Needy Greedy Love (Part 7)

Suddenly, sirens interrupted Gunn's romantic thoughts. Miles of police tape circled his mansion like little, thin, yellow, plastic children playing "Ring around the Rosie." He leaped out of the new Geo Storm like a man-sized bullfrog who ate Wheaties and felt the turmoil of tumultuous emotions. He had a jillion emotions going through his mind, all of them extremely emotional and emotionally draining.

He ducked under some police tape near his porch and ran smack dab into an Irish cop named Shamus O'Malley.

"What's happened here?" Gunn asked by happenstance.

"Is this your house?" O'Malley asked residentially with an Irish brogue, kicking his little legs together and cackling like a leprechaun.

"Yes, this is my house," Gunn said domestically.

"It's also a crime scene, lad," O'Malley said criminally.

A crime scene! Gunn thought excitedly. Here? At my house? Today? It can't be! I have laundry to do! "Where's my Cat?"

"I didn't know you had one, so it must have run off," O'Malley said, running his Irish mouth in a runny and offhand manner.

Gunn smiled catatonically. "I don't have a cat, Officer O'Malley. Do I look like a cat man to you? Huh, huh, huh."

O'Malley joined him with ironic Irish laughter gilded with angst.

"My girlfriend's name is Cat."

"So you're the boyfriend?" O'Malley asked boyishly.

Gunn nodded. "I am the boyfriend. I bought her some roses." He pointed at the back of the new Geo Storm.

Officer O'Malley looked at the roses. "They look like some empty stems to me."

"It was windy," Gunn said breezily.

"It might have had something to do with you having the windows open," O'Malley said openly. "Son, we need to talk."

Gunn blinked fifty times in a minute, the international sign that he was totally clueless, confused, nervous, or had something in his eye. He was glad he wasn't a parrot (twenty-six blinks per minute), a newborn baby (two blinks per minute), or an ostrich (one blink per minute), and that calmed him somewhat, but he couldn't stop thinking thoughtful thoughts.

Is Officer O'Malley my long-lost father? He called me his son just now! Am I Irish? Is it why I like the color green so much? Is it why I root for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team even though those guys come in as blue chip NFL prospects and go out as undrafted free agents thanks to horrendous coaching by guys who look like Rodney Dangerfield? Is it why I like women who have green eyes? Is it why I think little people live under stairs, eat cereal filled with marshmallows, and have magical powers? Is it why I prefer weeping to laughing, wool to cotton, and redheads to brunettes? Is it why I want to be the middleweight boxing champion of the world someday?

"Are you my father, Officer O'Malley?" Gunn asked paternally.

"No, son," O'Malley said, suddenly full of darkness.

"Dad?"

Officer O'Malley took a little silver flask, which magically never emptied, from his pocket and inhaled a long swig of Irish whiskey. "'Son' is just a stereotypical Irish cop expression designed to keep you calm before I tell you some really, seriously awful, you're gonna be really, really angry bad news."

"Oh." Gunn had a sinking feeling. That's when he realized that he needed to replace a few sagging boards on his porch. Lousy contractors, Gunn thought. Always substituting inferior 6.0 Eastern white pine when they run out of Western red cedar.

"Your girlfriend Cat had some seriously nice stems," O'Malley said seriously and nicely.

"Thank you," Gunn said thankfully.

"Your roses were once lovely son, but she'll never see them," O'Malley said blindly.

"You don't mean ..."

Officer O'Malley nodded.

Gunn crumpled to the porch like a three-piece suit made of crepe paper and recycled toilet tissue. "She's blind? I just bought her that contact lens! Was it recalled without my knowledge? I thought most recalls were for toys and cribs covered with lead-based paint from mainland China, where pollution is rampant, freedom is just another word, and they have far too many people!"

"Yes, they are, son."

"Dad?"

"No." Officer O'Malley helped Gunn to his feet. "I can see you have some deep seated father issues. I'll just call you 'me lad' from now on."

"OK."

"Me lad, she's not blind," O'Malley said not as blindly.

"St. Patrick be praised!" Gunn shouted trickily.

"St. Patrick came to Ireland, me lad," O'Malley said outlandishly. "Thus, he wasn't Irish."

"Oh. Um, what was he?" Gunn asked in all one-syllable words.

"Probably Swedish or Scandinavian," O'Malley said unintelligibly. "He talked with an indecipherable accent and claimed he wrote Nobel Prize-deserving books."

"Oh," Gunn said shortly.

"So, she's not blind, me lad," O'Malley said visually. "It's worse."

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