“That’s social work,” Raymer countered. He knew Jerome was trying to pay him a compliment, but for some reason he wasn’t in the mood to accept any. “The police solve crimes. Prevent crimes. Apprehend criminals.”
“Police work is giving a shit.”
“So what’re you saying?” Raymer asked. “Because I don’t want a lonely old man to die of heat stroke, that makes me a good cop?”
“Don’t resign, is what I’m saying. If you do, you’ll be sorry, is what I’m saying.”
From down the bar, now, a chuckle.
“Gert,” Raymer called. “What do I owe you?”
“It’s on the house.”
“Nope.”
“Two bucks, then. Call it happy hour.”
He took two dollars out of his wallet. “I’m putting it here on the register.”
There came a genial snort. “A cop paying for a beer? The end-times approach.”
Raymer ignored him. Heading back around the bar, he noticed one of the business cards he’d had printed up special for the last election, wedged into the corner of the mirror along the backbar. Yellowing, curled at the edges and covered with fingerprints, it had to have been there a good year. He tossed it onto the bar in front of Jerome. “Read this and tell me I’m not a joke cop.”
“Douglas Raymer, Chief of Police,” Jerome read. “We’re not happy until you’re happy.”
Gert rose from his stool and headed for the restroom, his shoulders shaking.
“Read it again,” Raymer suggested, sliding back onto his stool.
“We’re not happy until…” Jerome’s voice trailed off. “Huh,” he said squinting at the card. “We’re not happy—”
“Until you’re not happy,” Raymer finished.
The card had been the mayor’s idea, something to hand out to voters in the run-up to the election. Raymer’s first impulse had been to keep it simple, Douglas Raymer, Chief of Police in raised lettering, but Gus had objected, reminding him that this was a political campaign; it wasn’t enough to just announce his existence. “Tell people who you are and what you stand for,” he advised. “Your vision-for-the-police-department sort of deal.” Raymer supposed he understood what Gus was getting at, but really? Tell people who he was? (Everyone knew him.) What he stood for? (He stood for something?) His vision for the department? (What did that even mean?) And cram all this on a business card?
“Something catchy,” Gus explained, sensing his misgivings.
So. A motto, then. He’d come up with several, running each one by Charice, who wrote poetry when the switchboard was slow and had what her brother called sound literary judgment. Here to serve was his first effort, which Charice liked well enough, though under cross-examination she admitted it sounded a little, well, servile. Serve and protect also sounded good, but they both worried the phrase was already copyrighted by some larger, more important police force. On the front lines, they agreed, represented the worst of both worlds, sounding both fearful and belligerent. “Try for something more friendly,” Charice suggested.
In the end it came down to a toss-up: We’re not happy until you’re happy and If you’re not happy we’re not happy. Charice liked both and saved him some embarrassment by reminding him that “your” wasn’t the same as “you’re” and adding the necessary apostrophes. “They both say the same thing,” Charice said when he pressed for her favorite. “Just pick one.” So he’d scribbled his choice down and dropped it off at the printer.
He’d passed out about fifty cards before somebody pointed out that the motto printed beneath his name didn’t look right: We’re not happy until you’re not happy, it said. Raymer stared at it, at first unable to see anything wrong. But wait. There was an extra “not.” How had that happened? He called the printer immediately, hoping there’d be cause for righteous indignation but already fearing that it was he, not they, who’d screwed up. “I got what you gave us right here,” the girl told him over the phone. “It says We’re not happy until you’re not happy.” Somehow, he’d managed to merge the two slogans. But hadn’t it looked wrong? Raymer asked. Couldn’t they see it was the exact opposite of what he’d meant to say? This of course was the same argument he’d given Miss Beryl back in eighth grade, and she’d always reminded him that it wasn’t her job to decipher what he meant. It was his job to say what he meant. The girl at the printer’s expressed much the same opinion. No doubt she understood the rhetorical triangle as well.
Raymer had managed to repossess most of the cards, but the damage was done. The ones still in circulation either became collectors’ items or were put on public view, like kited checks, in businesses like the White Horse Tavern and Hattie’s Lunch. There was even a rumor the gaffe had been reprinted in The New Yorker, though Raymer doubted that. As far as he knew that magazine wasn’t even sold in Bath, so how would anybody have seen it? Regardless, the local humiliation had been full and sufficient. For weeks people stopped him on the street to inquire if he was happy. Charice encouraged him to just laugh along with the joke. “Say, ‘Not until you’re not,’ ” she advised, but asking him to pull off a double negative under rhetorical duress was like expecting him to perform a triple lutz under Olympic klieg lights. Better to surreptitiously confiscate the cards whenever he ran across them.
The problem was that the damn things kept turning up, reposted as soon as Raymer stole them. How many of the damn things had he handed out? Fifty or sixty at the outside, but he’d recovered at least that many, probably more. Had somebody ordered a second printing? That was just the sort of thing his old nemesis Donald Sullivan would do. Unfortunately, he lacked proof, and without it Raymer couldn’t bring himself to accuse the man, just as he’d never publicly accused him of stealing not one but three expensive wheel boots. No wonder, earlier in the day, when Charice told him he’d be pleased to learn who the mill’s wall had fallen on, he’d thought of Sully right off.
When Raymer finished relating the whole sorry saga, Jerome’s rigid expression was that of a man desperately trying to move a constipated bowel. “It’s okay,” Raymer said. “Go ahead.”
Permission granted, Jerome exploded into laughter so violent that he had all he could do to remain atop his barstool. For Raymer, it was alarming to see a man as tightly wound as Jerome, one so committed to self-control, lose himself so utterly. “We’re not happy until you’re not happy,” he croaked, tears streaming now. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”
“Great,” Raymer said. “Enjoy yourself.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, “You do have to admit that’s funny.”
“Laugh, I thought I’d die,” Raymer said, straight-faced. “I’m surprised Charice didn’t tell you all about it back when it happened.”
The mention of his sister seemed to be just what Jerome needed to regain his composure. “The thing you don’t realize about Charice is that the woman is completely devoted to you, man.”
The door to the men’s room opened, and Gert emerged, eyes down. Climbing back onto his stool, though, he made the mistake of looking up, and the mere sight of Raymer was enough to send him scurrying back to the men’s room.
“Jerome,” Raymer said, “not a day goes by that your sister doesn’t threaten to sue me. She’s keeping a list of all the actionable things I do and say. If I resigned, she’d do the happy dance on the station steps.”