Kris sat down in the booth; or rather, he slumped down into the booth. It was made of plywood and had a high back. The slightly rickety table was covered an oily yellow vinyl tablecloth. The wall within the booth was papered with customers’ business cards, cartoons doodled on napkins, and flyers for nearby drag clubs. Across the room was a dining bar with circular chrome stools. Large windows along two sides gave Kris a panorama of the street-life. Outside, attractive, mostly gay people moved busily up and down the block, diving in and out of glitzy boutiques: a contrast to the shabby quietude inside the restaurant. Kris and the detective would be the only patrons at the Chicken Shack this evening.
Detective Kennedy arrived with two beers and two surprisingly large chicken pot pies. “Here we are, food of the gods,” she piped enthusiastically.“Thank you, detective.”
“Kris! How tired are you, man? Listen, we’re off the clock now, you can call me Maggie.”
“Right! Maggie,” he pointed at her,” I knew I recognized you from somewhere.” He was almost too tired to be charming and witty.
Kris took a bite of the chicken pot pie and was immediately transported. He was a teenager again. He and Maggie, and their whole little crew, this used to be their place back in the day. Some of the brutality of the day was cured away by the pot pie; it tasted like home. “That is so, so good.” Kris relished a few more mouthfuls. “I forgot how special this place is,” he observed. Kris realized just where it was that he was, and looked about the room, taking in the memories that the little dive had preserved for them.
“Everyone needs a sanctuary,” said Maggie.
“Sanctuary,” Kris agreed. “Listen, I said it before, but I want to say it again: I really appreciate you letting me in on the investigation. I really need this right now.”
“Yeah yeah, sure thing. So what’s going on with you, man? Seems like some major tectonic shifts. What’s the story there?” Maggie took her charcoal sport jacket off and rolled up her sleeves. To Kris’ surprise, on her left hand was a trendy watch with about a 2 ½” wide leather band, as well as a couple of skinny bracelets of beads and leather. Her right forearm bore a couple colorful tattoos, as well. She undid a single button of her white blouse, and let her hair down.
Kris was in disbelief at the transformation. “What - what just happened here? Did you just spontaneously morph from hard-boiled cop lady to art-district hipster? That was so fast, I didn’t even see the change. Can I see the replay?”
“Eat your chicken, Slappy.”
“And tattoos, too?!” He pulled her right hand across the table to see her work. There was some cool vine-like thing that crawled around the palm side of her forearm, the name Hannah illustrated in a way that made it symmetrical both vertically and horizontally, and the obligatory writing in some handsome, unrecognizable language. “Very nice.” Kris pulled up his own right sleeve and placed his forearm next to hers. His arm displayed one simple cursive word, “Truth.”
“Who are you Maggie Kennedy?”
She pushed the crusty mantle of her meal down into its magma gravy core. “I asked you first. So what’s the deal? I thought you were doing some youth minister thing and you were all set up with this church out east and everything was all blue skies and sun beams and rainbows from heaven. Why are you back here?”
Kris took a drink of the beer. It was the sixth beer that he had consumed in the past five years. As he tasted it, Kris quoted Genesis to nobody in particular, “. . . and it was good.” He was quiet as he tried to find just the right answer to Maggie’s question.
“Something . . . bad happened.” This was his best response.
Maggie’s demeanor changed. A pregnant pause filled the room. With deadly seriousness Maggie put the question out there, “Kris. Did you do something bad to one of those kids?”
“Oh no! No. No-no-no-no. Absolutely not. Those were my kids, you know? It was nothing like that. And besides,” he sort of mumbled this last part, “I’ve been celibate since college.”
“What?!” it was Maggie’s turn to be incredulous. “That is not true. How can that be true? You’re pulling my leg.”
“Oh, I assure you that it is. I . . . assure you.” Kris watched Maggie wrestle with the reality of his last statement. “You know, you’re just going to have to accept last statement and move on. . . Can we move on now, please?”
“Ok. Well, what was it, then?” She was almost more concerned now.
“I just . . . I sort of totally lost my faith. I don’t believe any more.”
“Oh is that all?” All of the tension fell out of Maggie’s posture. “Dang, son! You had me really worried.” She turned her flask upside down and emptied its last vestiges into a glass of cola. “So what’s the big deal?” she asked. “I mean, do you think that everyone in every church believes every letter of every scripture? You were doing a good thing with those kids it sounds like. Why . . .why stop that? The world needs more guys like you, investing their energies with young people. That’s a good thing, Kris.”
Kris took a drink of his beer, the last drink. Had he drank the whole bottle already? “I’m just not wired like that, Maggie. How can I tell these kids all of these great principles and stories, when I don’t believe that the very thing at their core is real?”
Without her camouflage on, Maggie’s good looks were hard for Kris not to notice. Her blouse was loose-fitting, slightly open. Her unexpected hip-factor made Kris feel a real or imagined tribal kinship with her. Their shared past, this historic place, and a low tolerance for alcohol concocted together to make Kris believe that a “moment” was happening here.
“So what’s your problem with Jesus?” she asked. She signed the owner, Jimmy, that they were ready for two more drinks.
“I don’t have a problem with Jesus,” Kris said, “In fact . . . I miss him. It’s just all of the violence, and the slavery, and the jihad and genocide of the Old Testament, and blah blah blah. It just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. It doesn’t square with Kum-ba-yah to me anymore. It all just came to a head one day, and . . . I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it. You get the idea.”
“You know what your problem is?. You want everything to fit in a nice little box, with a nice little bow on top. Good things go over here, bad things go over here, a place for everything, and everything in its place. But that’s not the way the world is, brother. It’s messy, man. Things just happen, you know. It doesn’t mean there’s not a God, or Higher Power or something.”
“Good things happen to bad people?”
Maggie leaned in, “Bad people happen to other bad people.”
“You are so hard-boiled, Detective Kennedy. And with a flask, too.” They both laughed. The owner delivered two fresh beers and took away the empties.
“So what now?” Maggie continued.
“Yes! What now? What now, indeed? Well, being a youth minister doesn’t exactly equip you with a lot of lateral life skills. The only things I am good at is pretty words and gadgets. So, badda-bing badda-boom, online blogging! Crime blogging, to be precise. Which is where you come in.”
“Online blogging. You can make money at that?”
Kris leaned in, “That remains to be seen.” He took a drink. This was the seventh beer that he had consumed in the past five years.
Maggie took a drink.
Kris leaned in further, and kissed Maggie – awkwardly.
Her lips tasted like a good memory. His whole world was up for grabs at the moment and something in Maggie felt safe. Kris figured there were worse things to grab on to than Maggie Kennedy. And of course, there was the item of her God-given beauty.
Kris realized that she was not returning his kiss and faded back into the booth.
“Ok, so, that just happened. I’m sorry, I thought – this place, you, me – I thought we were having a ‘moment’ here.”
“Yeah, Chicken Shack confessions have a way of doing that.” Maggie was unfazed. She took his hand in hers. “Kris. You mean more to me than you can imagine. You are on a list that you can never get off of with me. But listen, I . . . prefer the company of women. I’m a lesbian, Kris.”
“Of course! Of course you are.” This triggered a cosmic bout of self-pity in Kris. The universe was had been aligning itself against him for many months now. How could this beautiful childhood friend not be gay? “I guess I could have more conflicting emotions at this moment,” he said, “but I am not exactly sure how.”
“Hold still,” Maggie told him, “there is a spider headed for your fork.” She raised her bottle up to smash the arachnid.
Kris grabbed the bottle to stop her, “No! No don’t. It’s fine. This is fine, I‘ll take care of him.” With a series of delicate sweeps of a napkin, Kris shepherded the tiny bug off the edge of the table and into his cupped hand. He covered the spider and hustled to the front door, which he then clumsily opened via a palsy-like twisting of the knob with his elbows and a few deft kicks. Outside he shook the spider into a nearby planter. Maggie stepped out onto the busy evening street behind him, swishing her cocktail around in its tumbler, “Nice catch-and-and release program there, Kris.” She took a drink of her cola, “Can’t believe some special girl hasn’t come along and snatched you up.”
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