Deafbo

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I have only been driving in Los Angeles for a few months when the roadside motorcycle police office holsters his LIDAR gun with undignified haste and kicks his bike into life or whatever they do.

“You’re fucked,” Jeff tells me.

“He might be after that sports car,” I say, pointing rather hopefully at the convertible that I am still speeding past in the next lane.

“Not likely,” Jeff scoffs, clearly unwilling to indulge my pathetic straw-clutching. “Seeing as she was driving within the speed limit and you were doing at least fifty.”

“It’s a dual carriageway,” I say in a whiny voice.

“Well, I guess we’ll see,” he says, folding his arms in an unnecessarily smug manner.

Jeff is the closest thing I have to a friend in this country. We met, predictably enough, in a bar when he was waiting for his friend and pool partner to arrive. I agreed to play a game which turned into two then three then a dozen when his friend failed to show up. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that he didn’t have any friends either and the whole thing had been a ruse. Which was fine.

I know very little about him and never bother asking questions because I suspect there is nothing more of interest to discover. He appears to have reached a similar, accurate conclusion about me. Once every couple of weeks or so we take turns to pick the other up to play pool and drink heavily. The only positive I can cling to as I wait for the siren to blare is that we are on our way to the bar rather than from.

When the cop zooms up needlessly close to my rear bumper, lights flashing and a mechanical-sounding “Pull over” coming from somewhere, I smile and wave him past, a spur of the moment plan that fails to have any effect.

“He wants you to pull over,” Jeff helpfully points out.

“Oh really?” I say in my sarcastic dullard voice before remembering that Jeff is immune to sarcasm, which is unfortunate as it is almost exclusively my only form of communication. Then I continue anyway because I can’t help myself. “We don’t have policemen in England.”

“Whaaat?” he says. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sherlock Holmes was English.”

“Sherlock Holmes was a private detective,” I say, turning into a side street and stopping.

“Pull into the alley,” the cop orders over his amplification system.

I click the gear stick back into Drive and do as he says. “Why does he want us in the alley?” I ask Jeff. “Is he going to shoot us?”

“Possibly,” Jeff says, seemingly seriously.

I watch in the rear-view mirror as the cop stays on his bike and makes some notes. There is a brief thrill of excitement at the novelty of being stopped by someone straight out of ChiPs which is replaced almost immediately by the dread prospect of informing Lydia of this encounter.

When we lived in London I thought of my speeding tickets as just another part of modern life; something unavoidable like petrol and tax and insurance and I paid them without worrying unduly about them. It was my country and my car and I wore the trousers.

Now the situation is reversed and Lydia is firmly in control of our marriage and my life. As I am essentially unemployed I am subservient to her in most ways, and would definitely be unable to hide a sudden increase in our insurance premiums.

This ongoing situation was compounded by a rash action on my part two days ago which Lydia has not yet fully recovered from. During a (nowdays) rare and generously selfless sexual act she had suddenly decided to treat me to because I had (probably accidentally) done something that made her feel pretty or special or the like, I had become distracted by something sparkling in the sunlight steaming through the living room blinds and mindlessly reached down and plucked a gray hair from the top of her bobbing head. Unsurprisingly, after a brief, fraught discussion, I was forced to finish myself off.

“Okay, switch the engine off and put your keys on the roof,” Jeff says.

I frown at him. “Why?”

“It just shows compliance. That you're not going to drive away or anything. Puts him in the best possible mood.”

“Fuck him,” I say in a tone that is meant to hint at dark menace and past criminal troubles and leave Jeff silently re-evaluating everything he thinks he knows about me.

Instead he merely blows air out of his mouth and shakes his head. “Whatever, man. How are you going to talk your way out of a ticket with that attitude?”

“I'm not going to talk my way out of it. Why should I give him the satisfaction of crawling and pleading like he's above me or something? Look, I'm not one of those idiots that hate 'pigs' on sight. I think most of them do a good job. Probably. But I'm not going to indulge his teenage fantasies by treating him like he's better than me because he's wearing a uniform and a badge. Anyone can be a fucking policeman. Fair enough, I was speeding and he's caught me so he's going to give me a ticket. That's the way it works. But I'm not going to sacrifice my dignity to inflate his ego. It's like how captured soldiers used to be back when people were brave. Name, rank, silence.”

“You're an idiot. I could talk my way out of this.”

“I'm not the kind of person who can talk my way out of things,” I say. “I'm not...appealing. People don't want to give me a break. So...fuck him.”

Jeff is looking past me so I turn to my open window where the policeman is leaning forward and waiting patiently. He clears his throat and then asks for my licence and registration and over the next two minutes I receive a speeding ticket without saying one word to the officer, maintaining at all times a purposeful, stoic stillness that largely involves awkwardly avoiding eye contact with him.

“Good evening, sir,” he says before walking back to his bike with no mention of the actual offence having passed between us, and I realise as I study the ticket that I am merely his perfect bust. A model sucker citizen who quietly accepts his fate without wasting the cop's time or making his life difficult in any way.

Jeff is incredulous. “Why didn't you at least do your English thing?”

“What English thing?” I ask numbly.

“That bumbling Hugh Grant charming shtick. People here love that shit.”

“Maybe I should practise,” I say.

“Or perhaps you could try driving within the speed limit,” Jeff suggests.

“You’re right,” I say, nodding my head. “I'm going to change. I’m going to be more responsible.”

“At any rate, after a few beers you won’t care about any of this until tomorrow.”

“Especially if we match those beers with shots,” I say brightly.

“Let’s roll,” Jeff says without irony, and we do.