“Yeah, and we know that’s wrong because that would mean I’m a middle-age lady, and I’m not ready for that shit. Your mama is fifty-six. Not that fifty-six is so bad since fifty-six is now the new thirty-six.”
“Well I feel like I’m seventy.”
“That’s the new fifty,” Lula said.
“My life isn’t going anywhere. It’s same old, same old. It’s stagnant.”
“I see where you might feel like that sometimes. There’s not much upward mobility in bounty-huntering, unless you’re Ranger. But that’s just your day job. You got any other stagnation problems?”
“My relationships are stagnant.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lula said. “We’re back to the cat issue. You got a problem with commitment. You’ve always had that problem. Only thing you can commit to is a three-ounce hamster. You got two hot men in your life that have been on hold forever.”
Lula was right, but I was only half of the problem. Both the men in my life were committed to me at some level, but they’d made it clear that marriage wasn’t on the table. Okay with me. I’d tried marriage, and it was a disaster. Still, it felt like my life was standing still when it should be moving forward. I mean, where do you go in a relationship after you’ve got the fantastic sex mastered and you’re comfortable sharing a bathroom?
“You gotta shake it up,” Lula said. “Get a new hairdo and some funner clothes. And we got Travis Wisneski in our future. He could turn out to be scary instead of just creepy, being that he’s up for armed robbery.”
“Tell me about him.”
Lula pulled his file out of my messenger bag. “It says here he lives in one of those little row houses on the edge of the Burg. He’s thirty-four years old. Unemployed. And I hate to tell you this, but I’m guessing from his picture he doesn’t use deodorant. I’m not sure where he dines. Guess it could be a dumpster.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
“My feeling is that you have a job and you do it as best you can,” Lula said. “Doesn’t matter if you like your job. You do it as best you can.”
I agreed, but the unfortunate reality was that sometimes our best was lacking.
I cut across town and found the row houses. Travis lived in the middle of the row in a house indistinguishable from the rest. Paint peeling off the clapboard. Shades drawn on the two front windows. Bleak.
“Are we following standard procedure for an armed suspect?” Lula asked.
“We don’t have a standard procedure,” I said. “And we don’t know that he’s armed.”
“Yeah, but we know he’s got a gun.”
“Lots of people have a gun. You have a gun. I have a gun.”
“In theory, you got a gun,” Lula said, “but I’m guessing you don’t have it with you. I’m guessing your gun is home in your cookie jar, and it don’t even have bullets in it. There’s your problem again. You can’t commit to having a gun.”
“I don’t like guns.”
“I like my gun. Her name is Suzy.”
“You named your gun?”
“Doesn’t your gun have a name?”
“Smith and Wesson.”
“That don’t count,” Lula said. “You got a poor nameless gun. I bet you don’t even take proper care of your gun. When was the last time you cleaned it?”
“I put it in the dishwasher after Elliot Flug threw up on it.”
“I never saw anything like it,” Lula said. “Projectile vomiting. All over you and your gun. It was like something from a horror movie where after someone’s head rotates they spew. Next time we go after a felon having a stomach virus we don’t get so close.”
Something to remember. I parked and cut the engine. “Let’s see if Travis is home.”
Lula and I walked up to the door and knocked. No answer.