From a Buick 8(79)

'Look out, you two galoots!' I yelled, but it was too late. They ran smack into me before I could put my cup down and there went the coffee, all down my front. Getting it on the blouse didn't bother me, it was just an old thing, but the skirt was brand-new. And nice. I'd spent half an hour the night before, fixing the hem.

I gave a yell and they finally stopped pushing and thumping. Justin still had one leg around Herb's hip and his hands around his neck. Herb was looking at me with his mouth hung wide open. He was a nice enough fellow (about Islington I couldn't say one way or the other; he was transferred over to Troop K in Media before I really got to know him), but with his mouth hung open that way, Herb Avery looked as dumb as a bag of hammers.

'Shirley, oh jeez,' he said. You know, he sounded like Arky, now that I think back, same accent, just not quite as thick. 'I never sar' you dere.'

'I'm not surprised,' I said, 'with that other one trying to ride you like you were a horse in the goddam Kentucky Derby.'

'Are you burned?' Justin asked.

'You bet I'm burned,' I said. 'This skirt was thirty-five dollars at J.C. Penney and it's the first time I wore it to work and it's ruined. You want to believe I'm burned.'

'Jeepers, calm down, we're sorry,' Justin said. He even had the gall to sound offended. And that's also men as I've come to know them, pardon the philosophy. If they say they're sorry, you're supposed to go all mellow, because that takes care of everything. Doesn't matter if they broke a window, blew up the powerboat, or lost the kids' college fund playing blackjack in Atlantic City. It's like Hey, I said I was sorry, do you have to make a federal case of it?

'Shirley ? ' Herb started.

'Not now, honeychile, not now,' I said. 'Just get out of here. Right out of my sight.'

Trooper Islington, meanwhile, had grabbed a handful of napkins off the counter and started mopping the front of my skirt.

'Stop that!' I said, grabbing his wrist. 'What do you think this is, Free Feel Friday?'

'I just thought . . . if it hasn't set in yet . . .'

I asked him if his mother had any kids that lived and he started in with Well Jesus, if that's the way you feel, all huffy and offended.

'Do yourself a favor,' I said, 'and go right now. Before you end up wearing this goddam coffee pot for a necklace.'

Out they went, more slinking than walking, and for quite awhile afterward they steered wide around me, Herb shamefaced and Justin Islington still wearing that puzzled, offended look ? I said I was sorry, what do you want, egg in your beer?

Then, a week later ? on the day the shit hit the fan, in other words ? they showed up in dispatch at two in the afternoon, Justin first, with the bouquet, and Herb behind him. Almost hiding behind him, it looked like, in case I should decide to start hucking paperweights at them.

Thing is, I'm not much good at holding a grudge. Anyone who knows me will tell you that. I do all right with them for a day or two, and then they just kind of melt through my fingers.  And the pair of them looked cute, like little boys who want to apologize to Teacher for cutting up dickens in the back of the room during social studies. That's another thing about men that gets you, how in almost the blink of a damned eye they can go from being loudmouth galoots who cut each other in the bars over the least little thing ? baseball scores, for the love of God ? to sweeties right out of a Norman Rockwell picture. And the next thing you know, they're in your pants or trying to get there.

Justin held out the bouquet. It was just stuff they'd picked in the field behind the barracks. Daisies, black-eyed susans, things of that nature. Even a few dandelions, as I recall. But that was part of what made it so cute and disarming. If it had been hothouse roses they'd bought downtown instead of that kid's bouquet, I might have been able to stay mad a little longer.  That was a good skirt, and I hate hemming the damned things, anyway.

Justin Islington out in front because he had those blue-eyed football-player good looks, complete with the one curl of dark hair tumbled over his forehead. Supposed to make me melt, and sort of did. Holding the flowers out. Shucks, oh gorsh, Teacher. There was even a little white envelope stuck in with the flowers.

'Shirley,' Justin said ? solemn enough, but with that cute little twinkle in his eyes  ? 'We want to make up with you.'

'That's right,' Herb said. 'I hate having you mad at us.'

'I do, too,' Justin said. I wasn't so sure that one meant it, but I thought Herb really did, and that was good enough for me.

'Okay,' I said, and took the flowers. 'But if you do it again ? '

'We won't!' Herb said. 'No way! Never!' Which is what they all say, of course. And don't accuse me of being a hardass, either. I'm just being realistic.

'If you do, I'll thump you crosseyed.'  I cocked an eyebrow at Islington. 'Here's something your mother probably never told you, you being a pointer instead of a setter: sorry won't take a coffee stain out of a linen skirt.'

'Be sure to look in the envelope,' Justin said, still trying to slay me with those bright blue eyes of his.

I put the vase down on my desk and plucked the envelope out of the daisies. 'This isn't going to puff sneezing powder in my face or anything like that, is it?' I asked Herb. I was joking, but he shook his head earnestly. Looking at him that way, you had to wonder how he could ever stop anyone and give them a ticket for speeding or reckless driving without getting a ration of grief. But Troopers are different on the highway, of course. They have to be.