The Tip Line by Vanessa Cuti

Author:Vanessa Cuti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

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I hadn’t planned on drinking. I didn’t want to be puffy and bloodshot and all the rest. I wanted to look my best for him, for our party. But it was Friday night, dark early, and I was alone, and so it happened. I did. I stopped after three glasses, though, when everything was at its highest hum, up and running, and I thought I made perfect sense.

Hi there. I was going to call him. Hey, can we talk? No, please, not that. Tell me about you, Deck, I’d slur. Tell me about your past relationships. Have you ever been in love? Whose anklet? Where do you live? Whose anklet? This is wild, I know, a little late, but hear me out, I haven’t properly asked you, but are you dating anyone? And if not, are you pining for a woman whose anklet you keep in your desk drawer? I had my phone in my hand. The anklet on my nightstand, nuclear, too hot to touch, its gold glittering in the blue light of the television. I had the news on. I always had the news on back then. Waiting for things I may have missed at work. Things kept from me. But nothing, nothing new. I googled it, the girls. The dead women. I clicked on links and tried to read, but the wine. I didn’t get far.

So I googled him again too. And I felt a shiver of shame and nerves when I hit “Return,” like I was doing something wrong. But then that flush of recognition when the pictures popped up. Those hands? Pointing to that map? I know those hands. That mouth, mid-speech, telling the press about cleaning up drugs, gangs, about the importance of community and communication. That mouth. Mine. So many pictures of him, Top Cop this and that. Even with the wine, I could look at pictures. The wine helped me see the pictures even more clearly. It helped me understand what I was dealing with. Education on a pixel level. Things I’d never even seen.

He was going to love me, this man. Verona’d told me how to do it. Taught me all it took, which was not much, in the scheme of things.

Yeah, but, whose was it though? That anklet? Whose—no, inconsequential. No. Those hands? From the map picture? Totally inconsequential. Something found on the sidewalk, waiting for its owner. An heirloom. His mother’s, his mother’s mother’s. A niece’s. The previous chief had left it in the desk. Someone else’s personal effect. The secretary’s, its clasp was broken, Deck was going to fix it for her. He was handy too, wouldn’t you know? A real well-rounded guy. It was mine. It was no one’s. It no longer existed. I had made it disappear.

I typed out a text to him, then thought to get up for water, then fell asleep without moving.

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