Write About Now

The Policeman's Tortured Psyche

Now that I'm writing crime fiction, I keep running across things like this:

"I'm not the cop-hater I'm reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to in your speech if we were debating is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would maintain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal...."

NORMAN MAILER
in a letter to William F. Buckley, Jr., quoted in The New Yorker, October 6, 2008, p. 59.

There's a Story All Right

We stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, a scary sort of place with an inch of grime on the surfaces and locals who watched our every move. Not the sort of place I'd choose for a pit stop, but needs must. Laurie went in while I pumped gas, and when she didn't return I went in after. The place was dark inside, a warren of interconnected rooms, the log cabin walls exposed. She was just paying our tab when I entered, and booked out to the car once I arrived. I couldn't leave, though. I had a stop to make.

Through a doorway and down an unlit corridor, I found myself in a greasy spoon diner. A single occupant sat at the counter, watching me through a tangled beard. The walls were covered in clippings from half a century ago. Then I went inside the bathroom. I almost jumped.

Here's what I found: