and ran back the way he’d come and disappeared into the night.

The second guy handed the purse back to the girl.  “You all right?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes,” she answered.  “Thank you so much.”

The screen went black as Jeff stood there with the remote.

“What are you doing?” I asked.  “You told me to watch and then you shut it off when it gets good.”

“I can tell you what happens,” Jeff said.  “Our hero gets the girl and they walk off into the sunset happy as two pigs in a mud puddle.”

“So what’s your point?” I said.  “What was I supposed to learn?”

Jeff took a seat next to me and smiled his sly smile.  “Well, buddy, if you’d watched the movie to the end you’d have seen that the hero and the mugger were in on the whole scheme from the beginning.  It was a way for our hero to get to meet the girl.  Great little twist, eh?”

“That’s what you wanted me to learn?” I said.  “That’s how you think I’m going to meet Miss Right?”

“You got any better ideas, Romeo?”

I thought for a moment, my eyes scanning the room for nothing in particular.  They landed back on Jeff’s face.  “You might just have something there,” I said.  “I take it you’re volunteering to play the role of the mugger.”

Jeff smiled at the prospect of pulling off a role like that.  He was a big ham at everything else in life, always looking for that extra scrap of attention wherever he could find it.  Jeff stood and yanked the TV Guide from my hands.  “Gimme dat purse, lady,” he said in a low, overdone voice.”  He bowed at the waist.  “How was that?”

I stood and extended my hand.  “You got the part, my good man.”

Jeff clasped his hands together over his head and shook them back and forth.  “Thank you, thank you,” he said as if acknowledging a nonexistent crowd of fans.  He lowered his hands and looked me in the eye.  “So who gets the part of the damsel in distress?”

“Well,” I said, thinking of one woman in particular, “there’s this woman I see several times a week.  She always walks past the library around five-thirty on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I watched once as she came out of City Hall on Fifth Street.  I think she works there.  Maybe she’s a clerk or something.”

“And how bad do you want to meet her?” Jeff said.

I thought for a moment about her long, brown hair, how it bounced off her shoulders as she walked.  She had a spring in her step and wiggled in all the right places.  She had a smile that could melt butter and her big brown eyes seemed to welcome you into her soul.

“All right,” I said.  “I’ll do it.  You just be sure not to get too rough with her.”

Jeff agreed.  “And,” he said, dragging out his words, “we WILL rehearse the punch part so I don’t get hurt.”

“Sure,” I said, “not really paying attention to what he was saying.  I was wrapped up in my own daydream about meeting this lovely woman and where we’d go on our first date and how I’d get up the nerve to kiss her and what we’d name our firstborn.

For the next three days Jeff and I practiced our moves and had the whole mugging choreographed.  I felt we were ready.  I drove Jeff down to Fifth Street and parked around the corner on Lombard.  Jeff got out and walked half a block and stopped in a recessed doorway and waited.  I glanced at my watch.  It was nearing five-thirty and my palms were wet.  I waited.

At five-thirty-two, as if on schedule, the woman emerged from City Hall and followed her usual route down Fifth Street.  My heart was racing at the thought of finally getting to meet her.  She had her purse slung over her shoulder—the same shoulder that her lovely brown hair bounced on—as she wiggled toward the doorway where Jeff waited.

I got out of my car and began walking parallel to her on the opposite side of the street.  I stayed several yards back.  As she passed the doorway, Jeff emerged and hurried up behind her.  He grabbed her purse and she struggled with him.  That was my cue.  I hurried up the street and was almost directly across from them when the woman reached into her purse.  She struggled with Jeff for another second or two before I heard the first muffled sound.  Then another.  Jeff stopped struggling and grasped his stomach.  Blood oozed from between his fingers.

The woman withdrew her hand from her purse and was now holding the revolver in plain sight.  I was still running toward her when she turned and pointed the gun at me.  “Freeze,” she yelled.

I stopped dead in my tracks and raised my hands in the air.  “I was…”

“Shut up and lay face down in the street,” she yelled at me.  “Do it, NOW.”

I dropped to my knees and watched as Jeff fell backwards, still clutching his bleeding stomach wound.

The woman reached into her purse again and withdrew a small radio.  She held it to he lips.  “This is officer Maloney.  Shots fired, Officer needs backup.  I’m just around the corner in front of seven-seventeen South Fifth Street.  Better send an ambulance, too.

An hour later I finally learned the name of the woman I’d longed to meet.  Her name was Roberta.  Officer Roberta Maloney.  We never did go on that first date and I never did get to kiss her.  Needless to say, I stopped thinking about what we’d name our firstborn.