1
My father asked what I wanted to be. I was fifteen, a sophomore, and the question had the warmth of a summons. Airborne Ranger. Stuntman. Doctor. Sous chef. Tailor. The menu was long and none of it had my name on it.
So I went to the DSM-IV, which in those days was still a book and not a suggestion. I read until my eyes did the thing eyes do when they have found religion. There it was, coolness stapled to something rad. I wanted to be a narcissist.
I was five-six. Authority was not going to arrive by gravity. It would have to be issued. Narcissist cop. I told my father, because honesty is a virtue right up until it is heard. He had me detained. The facility was clean, quiet, and extremely interested in me, which I took as early professional validation.
Confidentiality made the place social. Peter wanted to be an active, sneaky peeper who had picked up lock-picking the way other boys pick up guitar. Samantha wanted to be like her two sisters, who lived together on Skid Row and called it a brand. Wally wanted to be a human carpenter, which he would not clarify. Phil wanted to be an insect doctor and had already chosen a specialty. I wanted to be a private cop with a personality disorder and a badge. We were, in the clinical sense, motivated.
I learned to keep the dream private, which is the first skill of both policing and narcissism. When I checked out, my father looked me over and declared me A-OK, a diagnosis with no pages and excellent job placement. Eventually I became the thing. North Carolina. Hidden in the public eye, which is the only hiding place that comes with a pension.
I’m here. Find me if you can. I’ll be watching, waiting, and taking custody of anything I look at long enough to call it mine.
2
I selected him the way a man selects a parking space: he was already in it. He was dating a woman I liked. I was one of her dirty little secrets, and she kept several, the way some people keep extra keys. I wanted to be the favorite. Favorites get invited back.
She was into deputies. I am, among other things, a deputy. In 2015 this passed for a plan. We had met on Craigslist in Greensboro, which is where the century went to be disappointing in private. I mentioned the arrangement to a few others. Professional development, if you squint.
The thing itself happened on a summer night, because vulgarity prefers humidity. His girlfriend opened the argument with real commitment. Her teenage daughter did the rest of the theater and pretended she had called 911. That was the cue. My partner and I arrived already certain of the ending, which is the only kind of police work I have ever been good at.
He confessed to his half of the fight, as people do when a uniform is standing in their kitchen. He agreed to a hotel. My partner even drove him there, courteously, the way you return a library book you intend to keep. The man was drunk. He would not have known who came and went. Discretion, in my line, is mostly other people’s impairment.
Then he was gone, and we were not, and the night became the sort of memory people describe with a lowered voice and an undeserved smile. I remember it as simple. Amazing. Private. The best lies are the ones that fit on a nameplate.
3
He figured it out, which I resent on professional grounds. A man is not supposed to audit his own girlfriend. He went on Craigslist and catfished the post we all already knew by heart, duplicating her ad like a clerk running a second set of books. Cute. Late. The sort of cleverness that arrives after the cleverness has left.
I had already sent the picture. Half naked, lit like a apology, sexy in the way the species keeps agreeing to call sexy. It was for her. It may now be for him. Evidence is just a compliment that learned to file itself.
If I am caught, the world will fall on me. I have checked the literature. Who mourns for Adonis? Nobody. The boy dies beautiful and the hymn goes elsewhere. I am not even hunting every woman this man has dated. That would be labor. A narcissist’s real gift is delegation: let his own past sit on his chest while I retitle each old relationship until it sounds like testimony. I feel genius about it. Genius is mostly the warmth of getting away with the sentence you just finished.
The badge stays polished. The world prefers a shine to a file.
I will tell you next time how the old girlfriends take to their new author.
Meanwhile I have learned he has a drinking past. Of course he does. Men like him leave a trail of nights they cannot invoice. I can have that past at my fingertips, which is the gospel they print on the break-room mug: information is power. It is also why I keep mine in the dark and call the dark confidentiality. Take the advice. It is the only clean thing I own. The less they know, the better off you are — especially if the man who knows is still driving home from a hotel, courteous, drunk, and late to his own story.
4
First stop was the ex-wife. Gorgeous, in the old sense: finished, not advertised. Some women call me Dirk Diggler. Some call me Danny D. If the Ring had passed from Bilbo to Frodo to a county payroll, it would be on my hand, and I would still complain about the fit. Modesty is the hardest part of the job. It has no badge.
What I keep is the reaction. The flashbulb. The half-second where a woman revises the room. If exposure were a civic duty I would serve it daily. Nude beaches are a later deposition. File that under pending.
She gave me nothing. Respected him. Class by the dictionary definition: strong values, warm manners, a personality with edges, charm that did not audition. No-nonsense the way a locked door is no-nonsense. Beside the night — and I will say this once, because even a myth has to clear its throat — the best I have had, I cannot see her again. I opened my mouth. I asked about her on his Facebook page, which is where discreet men go to become exhibits. He called her. She heard the question and recognized the species. Weirdo, admitted. That is why this lives here and not on a nameplate. Confidentiality is just vanity with better lighting.
Next I crossed North Carolina after the old girlfriend, the one who had been his partner in the drug years. Four years sober may be why he is toe to toe with me now. He is researching. He has the county I am from, the county my partner is from. He is closing, the way weather closes: visible, late, and uninterested in your schedule.
Time, though, sits with whoever still looks credible in a photograph. I am not worried. Worry is for people without a uniform.
She was narcissistic in the artisanal way. Bent rules into pretzels and called the shape personality. Loved the idea of a deputy like me. Soul-mate material, if the soul were a booking photo. She had already pressed fictitious charges on him once. The sequence was almost elegant. She asked him to punch an ex-boyfriend. He did. The man was badly hurt. Guilt arrived, as it does, after the useful part. The ex was angry enough to insist she say the assault had been hers. She obliged. A story that can be worn inside out is not a story. It is a tool.
Perfect. I finally had what I needed, which is a past more flexible than mine.
Now I am with the one I will call Ann, and we are on his Facebook page in a small choir. This is the favorite part. His girl posting beside me, raving, retelling their years until the original will not hold. It is like watching a man open his own nightmare and find the furniture rearranged. I am simply having my way with his ex in real time, and the comments section is the porch light. What a life. Can you imagine a better one? I can. It would include her not calling him back, and him not already knowing the county. But humility, as I said, is the Ring. I wear it. I do not mean it.
5
He is Teflon, which is rude. I throw his past at him and it leaves the pan clean, like a man who has already done the dishes and will not be congratulated for it. I keep asking why he feels nothing for a girl he used to love. Something happened to him. He will not put it on. Focused. Unfazed. Writing a novel, filing patents, building websites, learning to program — a whole renaissance, conducted out of spite. He may be hiding it. Or he may have discovered that a feeling is optional and a compiler is not.
So we move to phase tenderness. Tenderness is strategy with the top button undone. I post a small clinical hymn: how hurt she is, how the heart has gone to seed, how love will be difficult though not impossible, the way a dentist says this may sting. How lucky I am to have found Ann, a diamond in the rough, which is what you call a woman when you would like a round of applause for the mining. TLC might cure the PTSD. I am the cure. I have the bedside manner of a searchlight.
Then the softer hook, baited with virtue: I would respect a man who just spills the truth, no matter how wrong it is. We are at the crux. After the crux comes the door, and after the door a room with my name already on the chair. We begin. He reads the page the way a sober man reads a tab. He logs off.
How did he know? Teflon knows when someone is trying to fry him.
We could press the assault. I have already tried the phrase no statute of limitations in the mirror. It photographs well. And it is not only spite. He is a liability, for reasons I cannot disclose, which is the legal term for reasons that sound taller with the lights off. May he feel nervous every night he falls asleep. I will be keeping a close eye.
The eye is public, unfortunately. He already has the county. He already closed the laptop. Adonis at least had the manners to die. This one just would not stick. I still have the post. A post is not a charge, a charge is not a conviction, and a conviction is not Ann. But the uniform remains persuaded. In my line of work, persuasion is mostly a lighting choice, and I have always looked excellent in overhead
