Romance

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KLING MADE HIS CALL FROM AN OUTSIDE PHONE BECAUSE HE didn’t want to be turned down in a place as public as the squadroom. He didn’t want to risk possible derision from the men with whom he worked day and night, the men to whom he often entrusted his life. Nor did he want to make the call from anyplace at all in the station house. There were pay phones on every floor, but a police station was like a small town, and gossip traveled fast. He did not want anyone to overhear him fumbling for words in the event of a rejection. He felt that rejection was a very definite possibility.

So he stood in the pouring rain a block from the station house, at a blue plastic shell with a pay phone inside it, dialing the number he’d got from the police directory operator, and which he’d scribbled on a scrap of paper that was now getting soggy in the rain. He waited while the phone rang, once, twice, three times, four, five, and he thought, She isn’t home, six, sev…

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