LOOK BOTH WAYS
26
He waited in a room, a small room, centred by a table and three chairs. The door was ajar. He was alone. They had brought him there to question him. He had come willingly. He had nothing to hide. He carried no shame and no guilt, yet he wore handcuffs of silver on both wrists. As a formality, the desk policeman had told him, and not to worry, but they were tight.
The door opened and the woman policeman entered carrying two cups. She placed one before him, not smiling, but he did, inside and out. She stared at him with a puzzled expression on her face. They were not the eyes of a woman policeman. Then, still smiling warmly up at her, he slowly brought his wrists around and up to lay on the table, his left hand holding the loosened silver manacles.
‘Make’s drinking easier,’ he grinned and picked up one of the cups and sipped. It was not how he last remembered taking his coffee. He handed her the cuffs. Her gaze told him the woman policeman was back.
‘What?’ She exclaimed, eyes wide with amazement and suspicion both. ‘How’d you do that, smart-ass?’
‘Thirsty,’ he grinned and proceeded to drink his coffee, watching her turn quickly and depart the room scowling. He looked both ways and then around the small room, thinking about the woman policeman and the brief visit of her female.
How can you have a son, he thought to her, when no male has touched you, ever?
‘No more tricks now!’ The male policeman said gruffly, when he opened the door and came in, pointing his stubby finger directly forward and down.
He nodded and smiled politely, watching the policeman turn and then leave, but not close the door entirely behind him, as he went. The woman policeman came back in, then sat down opposite him. She was not smiling. He wondered if she ever did. He guessed her age at twenty-five or so, no older.
Her hair was blonde, and short. Her tall frame was athletic, and her weight was proportioned well from her toes to the crown of her head. She was pretty, in her unique and natural way. He wondered if she knew that, as he watched her sip her coffee.
‘Checking up on you now, Funny man,’ she said coldly between sips, looking strangely at him from time to time. ‘See what we find. Nothin’ there, you can go.’
He nodded politely and smiled, glancing at the dark purple ink stains on the pads of his fingers and thumbs where she had fingerprinted him.
‘You a magician?’ The woman policeman asked then.
‘Nope,’ he smiled softly at her.
‘How’d you do that then?’ She asked again, puzzled and scowling in face and features.
‘Must have been loose,’ he grinned, then sipped his coffee, concluding he definitely did not take his coffee that way. She had blue eyes that did not smile.
‘Sure, and pigs fly, too. Why don’t you know your name?’ She asked him.
Before Abraham was, I am, the thought came to him, but he did not recognise that name. She spoke again.
‘No name, no ID, no money and no baggage,’ she stated flatly and pulled a dry face. ‘You’re a mess,’ then she shook her head. ‘And you’re not funny.’
He held her gaze for as long as she could, then she looked away. Her female had come and gone. It had been that quick, but, he had seen, and she knew he had.
Before I formed you in the womb, he thought suddenly. I knew you. And before you were born I consecrated you.
‘Where were you last?’ She asked, draining her coffee cup and licking her full lips. Her female was back, with no tone and no attitude.
Before the heavens, I was there, he thought, but he couldn’t remember quite where there was. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Have you ever been in trouble with the law?’
I am in you already, he thought, and you are in me.
‘Nope,’ he smiled.
‘How do you know if you can’t remember?’ the woman policeman asked then.
‘I don’t,’ he grinned boyishly and watched her shake her head and scowl, but he did not miss the brief maternal look pass through her latent female’s eyes.
The door opened and the policeman entered. He sat down beside the woman policeman. She moved her chair away from him a little. He was a beefy man and she was solid. The table was only small.
‘Well,’ he began. ‘You don’t exist, it seems, in our files, at any rate. No matching prints, no photo matches.’
He smiled and shrugged, as he watched the woman policeman’s eyebrows arch upward and then down again.
‘Must be something on him?’
‘Nope,’ her bored partner answered. ‘Nothing.’
The blue eyes of the woman policeman then looked hard at him, puzzling. Then she turned in her chair toward her boss.
‘What’ll we do with him then?’ She asked, her tone curious, but with also laced with a hint of concern, he noticed.
He smiled. Her female was trying, at least. That was something.
The policeman took a deep breath, held it, shrugged, and then exhaled with a shaking of his head.
‘Nothing,’ he said, then stood up. ‘Let him go.’
‘What?’ she questioned, and he smiled.
‘Let him go.’
‘But he’s got no money, no ID, no nothin’!’ She exclaimed, the concern now obvious in her tone, which pleased him. The woman policeman had gone.
‘That’s his problem,’ the policeman said. Then he turned and left the room, leaving the woman policeman to shake her head slowly from side to side, as she turned back to face him.
‘Sorry,’ she said, her face showing a hint of embarrassment and concern. ‘Wish I could help you with a new beginning, but I don’t know where start. Guess all I can do is say the words and wish you good luck, and may God help you. With your smart mouth you’ll most likely need him.’
‘Yep,’ he smiled warmly at the blue eyes of her female that owned the caring heart.
I did not know I was a God, until you told me, he mused. In the beginning was the word, he thought then, and the word became flesh and dwelt among you, full of grace and truth, and so I am here, ever.
She stood up and he watched her stand, tall and proud. His gaze never left hers. She saw him watching and he knew she knew he was watching. He smiled and rose as well. The woman policeman led him out of the building past all of the other officers in the foyer and on the steps. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Well, good luck,’ she said. Then she reached for his hand to shake and placed something in it. He smiled when he opened his palm. It was paper money. ‘To eat and sleep with, she said, her blue-eyed female smiling now, but not with her face or lips.
‘Thanks,’ he said, then put the money in his right pocket. He watched her turn then and walk back up the stairs and inside the police station; his gaze riveted on her muscular butt and upper thighs. Then his eyes glanced upward and he grinned. No rain today, he thought.
No one is good, but save my Father, he remembered, as he walked casually away from the police station thinking about her butt. I am not good and did never say that. I am a male and was never what you made me when I was not.
He smiled, as he walked, but not far. The woman policeman was perfect, he thought, absolutely perfect.