BENCHED Read Free Page A

under her uniform trousers, and she’s got those tight muscular arms girls get when they spend a lot of time in the gym, and nice shoulders. If she let her hair down and dressed like an actual lady, she’d look halfway decent.
    “What are you looking at?” she demands.
    I extend a hand. “Hi, neighbor. Can I borrow a cup of sugar? Maybe you want to invite me in for tea.”
    She scowls. “F-”
    “Mom?” a small voice says.
    A little girl walks up to Officer Tightwad and takes her hand. She must be what, six years old? It’s hard for me to tell. I’m not big on kids. She’s about two thirds her mom’s height with the same coloring and hair, and she looks at me with wide blue-green eyes and shock on her face. Her little mouth falls open.
    “Mom? Is he…”
    I blink a few times.
    “Are you Alexander Wright?”
    “Yes,” I grunt.
    “From the Philadelphia Corsairs?”
    “Yes,” I say, a little more unsure this time.
    “Oh my God!” she shouts, darting towards me.
    “Carrie-”
    The kid throws her arms around my legs. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,” she chants.
    “Get it off!”
    Officer Maguire pulls her daughter back by the arms. “Carrie!” she snaps. Then she looks up at me. “My child is not an it. ”
    “How are you even old enough to--”
    Her look actually shuts me up, as she rises to her feet. She is stronger than she looks, strong enough to pick up her kid in her arms.
    The little girl gazes at me with a mixture of awe, terror, and surprise. Her mom lowers her little feet to the ground.
    “Go back in the house, honey. It’s homework time.”
    “But, Mom,” she protests.
    “Stop calling me Butt Mom!”
    The girl giggles, then looks and reddens, as if embarrassed by her mom’s dirty joking in my presence. She doesn’t argue any further, but instead scampers off to run through the open front door and into her house.
    Officer Maguire turns to try to kill me with a harsh stare. “You have to pick this house.”
    “I didn’t know the bitch queen of Shitkickerville was my next door neighbor.”
    “Watch your language. My daughter could overhear you.”
    “What was that about?”
    She rolls her eyes. The gesture is actually a little cute. “She adores you. She’s a huge Corsairs fan. She even has your doll.”
    “My what?”
    “That little doll they make of you. It’s like this big,” she holds out her hands.
    “That’s an action figure.”
    “If a girl buys it,” she smirks, “it’s a doll. An Alexander Wright doll.”
    “It’s not a doll.”
    The corner of her lips twitches into a half sneer, half smirk. A little snaggletooth pokes out when she does, and something in me turns hot and wriggles in my chest. I’m suddenly looking at her in a different light. Take that stupid vest off her and she’d have a slender, athletic body that nicely fills out her uniform. My eyes keep falling to the way her handcuffs rest in a little leather pouch on her sleek hip.
    She folds her arms and cocks her head to the side.
    “Why are you eyeballing me like that?”
    “Why do you have to be so harsh all the time?”
    “Me? Oh, I’m harsh. I’m not the one who went flying past the school in the lime green death trap, jackass.”
    “If you’d just listened to me--”
    “About what? You realize my kid was there that day?”
    “What, do they have peewee cheerleaders, too?”
    She sneers at me even harder. “You’re a total jerk, you know that?”
    “That was a really cutting barb, officer smarts.”
    She rolls her eyes, so hard it makes her whole head move. “Yeah, you have a real rapier wit yourself.”
    “You’re on my lawn. You have a warrant or something?”
    “No, but I’d love to bust you for something else,” she says, stepping back onto her grass.
    “I bet you’d like me to bust something.” I grin at her.
    She snorts. “Oh, please. Waving your dick around doesn’t work any better than waving your wallet around.”
    “I wasn’t trying to bribe you. I just wanted to