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electrical cord. Dropping the box he turned, jerking his hands up to protect himself, or fight, or plead, he didn’t know which. He saw a uniform, and his eyes widened, a gasp escaping his lips, his hands nearly formed around the shape of a weapon he hadn’t held in almost twenty years. All in a second, a slowed-down second in which the blur of the uniform resolved into blue and the smile on the face peered out from the veil of panic that Clay’s brain had sent rushing through him.
    “Jesus, Bob, don’t sneak up on me like that, willya?” Clay dropped his hands, then brought one up to his heart. He smiled, willing the sweat to soak into his skin before it streamed down his temple. Make a joke. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
    “Cripes, Clay, you look like you saw a ghost. You okay?” Bob put his hand on Clay’s shoulder, as if to steady him, like he might topple over any second. Was he swaying a little, or was that the room moving? Bob looked him in the eye, gave him the kind of look a cop couldn’t help giving. Penetrating, studying him.
    “Yeah, yeah, you just startled the hell out of me, that’s all, and then I got up too fast. I’m okay.” Clay gave a little embarrassed laugh, shook his head. I’m such a klutz.
    “Good. I called you when I came in, but you didn’t hear me. Deep in thought, huh?” Bob moved back half a step as he let Clay’s shoulder go. He stood a couple of inches taller than Clay, clear blue eyes and a crew cut giving his face a chiseled, steely look. The look matched his deep blue uniform, pressed and creased like it was new, badge gleaming, leather holster shined as well as his black shoes.
    “Not too deep. How are you doing? Back on duty?” Officer Robert Quinn had been shot about a month ago, after pulling over a black Chrysler for speeding through a red light. He couldn’t have known it had been stolen a half hour before, by two guys from the Latin Kings who were going to use it as their getaway car for a hit on a rival gang president. Instead of license and registration Bob got six bullets fired at him, one of which hit. The driver was a lousy shot. Bob wasn’t. Down with a bullet through one leg, he squeezed off two rounds and watched the car swerve off the road and hit a telephone pole. The passenger hoofed it and was never found. The driver was slumped over the wheel, one bullet in the neck, another in his shoulder.
    Bob had been a good customer. Came in most nights for a beer or two before he went home. Taking it down a notch, he called it. Clay had visited him in the hospital, complimented him on his shooting. There was something icily calm about how he had fired those two shots, closely grouped, and at a moving target at that. Not to mention having taken a .38 slug in the leg besides. Something recognizable.
    “You in the war?” Clay had asked, as he stared down at the floor, counting the alternating blue linoleum squares. He was nervous in hospitals, the closeness of disease and death causing him to focus on the details of the room or the hallways to keep his mind off of the misery within.
    “Yeah.”
    “Figured. Where?”
    “Army. Infantryman. New Guinea. Didn’t like it much.”
    “Which?” Clay asked, smiling because he knew the answer, remembered the familiar complaints, the chickenshit, the officers, the chow.
    “Neither,” Bob had laughed, then winced a little. “You?”
    “Infantry, too. Europe. Can’t say I liked either much myself. But still…”
    Clay had looked at the floor, then his hands, and then out the window. It was late morning, no one else was around, and the sunlight filtered into the room between the open blinds, scarring each man with lines of light and shade.
    “Yeah,” Bob had said. “Yeah.”
    They sat for half an hour, the noisy clanking of carts and nurse’s chatter passing them by. Everything that needed to be said out loud had been, and they sat in graceful silence in a clean room with white sheets, far from the