Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? by Stephen Dobyns Page A

mind?” Vikström had an eye on the sidewalk, looking for drug deals.
    â€œIt’s for you and the wife. You both gotta come.”
    Vikström glanced at Manny. “So? What is it?”
    â€œYou’ll be impressed, I promise you. You’ll love it.”
    â€œOkay, okay, so what is it?”
    â€œA karaoke box.”
    â€œSay what?”
    So Manny explained what it was: the lights, the music, the singing, the fog, the bubbles, the little refrigerator, and so on. Halfway through his description, Vikström drove the Impala over the curb, blowing out a front tire. A parking meter knocked off the driver’s-side mirror.
    Manny thought Vikström was suffering a sudden attack, which in a way was true, because Vikström was laughing deep, uncontrollable belly laughs, laughing so hard he had to wipe away his tears with his handkerchief as he hit the wheel with a fist. “Oh, that’s good!” he kept saying. “Bubbles? That’s really good!”
    Manny rubbed his chin and looked out the window. “You don’t like music?”
    â€œNo, no, I love music. You really get up on a little stage in your spare bedroom?” Again he laughed.
    Manny wished he could put a bullet through Vikström’s skull, and the fingers of his right hand toyed with the butt of his Glock. Instead he remained silent as they waited for the police tow truck to arrive and fix the front wheel. Vikström was silent as well, though every few minutes he’d chuckle. Then he’d say, “Sorry, sorry, I can’t help it,” then he’d chuckle some more.
    The next day Manny asked the supervisor of the Detective Bureau, Detective Sergeant Masters, if he could be transferred. She said it was impossible, unless he wanted the Mountain Bike Patrol. Manny didn’t think so.
    â€œWhatever your problems with Vikström,” Masters said, “get used to them.”
    But the laughter was like broken glass in his gut. No way could he get used to it. Anyway, he stopped complaining. “I’ve internalized the problem,” he told Yvonne.
    When disappointment becomes central to your life, it’s like a religion. It takes up all your spiritual space. Are you Baptist? Are you Methodist? No, I’m Disappointed. That’s how it happened with Manny.
    So the disappointment provoked by Vikström left its mark, just as other disappointments had left their mark. It was a disappointment he’d lost his hair. It was a disappointment he was forty-five instead of twenty, a disappointment he was overweight, a disappointment he hadn’t made detective sergeant, a disappointment that his kids had moved to California—the two sons to L.A., a daughter to Bakersfield—a disappointment that his cat, Flutie, had run away. It made a long list; and if Manny was sitting in the car—on a stakeout, for instance—he’d tot them up once again and find more. And looking in the mirror, he saw that each disappointment had carved a new wrinkle on his face until the wrinkles formed a portrait of his disappointment, which in itself was disappointing. So this was how it was with Manny: the sun-drenched, rolling hills of karaoke on one side, an alp of disappointments on the other.
    â€œHe walks like he’s got a tombstone on his back,” Vikström told another detective.
    Late in the afternoon, Manny talks to twenty people in stores and offices near the alley that opens onto Bank Street, and as he makes his way from one to the next, he has a quiet talk with himself in the area of lexical semantics. Is it disappointment that obsesses him or is it grievance? Both identify loss, but grievance also suggests resentment, holding someone accountable. So perhaps his disappointments are in fact grievances. On the other hand, he might have disappointments and grievances at the same time. He’s disappointed with Vikström, but he also has grievances against him.