None of this Ever Really Happened Read Free

unusual cop. A late child of middle-aged parents
who took him around the world and gave him everything
under the sun including a leafy suburban life, every album
ever made, and a gleaming white convertible with tan leather
interior when he was sixteen, Steve Lotts started saying at the
age of four that he wanted to be a Chicago policeman. "Sure,"
people said, "good!" But he was still saying it when he went to
college to study criminal justice, and still saying it after a year
spent as a guard at a nuclear-power plant, two and a half as
a paralegal, and four as an internal-affairs investigator when
he was finally admitted to the police academy. Even then
people were sure he would bail out and head for the suburbs,
but today he is an undercover gang-crimes cop who is on
the street every day and often night, and is one of the few
people I know who truly loves his work. He lives in an apartment
full of plants and cats, wears horn-rimmed glasses and
a Little Lord Fauntleroy haircut, and attracts wistful, waifish
women.
    "Ride your bike?" I pulled out a stool.
    "Yep." He pointed at it through the window locked to a
parking meter.
    "Armed?" I asked lifting up his backpack.
    "Of course," he said. He rarely goes anywhere without his
gun. I had been waiting all week to talk about Lisa Kim, and
I almost told Steve the story right then, but I knew I'd only
have to repeat it later, so I didn't. It was difficult.
    Pretty soon everyone was there, laughing, eating, telling
stories. Carolyn O'Connor was dating a gastroenterologist
from Terre Haute. He took her for a walk through the woods
on a farm he owns in Brown County, and in a clearing they
came upon a table set with white linen, candles, a lovely meal,
glasses of wine already poured. "I have no idea how he did it."
    Carolyn smiled; she may have the best smile in the world.
Carolyn's family and mine have summer homes in the
same Michigan beach resort, and I've always known her, although
I grew up playing with her older brothers and sisters.
Then when she moved to Chicago after law school and
rented an apartment with Steve Lotts on Fargo Street two
blocks from where Lydia and I were living, we started hanging
out with them and with Wendy Spitz, too, a lawyer pal of
Carolyn's from her law firm.
    It was Wendy who turned to me that evening and said,
"I read that piece of yours about you and Lydia in Mexico."
    "Me too," said Carolyn, "and I have a question for you."
    "Is it really that beautiful?" Wendy asked.
    "'Course it is," I said. "Why would you ask that?"
    "Well, you know, travel writers . . ."
    "It's like paradise," said Lydia, at the same time pointing
out that a lot of beautiful places are full of odd people.
    "Like Charlie Duke," said Carolyn. "That was my question.
Is he a real person?"
    "Oh, he's real," said Lydia.
    Wendy said, "What I want to know is is he gay? You never
make it clear."
    There ensued a rambling discussion of our friend Charlie,
his sexuality, his drinking habits, the drinking habits of homosexuals,
the definition of alcoholism, the trustworthiness
of alcoholics, whether it's possible to be friends with an alcoholic,
the nature of friendship, and the nature of love itself.
None of this was of any interest to me, but I hadn't yet seen
my opening into Lisa Kim. I crossed my arms and listened. I
felt like a sniper lying in wait.
    "But can you love someone you can't trust?" asked Wendy.
    "Of course you can," said Carolyn. "Think about children;
you love them but can't trust them. Even most teenagers.
Even a lot of old people."
    "In fact," I said, "some people can't love someone they do trust. They lose interest." I wondered as soon as I said it
whether my statement had a subtext, and if it did, I wondered
if Lydia had picked up on it.
    I didn't look at her, but I heard her say, "I don't think
that's real love."
    "Oh, who the hell knows what real love is," I said quickly,
flippantly.
    "Quick, change the subject," said Lydia. "Don't get him
started on love."
    "Okay, what