20. I hate you, you bitch.


“You ever say that to Mary?”

Frank turned his eyes to Tim where he sat, knitting his eyebrows in the passenger seat of the sedan as the car moved through the streets of Baltimore. “What?” He asked. His voice was smooth, unaffected, which was what Tim could always count on in him. Looking back through the windshield his profile was outlined in the fading afternoon light. Half in shadow, his smooth dark skin was edged in gold. Over his shoulders the broken gray streets of Baltimore passed by, nondescript and dilapidated. The waning sun illuminated debris scattered on the sidewalks and in the storm drains by the road. Over the posters stuck over each other on the boarded up door of a closed down liquor store. “’Bitch’?” He asked for clarification. Tim shrugged his shoulders, looking through the windshield, to the passing street and back to Frank. “’I hate you’?” He surmised again.

They’d come fresh off the scene of a domestic – three uniforms holding a husband back as he howled at his wife and the M.E. carried off the small body of a baby in a body bag. His twisted face was reflected in the window of the patrol car – over hers inside. Tim had averted his eyes from the spectacle, adjusting his glasses as Frank pointed at the blood stains on the ground and called out to the forensics team.

“Yeah. ‘Bitch’ – ‘I hate you’.”

The light over the rooftops glinted in his eyes as he turned toward his partner. He met Frank’s stare with some feeling he couldn’t understand or reason out and Frank pursed his lips, shrugging at length. “She never killed our kid.” It struck Tim as an unfair redirection. “I’m not saying that, Frank. I’m just asking-“

“Like, what? In a fight?”

“Sure. Like in a fight.”

Approaching the red light at an intersection, the car slowed and rolled to a stop. A brown plastic bag twirled in the crosswalk in front of the car. Frank considered Tim’s question. At five after six in the evening the inside of the sedan was dim.

“You’re asking if I ever called Mary a bitch?” He asked.

He looked at Tim and Tim looked back at him and briefly, Tim felt the impulse to retract his question. He opened his mouth and Frank interrupted him. “I don’t know. Our relationship isn’t like that.” Tim didn’t understand. He subsided into disquieted silence and beside him Frank brushed his knuckles over his lips absently as he thought. “We respect each other.” He stated suddenly. The traffic lights reflected over the windshield and washed over his face. He thought about it, nodded vaguely in agreement with himself.

The light turned green and the car eased forward at the bumper of a rusted van.

“Mary respects my decisions.” Tim’s tongue felt dry. “Yeah.” Against the window, Frank’s profile was indifferent and cool. Tim was colorless against the car door, his knit brows drawing lines in his forehead. “You’re lucky to have someone like that.”

Frank glanced at him. The quiet of the cabin seemed to rush in their ears. His dark eyes took in Tim’s features. If Tim was uncomfortable being read it didn’t appear on his face. A moment passed and Frank remembered something that Mary had told him and something that Tim had said to him a long time ago. Tim, likewise, was remembering something morose. Like always it seemed like they understood each other – nearly understood each other then yielded to indifference. Then the moment ended and Frank shrugged and looked away.

The glass at Tim’s shoulder was cold from the approaching evening. He looked down and away.

“’Bitch’.” Frank mused quietly to himself, seeming once again to consider the question. Tim watched him, feeling separate and together and alone.

“Yeah.” He sighed and turned his eyes back to the street.