Are You Happy Now? by Richard Babcock

come off. “So you say you didn’t knock down the old lady?” the detective says.
    “Everybody was pushing and shoving,” Lincoln evades. “It was chaos.”
    “And then you just left the scene?”
    Lincoln’s heart jumps in red alert. (Is it a crime to be a hit-and-run pedestrian?) “I didn’t think there was a problem,” he responds, then pulls out another tactic he’d planned, turning interrogator himself. “Who is this person who filed the complaint?”
    “Can’t tell you, at least not until I’ve looked into it a little more,” the officer says evenly. “We don’t want people settling things on their own.”
    “Was the complainant even there?”
    Detective Evinrude picks up his glasses and consults the sheet. “One of my colleagues took the report,” he explains, “but he’s been promoted.” After reading for a few seconds, he says, “It appears not.”
    “How did my name even come up?”
    “You dropped your New York Times . Had your name and your company on it.” Said with just a hint of satisfaction, as if the detective has trapped Lincoln with this simple explanation.
    Lincoln zips shut his briefcase. Time to flee. Probably past time. But Detective Evinrude has another question. “Pistakee Press. What do they do?”
    “A book publisher. I edit books.”
    “What sort of books?”
    “All sorts.” (Does the cop suspect that I’m a pornographer? Lincoln wonders.) Lincoln does a rapid inventory of his projects, searching for a possible sympathetic connection. “Right now, I’m editing a book on the history of Wrigley Field.”
    “I grew up on the South Side. A White Sox fan.”
    The black South Side. The white North Side. Why does race have to come into everything in Chicago? “I’m mostly a Bulls fan myself,” says Lincoln, dodging.
    And then Detective Evinrude warms by a degree or two. “Maybe you should do a book on Comiskey Park, you know, the old White Sox stadium.”
    “Maybe I should!”
    “I could tell you some stories.”
    “I’ll remember that!” Lincoln takes advantage of the slight détente to get up to leave, but he dreads the thought of walking out into the warm summer morning burdened with uncertainty. So he asks, “On this L train matter—what happens now?”
    The temperature drops again. “I’ll look into it. We’ll be in touch.”
    For all his planning and preparation, Lincoln can’t help himself. He blurts, “I mean, it just seems like a waste of time. The whole thing was an accident, nothing more.”
    The officer waits, letting Lincoln suffer in the silent memory of his outburst. “Sometimes these complaints are just for the record,” Evinrude says finally. “They’re preliminary to the filing of a civil case.”
    “A civil case?”
    “Do you have homeowner’s insurance?”
    “For a condo.”
    “Same thing. Sometimes your homeowner’s insurance will cover it.” The detective considers Lincoln, who is hugging his briefcase as if it were the stuffed polar bear he carried around when he was six. “Can you find your way out?” Evinrude asks.
    Lincoln assures him that he can.
    The detective hands Lincoln his card. “Let me know if you plan to leave town,” he instructs.

9

    L INCOLN LEAVES THE police station and walks south, too befuddled to go right to work. Why does everything have to be so ambiguous? He’s accused of a crime or he’s not. He’s in good standing at his job or he’s not. He’s married or he’s not. Where are the hard edges? How do you turn a corner when everything around you is curved?
    The pedestrians he passes on this stretch of Halsted, the gay neighborhood known as Boystown, move with strong, purposeful strides. Lincoln feels as if his noodly legs can barely hold him up. He’s a thoughtful drinker and hasn’t touched booze before noon since college, but this day he needs a bracer, so when he comes to Leonard’s Lounge, a small, nondescript dive, he enters and sits at the bar. He’s alone with a bartender in a