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Hutch sat sideways at the bar, cheek
propped on a fist, watching Starsky gloat with Huggy over yet another new
watch. Their curly heads were almost touching, bent over the voluminous
instructions, reminding him of small boys with a new toy. It had been going on
for about twenty minutes now, and it didn’t look like it was going to be over
anytime soon.
“Starsk, we’re gonna be late.”
“No we’re not; just give me a sec.”
Starsky didn’t even bother to look up.
Hutch sighed heavily and turned,
caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the register and paused. For a
moment he hadn’t recognized his own face. He scrubbed at the tired lines. His
friends’ enthusiasm seemed a foreign emotion, an echo of ages past. A twinge of
regret flared briefly back at him in the glass, and then he shrugged and
grimaced. The price of police work.
Turning away from the disquieting
reflection, his elbow brushed against something on the bar, and he looked down
into a shoebox holding some rocks. Hutch rolled his eyes, but he picked through
them idly, listening to the oceanlike ebb and flow of his friends’
conversation. There was a soothing rhythm to it, almost like music, and he let
the familiar comfort of it wash through him as he looked at the strangely
shaped stones. One of them looked like an almost perfect sphere sheared in
half. It fit perfectly in the palm of his
hand, and it was blue, so blue it was almost black. He felt . . . something
. . .
“Hey, Hutch. Ya ready to go?”
Hutch started, glanced over his
shoulder. “Yeah, Starsk. Give me a second.” He looked back at his hand and saw
only an old rock, pitted and scored, its color indeterminate. He should’ve put
it back, but instead he turned toward Huggy.
“Hug, what’re these?”
Huggy moved down the bar toward him
like a hound that’d caught his scent. “Those, my brother, are genuine meteors,
pieces of mysterious outer space. You can have one for your very own for the
very reasonable fee of twenty dollars apiece.”
“Meteorites,” Hutch said distantly.
The stone was cool in his hand.
“Huh?”
“Meteors are what you call them when
they’re still in the air. Meteorites are what you call them after they land.”
Hutch finally looked up at Huggy. “If they really are meteorites.”
Huggy stepped back and threw his chest
out, slender hands rising in eloquent defense. “Would I steer you wrong? I’m
telling you these are the real thing. My cousin picked them up for me in
Arizona just last month.”
“Whatcha got there, Hutch?” Starsky
had joined them.
Hutch had a strange impulse to hide
the stone from his partner. Instead he held it out and shrugged. “Just a rock.”
He looked back at Huggy’s face. “Or, okay, maybe a meteorite. Maybe.”
“What would you want something like
that for? ’Sides, didn’t you call me a sucker when I acquired my pet rock?”
Starsky flashed him a shit-eating
grin, but he was still too busy admiring his watch to really pay much
attention. Hutch quickly handed over the cash, appeasing Huggy’s obvious
outrage before casually dropping the stone into his jacket pocket.
“I don’t know. It has an interesting
shape, and I think it might look good in that new planter I bought last week.”
Starsky gave him a quizzical look as
he turned to leave. “You pick the weirdest stuff to get interested in
sometimes.”
“Me? You’re the one who dragged me in
here so you could show off some old watch.” Hutch waved at a grinning Huggy as
they went out the door.
“Hey! It’s not old. It’s state of the
art, Swiss made and everything.”
“Yeah, and it’s gonna break just as
easily as your other one did.”
“Only if I let you get a hold of it,
partner.” Starsky shut his car door with too much force and jabbed his key at
the ignition. “Besides, it didn’t break. It was shot. You got it shot.”
Hutch reached for the radio to clock
them back in. “And I saved our lives in the process, didn’t I?”
Starsky grunted and peeled out from
the curb. Hutch turned his head to scan the storefronts on his side of the
street, content to let it rest if Starsky was. In a distant way he felt bad for
bringing up yet another close call just to divert his partner’s attention.
They never talked about it. Death had
been too close too often, and to speak of fears and realizations might have
made things worse, made them lose their edge. So they went through their days
doing their jobs and trading barbs, orbiting each other like twin stars,
putting out shared energy, and yet staying self-contained. It was better that
way, easier. It was the price of police work.
Hutch fingered the chill lump in his
pocket, only partially feeling the sidelong look Starsky gave him. It had
been so blue.