I started to lower my arms. “ Don’t make any moves,” I was told, and I unstarted arm lowerings. Guns stiffened as if they’d been caught cooping. Tricia was talking with a cop behind the kneeling cannon; she looked like an accomplice, saying the sorts of true things which always seem to elicit responses like, “ Sure, a likely story.” A cop studied my face closely, then looked at a picture. He looked at the picture and then at my face. Several times, and closely (they’re apparently into this territorial infringement business on all levels); out of fear of bullet-catching routines, 1 did not make a syncopated series of funny faces to accompany his stop-action detection work. The identification expert, an apparently misplaced modifier who needed my eyeglasses even more than I, called over an associate logicburglar and asked, “ This doesn’t look like him, does it?” Umpire No. 2 gave a nope. The camera crew split; no news in betrayed innocence. “ Okay, you can relax now,” I was told. Sure. I quit the Simon Says and hiked up my pants while they showed me a picture of whom I wasn’t — it didn’t look anything like me and I couldn’t believe that they’d been serious; I mean, they were cops, and should’ve been more than just serious; they should’ve been equipped with seeing-eye dogs or at least novelty X-ray Specs. The asshole being sought didn’t look anything like me past beard and moustache (granted, two size-up characteristics for terminal nits); every facial feature was completely different. But, 1 was told, the tip-off had been apparently almost legit and provoked by two non-facial characteristics — the theater manager had called the police because of an Oregonian item which described the culprit as an eyeglasses-wearer and as having a taller girlfriend. Tricia was permitted to leave the trench and return to my side. Sure enough, 1 hadn’t noticed earlier, she had boots on which pipsqueaked my usual height advantage. And I remembered having worn my goddamn eyeglasses into the theater. Glasses which I hardly wear for any phenomena other than movies or spectacular disasters; glasses which even on film dates don’t perch on my impeccably unblemished bridge until darkness falls. But this night I had put them on at home, a block*and a half away, out of some never-before-experienced rationale of letting them go for a ride. Irish asked us to step inside the lobby. The artillery was vanishing, the crowds, with neither amending excitements to Rocky I I not streetzines, began to trundle their liver- pilled passions home. Everything had taken place in a spry span of five minutes. An interlude of stop-watched seconds, pulled triggers, and traumazones. We re-entered the lobby, land of blooming ashtrays, and I wanted to have a cigarette but I didn’t because 1 could otherwise someday claim that 1 should’ve. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve done. Tricia and I sat down on what felt like an orangey vinyl slug with whoopee-cushion implants. The clean-up cop, big Irish, why he said that they were sorry, they’d made a mistake, but someone had tried to kill a cop and that they’d gotten this phone call and et cetera and did 1 feel all right? I said I didn’t know, to ask me again in an hour after I’ve had a drink. He/They/ Theater Event said Yeah, have a drink, Irish, to have a drink and feel better. I mumbled that I was glad they were trying to catch dangerous people, that we lived a block and a half away, that I’ve lived in this neighborhood for over seven years and never farther than six blocks from the Esquire, that I’ve been a conspicuous neighborly person and Esquire patron, that I’m a respected artist and business person in our community, and that I’ve never thought of killing a cop, or anyone, for that matter (Irish waved “ okay” and split) . . . until now. Ah, what a sense of unheard humor. The theater manager, avoiding hazardous waters, quickly slipped some slips into my palm before hasty retreat. Like a no-no allowance from Grandma. (I didn’t know who I was, exactly, eyeballs scoured, brain getting spackled, tongue tying split-knots, and sitting there in postpartum shots-shop, and the thoughts skidding, spitting gravel, Tricia saying, ‘‘I told them we only live a block and a half away, ” and I thought like I ’m so fucking decent or decently indecent and I wanted a cigarette but even in fog-zone I remained stupidly rule-abiding — me in my unfashionably loose drapery clothing and uneyeglassed orbits and junk film feverishly defensive mindmelt innocence, I mean honest to groin fidelity and punk but true and rude but kind or kindling — and I just wanted to get out that industrialstrength eraser and correct the entire overly lipsticked smooch o f governmental crap and good-citizenship croppers and every existent thing that only breathes because i t ’s supposed to and who think that because they ’re supposed to breathe that i t ’s a big obligation to smother babies and thoughts and people who don’t play adjunct to buck-fucked meconium ooze. My mind was awhirl. I f facts were still things known with certainty, I was factless. I was washcloth, dish- rag, unread supplement. I didn’t know who I was, but I thought I was maybe a dirty word candidate or a gravel-hopeful speck o f dirt or an unfulfilled migraine) I looked at the slips, which had been, like the unarresting arrest which had just occurred, completely nonsolicited but force-fed by snakehandlers and moreover force-fed by souls who want no feedback past “ praise be,” and it was not unlike looking at Biblical tracts that one is always given outside of Newberry’s downtown. It was two passes, this slippery apology, to the Esquire theater, good anytime. I wanted to get up and corner the manager and unceremoniously shove these passes up his clerically nonsilenced outward bound program. But I didn’t. (These healthy, crime-stopping, good-sense-prevails people are diseased by virtues unsung; they’re the right crowd, the “well, I did the right thing” crowd, the people who can chalk o f f harm to others by finding Casual, intimate, and family dining in the comfort of our bucket seats. Enjoy fine steaks, seafood, omelettes and sandwiches. Home-style cookin’ and lots of it at pre-gas-shortage prices. The Rolls Royce of Restaurants This has got to be the classiest potata ever. The HOTPOTATA Cafe 422 SW 13th Portland, Oregon 223-7573 SWEET REVENGE A RESTAURANT 1004 S.W. Third Avenue between Main & Salmon 2 2 3 - 5 2 5 8 34
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