BooksBarbecue
Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

After two miles, the muscles in my back start to relax and it no longer hurts each time I inhale. As I head back, a shadow darts out from behind a tree and into my path.

“Ahhh!” I scream.

Under the streetlight I can see him smiling.

Once I get my heart rate back under 200, I say, “Have you been waiting there all this time just to jump out and scare me?”

Meow.

I make a scary face and claw the air at him.

He claws back.

Best friends.

“Come on, let's go.”

I start running and he falls in next to me, gliding along silently.

As we take the steps up to my third-story condo, I'm startled to see two people walking away from my door. Detective Ray is wearing a brown jacket and her hair is down. It is longer than I would have thought, cascading down well past her shoulders. She reminds me of Rene Russo from the Thomas Crown Affair. (It is my dad's favorite movie and one of just twelve I've seen. I’d watched the original and the remake over the course of a month. I prefer the original but I also prefer to see Rene Russo naked.) The gentleman with Ray is twice her age and three times her size. His head is shaved bald and he has a perfectly trimmed goatee circumventing nearly invisible lips. He is more muscle than fat, but barely, and he wears his Men's Warehouse attire smartly.

“He always go running with you?” asks Ray, bending down on her haunches to pet the approaching Lassie.

“Sometimes.”

She nods her head upward and says, “This is my partner, Cal.”

I nod my acknowledgement and step past them.

“We have some questions for you,” barks Cal, the words aimed at my back.

“Then I shall answer them,” I say, bending down to untie the key from my shoelaces. “I could do something later this week.”

“How about right now?”

I look down at my cell phone. It is 3:48.

“Why are you always checking the time?”

I glance up at Ray with raised eyebrows.

“Last night, I must have seen you check the time on your phone eight, nine times.”

Was she counting? I squint at her, but say nothing.

“What's one minute to the next at three in the morning?”

Those minutes are my life, I nearly scream. Those minutes that you take so much for granted because you get a thousand of them each day are priceless to me. Your life is measured by title, wealth, and status. My life is measured in grains of sand, trickling from one teardrop to the other.

My nostrils flare when I'm angry and I wonder if Ray feels a small gust of wind. Taking a calming breath, I ponder telling her that I'm Henry Bins and I have Henry Bins. I don't.