Flying Lessons

Even if they’ve never exchanged more than a few words, Hutch knows Starsky is famous for two things in the department—a curveball worthy of the majors and the four leaf clover in his back pocket. When Starsky wants to celebrate his new promotion, he takes Hutch along for the ride of his life.

Originally published in the Boys in Blue Zine in 2008, edited by Enednoviel.

For Laura

Two weeks before his tenth birthday, Hutch falls from the top branch of the old oak tree in Peter Erickson’s front yard and breaks his arm. He can hear Mrs. Erickson on the phone with his mother through the open window. “One minute he was waving at me, and the next, he’s lying on the ground holding his arm, wailing up a storm. I think you need to come and get him.”

“I was not wailing,” he tells his mother on the way to the hospital. He holds his arm tightly against his chest and stares out the open window of the De Soto.

“No one would think any less of you if you were,” she answers. “I wailed plenty when I caught my finger in the door last winter, remember?”

“But you’re a girl,” he says stubbornly, his chin beginning to quiver. “And Dad says…”

“Never mind what Dad says. Broken bones and broken hearts are always worth crying over.”

He wipes at his eyes awkwardly with his left hand. “Do broken hearts hurt as much as broken arms, Mom?”

“Sometimes more,” she answers quietly and glances over at him.

“Then I’m never getting mine broken.”

“Not sure you get to decide that, Kenny. It just happens. Like today. One minute you’re having fun, and the next, you’re flat on your behind wailing.”

“I was not wailing,” he insists. Stubborn. Proud. Impatient. Like his father.

“I know, honey, I know.”

Looking back, Hutch doesn’t remember the pain, or the heavy white cast, or even the humiliation of crying in front of Peter Erickson.

Instead, he remembers how it feels to fly.

***

The Bay City Police Department doesn’t give report cards to its uniformed officers. Instead, they have performance reviews every three months. Hutch’s latest—a five minute sit-down with his captain and some suit from Human Resources—informs him that the Department is “satisfied” with his work. Hutch wants to ask if satisfied is like a C? Or more like a B? And if it is a B, what the hell does he have to do to get an A?

He’s still standing in the hallway outside HR half an hour later, reading the board and wondering if he’ll ever make detective, when Dave Starsky bounces out of the office, grinning widely, and humming what sounds like “Satisfaction.”

He’s seen him around, police league baseball games mostly. Starsky was at the Academy a few months before him and works out of 8th Precinct, partnered up with Frank Tucci. Starsky’s famous for two things in the department—a curveball worthy of the majors and the four leaf clover in his back pocket. Like last winter, when he pulled over a ’63 Monte Carlo with a broken tail light and stumbled across ten kilos of Blue Magic heroin in the trunk. And last month, he busted this old guy on a drunk and disorderly outside a bar on Fifth. Turns out the old guy is Jimmy Doherty, the same Jimmy Doherty who’s number three with a bullet on the FBI’s most wanted list. At least he was—until Starsky spotted him singing “Danny Boy” and peeing on the front tire of a white Cadillac at two in the morning. He got a commendation from the Department and a thank-you note from J. Edgar Hoover.

“How’d it go?” Hutch asks him. He thinks maybe the question is rhetorical. Sort of like asking Sandy Koufax about the no-hitter he just pitched.

“Terrific. They told me my hair’s too long, I’m way too mouthy, and my shoes need shining.” He grins again. “I told them the perps ain’t looking at my shoes. Guess they agreed, because right after that, they told me I start in plainclothes next month. First thing I’m buying is a pair of comfortable sneakers. You keep the feet happy…” And then he does a little two-step right there in the corridor.

“That’s great. Really.”

“What about you?”

Hutch thinks he hears more politeness than interest in Starsky’s voice. “Apparently, my work is satisfactory. Though they did have great things to say about my shoes.”

Starsky laughs, then says, “C’mon, I’ll buy you a beer to celebrate. It’s Ken Hutchinson, right? I’ve seen you play. Second base?”

“Third. And everyone calls me—”

“Let me guess… Blondie?”

He feels a faint blush crawl up his cheek. “No. It’s Hutch. And you’re Officer Wunderkind.”

“Huh?”

“Sorry. Dave Starsky, right?”

“Only my rabbi and my girlfriends get to call me Dave. Starsky to everyone else. I know this place over on Fifth we can go. Great beer, so-so burgers. I’ll drive.”

“We’re still in uniform…” he protests, but Starsky is already heading toward the door.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” Starsky laughs. “C’mon.”

Hutch pushes away the image of Vanessa, arms folded, warning him not to be late again and follows him out to the parking lot. Starsky stops in front of a lime green Chevelle in the lot and Hutch wants to laugh, to ask him if he’s kidding. He’s glad he doesn’t because Starsky pulls a set of keys out of his pocket, pats the hood lovingly, and says, “Ain’t she a beauty?”

***

The place is a dive. By his standards, anyway. But in Bay City, Hutch has learned, it’s more about atmosphere than style. The Den is big on atmosphere, all of it dark and smoky—faux wood paneling, faux leather stools, faux Chivas too, he guesses.

Starsky waves at the bartender, who scowls back at him, and they slide into a corner booth in the back away from the door. “Huggy hates when I come here in uniform. Says it scares off his clientele. Only clientele I ever see here are hookers, hypes, and two-bit dealers.”

Hutch raises one eyebrow and Starsky laughs. “Okay. Maybe he’s right.”

“Who’s Huggy?”

“Skinny guy behind the bar who gave us that warm welcome. Same one who’s ignoring me now. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Hutch watches him walk to the bar. It’s more swagger than walk, like he knows something everyone else doesn’t. Starsky leans in against the bar, talks quietly to Huggy, who glances over at him a couple times, then back at Starsky. He’s clearly pissed about something.

Starsky comes back a minute later with two bottles of beer and a bowl of peanuts. “Kitchen’s closed. These’ll have to do,” he says. He’s pissed now too, and Hutch has the familiar feeling that it’s somehow his fault.

Starsky silently shells peanuts between swigs of beer. He arranges the broken shells absently into a small hill, then the letter S, then an empty circle.

“Do you come here often?” Hutch finally asks, partly to break the silence and partly because he’s curious, but it comes out sounding like some cheap pickup line.

Starsky wags his eyebrows at him, laughing. “Are you flirting with me, Officer Hutchinson?”

“No, of course not. I was just wondering…” He swallows and runs a hand through his hair. He wants a cigarette badly, considers asking Starsky if he smokes, but he’s two weeks into quitting. Again.

“I kinda follow Huggy around. We’ve known each other a long time—since high school, I guess. And he knows everyone—comes in handy sometimes. Helps to have unofficial sources, if you know what I mean.”

Hutch nods like he knows. Truth is, he doesn’t know shit about this stuff. Two years of college didn’t prepare him for anything. Except maybe two more years of college.

Over the next couple beers, Starsky tells him about high school and getting drafted and how much he hated the army—the food, the uniforms, the boredom, “not to mention how it killed the whole pro ball career I was counting on to make me rich and famous.”

“Were you wounded?” Hutch asks.

“Not like you think. I was stationed in the Philippines the whole time. Jeep accident—my shoulder hasn’t been the same since. Bummed around for a while when I got out, drove a cab, tended bar, that sort of thing. Then this cop I knew suggested I sign up. So I signed up.” If he’s bitter, he doesn’t let on. “Doesn’t pay as good as the majors, but I ain’t complaining. It’s a different kind of game, that’s all.”

Huggy sends over a couple shots. “Peace offering,” Starsky says, then turns to nod at Huggy who’s standing behind the bar drying glasses. He gets the barest hint of a shrug in return.

Hutch’s throat stings when he tosses back the tequila. He watches Starsky’s neck muscles contract as he downs his and then finds himself reaching across the table to brush a stray piece of shell off Starsky’s shirt. Starsky smiles at him and he has the strange feeling that Starsky knows exactly what he’s thinking. Which is confusing, because he doesn’t know himself. All he knows is that he’s relaxed, really relaxed, probably for the first time in months.

“What about you?” Starsky finally says, leaning back in the booth, hands laced together behind his head. Damned if he doesn’t look like he’s settling in for story time.

“I’m married.” It sounds like the answer to a question no one asked. He glances down at his watch. “Though after tonight, I might not be. My wife says being late every night is my passive-aggressive way of saying I don’t love her anymore.”

“Is it?”

“No,” he says too quickly. Practice has made him perfect. Then he shrugs. “Maybe. Probably.” He drains the bottle, wipes his hand across his mouth. “My wife is not—” he searches for the word, “—comfortable with my choice of career. She had other plans for me.”

He tells Starsky about college and his family and how one week before finals, he just walked away from it all and drove until he ran out of road. His father called in a few favors and got him a job at a publishing house—that’s where he met his wife—but after a couple years reading bad manuscripts, he walked away from that too. For a while he toyed with the idea of writing his own book. Then decided to do something useful. Though he’s not so sure how spending his days giving out traffic tickets and serving warrants helps anyone.

He blows out a long breath. “After today’s review, maybe it’s time to admit my wife was right. Brass is in no rush to promote me, and I can’t see myself driving a black and white for the next thirty years.”

“How long you been on the force?”

“Almost three years.” He remembers the day he told Vanessa. The way she laughed and told him to be serious. Only he was. He’s always serious. Now she threatens to leave him as regularly as he quits smoking. And with about as much conviction.

“You pass the sergeant’s exam yet?”

“Three months ago. Ninety-eight fucking per cent.”

Starsky shakes his head. “Well, there’s your problem. No one likes an overachiever. Makes them nervous. Afraid you’re going to make them look bad. Ever get written up?”

“Of course not.” He doesn’t mention how he’s had three partners in as many years. How the first one called him “Shakespeare” for six months. How the current one, forty-eight and already counting the days until retirement, has him fetching coffee and sodas and lunch for both of them on his own dime. You can afford it, kid. I saw the car your wife drives. He swears the next car he buys will be a rusted bucket of shit.

“Well, maybe you should. Get noticed. Unless you’re just slumming here,” Starsky adds, and the words sting worse than the tequila.

“Fuck you,” he spits back, palms flat on the table. “Fuck all of you.”

Starsky just snorts.

Hutch shakes his head and stands up, unsteady. “I need to go to the john. And I need to go home.” He slaps some money on the bar as he passes, and makes his way to the bathroom.

Starsky is leaning against the wall when he comes out, bouncing his car keys in one hand, and smiles at him slow and lazy, like maybe Hutch didn’t really just tell him to fuck off. “Can I drop you somewhere?”

His anger’s gone, replaced by something he can’t name. It’s like he’s got an itch somewhere he can’t reach. “I left my car at the station. Maybe you could swing by—”

“Sure.”

The car—less green in the dark, but just as ugly—is parked in the alley behind the bar. Hutch follows him out the back way, past the empty beer kegs, past the cases stacked four high against the wall, up two steps and out the door into the empty alley.

Starsky turns and pushes him up against the car and Hutch doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Then his lips are on Hutch’s and he’s kissing him, his tongue in his mouth, and all Hutch can think is that he doesn’t know how it happened, but then he’s kissing Starsky back, and it’s fierce and hot and nothing, nothing like kissing Vanessa.

When they break apart, their gasps for air are loud in the darkness. Starsky is pressed up hard against him, his leg shoved between Hutch’s, rocking gently against his erection. Hands clutch at his hips, at his pants, at his ass. He stares at Hutch, so close in the dark. Close enough that Hutch can feel his breath on his lips.

Then Starsky drops to his knees in front of him, runs his hand over the front of Hutch’s pants. Hutch bites his lip hard to stifle a moan. “God, don’t stop.”

“Don’t worry,” Starsky breathes. “I’m not a cock-tease like Vanessa.”

Like Vanessa? How do you—Hutch brings his hands up, fists them into Starsky’s shirt and pulls him up from his knees. He slides his tongue into Starsky’s mouth, pushes his hips forward. He groans and Starsky kisses him a little less smooth, a little more frantic now.

Then he places one hand on Starsky’s chest, heaves him away, and punches him square in the jaw.

Starsky staggers back a step, but recovers quickly. He presses his hand to his mouth, then looks down to see if he’s bleeding. He tilts his head, half-smiles at Hutch. “What was that for?” he says, sounding more curious than angry.

“My wife,” Hutch says, panting a little, pain shooting up his arm. He tries to flex his hand and winces.

“Feel better?”

“Not really, no. I think I just broke my hand. And you’re not even bleeding, for Christ’s sake.”

“You’re serious? About your hand, I mean?”

Hutch starts to say something—something mean and sarcastic—but then he sees the look on Starsky’s face, and all he says is “Yeah. I’m serious.”

“I’ll take you to the ER. I think Memorial’s closest.” He holds open the passenger door. “Sorry, man,” he says as Hutch lowers himself carefully onto the front seat.

“My wife or my hand?”

“Both.”

Hutch holds his hand up against his chest, stares out the window. Remembers another drive a long time ago.

“You got any gum, Starsky? I walk in to the ER in uniform smelling of beer…”

“Tell them a wino puked on your shoes.”

“I’m off duty.”

“You’re never off duty. You’re a fucking Boy Scout.” He leans over and rummages through the glove compartment. Pulls out two sticks of Juicy Fruit, unwraps one for Hutch and folds the other into his mouth.

“Do you have a smart-ass answer for everything, Starsky?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Want me to go in with you?” Starsky asks when they pull up in front of the Emergency entrance.

“What am I, ten?” He reaches awkwardly for the door with his left hand, and feels a hand on his arm.

“Hutch? If you had to hit me, I’m glad it was because of her, not, you know, because of the other thing.”

Hutch’s laugh is dry and short. He turns back to face Starsky and says, “I just want to know one thing.”

“Yes, you’re a better kisser than Vanessa,” Starsky says. Like a teacher to a first grader.

“Shut up. The Jimmy Doherty bust. Tell me the truth.”

“Guess I owe you that much. I got a tip and ran with it.”

“Huggy?”

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“I think we both know you’re no gentleman.” Hutch laughs as he climbs out of the car. “See you around, Starsky.”

“Want me to put out the word you broke your hand in a bar fight?” Starsky calls after him. “It’ll work wonders for your reputation. Hey, if you’re ever looking for a partner—”

Hutch walks around to Starsky’s side of the car and leans in. “What kind of partner?”

He grins and cracks his gum. “Any kind you want, Blondie, any kind you want.”

***

Looking back, Hutch doesn’t remember the pain, or the anger, or even the look on Vanessa’s face the next morning.

Instead, he remembers how it feels to fly.

End

July 2008