CHARLIE HEART

CHAPTER THREE: BRUCE

BRUCE

         An hour later I am standing on the edge of my roof, a forty nine story high apartment building.
         Bruce can’t stop laughing after I tell him about Cassie. It’s a hearty belly kind of laugh you would expect from a drunk santa. The beautifully full, genuine kind of laugh.
         I swing my favorite driver over the small patch of Astroturf, a smart cracking sound fills the air and my ball goes flying into the sky. I look at Bruce. I can’t tell if he is laughing at me, or at Cassie, but I don’t care. I love the feeling of him feeling like he’s reliving his single days through me.
         “And you took down that French guy and he just takes off down the street?” Bruce’s thick tough-guy accent echoes against the roof tops.
         I smile, shrug, and point to my beat up face. I don’t tell him that it was really from my latest viatical life insurance deal. He would go off on one of his little ‘I’m going to arrest you one day for stealing from dying people’ tangents. You see, Bruce is a cop, a really bad cop. No, more like a really good friend who... no, he’s just a really bad cop.
         My ball lands on the street, too far away to hear it bounce.
         “You said that guy was wearing mascara?” He pauses. “That is just so gay.” Bruce sets up his club and swings. The tiny white ball soars.
         Let me tell you the short sad story about Bruce. He was raped by two wrestlers our freshman year of college. After that he developed a severe, childish form of homophobia that has haunted him ever since.
         Sad, I know.
         It was actually kind of funny though, he didn’t come out of his dorm room for a week. He also ate sixteen and a half buckets of napoleon flavored ice cream and played Queen’s greatest hits all through the night.
         Mama me ah, Mama me ah, figaro...
         I hate that song now. No, actually, I just hate Queen all around.
         So because of that, if he didn’t like it, it was gay; If it tasted bad, it was gay; If someone said something he didn’t agree with, that person was gay.
         Gay, gay, gay, mega gay, gay.
         For most, it’s a phase you are supposed to grow out of when you start growing pubic hair, but not Bruce.
         I smile.
         “The world is a sick place, Charlie,” he says.
         I smile even bigger.
         I ask, “So how’s work?”
         “Well, yah know, it’s the same. Got the badge, got the gun, go out on the town, put some punks in jail, then hang with you.”
         “I still don’t get why you wear your uniform after hours, officer.”
         “People don’t mess around. It’s a power symbol, Charlie.” He turns and looks at the teenage punk janitor that we paid off to keep guard at the roof entrance while we golf. It wasn’t technically legally approved in the building codes for anyone to be up here, but It’s the best place for golfing and a lot of other things. Bruce makes a growling motion towards him. The kid flinches.
         Bruce also has a bad inferiority complex. He probably developed that from the incident as well. He always had something to compensate for his lack of self. Before he was a cop he walked around with an eggplant in his jean pocket.’
         Poor Bruce.
         It was easy to see that his low self esteem was the reason his marriage was failing, but I don’t tell him this.
         “I’m not like you, Charlie. I can’t squeeze millions out of dying old saps and their families, I have to work.”
         I look at him. “I hate when you refer to it as squeezing.”
         “That’s what you do, Charlie. You squeeze that green. I swear I should put you away for it.”
         “It’s not illegal, Bruce, we’ve been over this.”
         “Sure, it’s not.”
         I can almost taste his sarcasm. He nods his head and winks at me as if to say, ‘I’ll keep your little secret.’ Then he sucks down a good sized gulp from his sports bottle. I think he brings that because it makes him feel like a real golfer, which he’s not, but I don’t tell him this either.
         Both Bruce and the janitor stare at me.
         The kid says, “What do you mean you squeeze people?”
         “Johnny, what did I say about talking?” I remind him about last time, and a roll of duct tape I have in my golf bag. He rolls his eyes and gives me a dirty look.
         I swing and the ball bounces off the building across the street. Bruce shakes his head.
         “You know, you’re a great friend Charlie, but you’re are horrible person, and a little gay sometimes.”
         “Bruce, you know only fourth graders use that as a derogatory term now a days. I’m sorry about your little episode in college but I think we need to get you a new word.”
         The janitor snorts a laugh, I give him a threatening look and point at him.
         Bruce’s eyebrows lift. “Don’t you dare go there Charlie.” He points at me. “You promised.”
         We both look at each other. It seems like everyone is pointing at someone, then we swing. Both of the balls disappear into the dark, then there is a distant ping sound of metal that echos back.
         “You should come with me to the nursing home tomorrow. I’ll show you how to get someone interested in signing a policy over.”
         “No thanks. I’m a man of morals. I’ll just stick to shooting people.” He taps his gun and takes another drink.
         “You never know, Bruce. You put a few more zeros on the end of that bank account, maybe Cindy will take you back.”
         “Forget Cindy, and forget you, Charlie Heart.”
         If only I had a dime for every time someone’s said something like that to me.
         I remember when Bruce first told me about his wife issues about a year ago, I laughed when he did. Not because he, or his problems were funny, but because of a joke I had heard earlier that day. I told him the joke but he didn’t think it was very funny.
         We both take a seat on the ledge of the roof. Bruce takes another swig and offers it to me but I turn it down.
         “Speaking of Cindy, I have a man to man question for you.”
         Oh, no. Man to man was never good.
         He continues. “I’ve got a lunch date with Cindy and her friend.”
         “Okay.”
         “It would really mean a lot if you came, Charlie.”
         “Why?”
         He looks at me like a child who wants something from their mommy. For some reason I know what he is going to say.
         “Cindy’s friend is kind of a, counselor, or studying to be a marriage...
         “Why do you want me to come to your marriage counseling sessions, Bruce? That’s so...”
         “Please, Charlie! You have no idea what it feels like to be beaten up day after day after day like this.”
         I would take his kind of beating anytime over what I’ve been getting. I don’t tell him this though. I just say, “No, man...”
         Bruce says, “I come out here on this roof because you want to go golfing and talk about life and you can’t come share a little lunch date with me? You are zero support, Charlie. Zero.”
         For half a second this hurts, then a rush of sarcastic comebacks flood into my skull that I also keep quiet. “Zero, really, bruce?” I can’t help the dirty way it floats out of my mouth. “What about your program a while back?”
         He says, “You mean the ‘Be a Man program for Men?’”
         “Remember? It was the first time Cindy kicked you out of the house. You come barging into my apartment, drunk as an Irish school girl, flailing your gun and badge and telling me that you’ll shoot both of my thighs unless I go with you.”
         “You always bring that up but I honestly don’t remem...”
         “You cried and then left without your pants, Bruce.”
         “Yah, I remember that. You wrapped them up and gave them to me for my birthday.”
         I say, “I know. What can I say? I’m cheap.”
         Bruce rolls his eyes.
         “The fact is I went with you to your little thing. If anything in is this world was gay, that crying fest was.”
         Bruce puts his hand on my knee. Bruce was always dead serious when he touched your knee.
         “Come on, I need you Charlie.”
         I look at him for a moment, then stand up, position myself, and whip a ball directly at a lit up window of a man watching ‘I love lucy’ in a robe on his couch. I hear a cracking sound and a few seconds later a car alarm goes off.
         I take a deep breath. “Alright Bruce, I’ll go. I’ll hold your hand. But you owe me one.” I don’t know why I agree to this, I really don’t. I like Bruce, he is like my big teddy bear of a brother. My homophobic, soft shell pet. How could I say no?
         “At a boy, Charlie, I knew you’d come through.” He slams a giant hand on my back and gives me his big-loving-man hug.
         I hate Bruce’s big-loving-man hugs.
         But, he is the only friend I have, so I embrace it. I embrace the warm sour smell of armpit with a hint of expired Brute deodorant; the sweaty cop shirt that my face slams against because he is about a foot taller than me. I embrace the lump his gun handle pops into my crotch even though this makes me want to drop to my knees and cry.
         But I’ve been hit there more than once today so what’s another friendly punch?