Swan Dive

A breeze on a Thursday in June rustled the papers on my desk, but I was holding the only two pieces of afternoon mail that mattered. The first arrived in an envelope with the distinctive royal blue logo of the Boston Police, a reminder of my appointment at the department’s pistol range the following Monday morning. In Massachusetts , you have to reapply every five years to retain a permit to carry a firearm, and in Boston that means requalifying on the targets. It’s a good rule, and I called a friend of mine who’s a police chief in the small suburban town of Bonham to see if he could meet me at his facility to practice. He and his wife were going away for the weekend, but he left word with the officer on duty to let me in on Saturday.
    Next I read the annual form letter from the licensing section of the Department of Public Safety. It advised me that pursuant to General Laws, Chapter 147, Section 22, et seq., my present ticket as a private detective expired in forty-five days. Between now and then, I had to submit the enclosed application for renewal and accompanying paperwork.
    I glanced over the renewal, my head telling me it was easier to fill it out now, my heart saying I was a little tired of playing with forms today. The liquid crystal on the cheap digital clock showed only 3:10, and my head won out.
    Next to ”Legal Name in Full,” I block-printed ”John Francis Cuddy.” Above ”Date of Birth,” I told the truth. For residence, the Back Bay condo I was renting; for business address, the Tremont Street office with two windows and a door in which I was writing. The form for your original license has spaces to list similar prior employment, for me just the military police and the claims department of Empire Insurance. Neither form has a line for marital status, which saved my having to specify ”widower.”
    I dated and signed the renewal, attesting separately to the truth of the statements and my honor as a taxpayer. Drawing a check for the $500 annual fee (and remembering when it was only $400), I called my surety company, getting their promise to send me a continuation of my $5,000 posted bond in exchange for another hundred bucks of premium. Then I went to the wall and took down my current license from the ”conspicuous place” where the law requires it to be displayed. After my previous apartment/office had been hit by arson, I’d had to apply for a replacement certificate. Next to ”Reason for Needing Replacement,” I’d written ”Burned out.” Then I’d decided that sounded psychologically questionable and substituted ”Destroyed by fire.”
    I turned the metal frame from Woolworth’s glass-side down on my desk and niggled free the stubborn cardboard backing. I slid the license out and carried it down the hall to the nice receptionist in the CPA firm. She reminds me of aunts who bake cookies, and she photocopied the license for me when none of the accountants was looking.
    Returning to my own office, I gathered up the junk mail that had blown off the desk in the draft I’d caused opening and closing the door. I put the original of the license back in the frame and on the wall. Paper-clipping the renewal to the rest of the documents, I dropped the package on top of the box to await the bonding company’s certificate.
    This time, the clock said just 3:45. On a Thursday in June. A warm one at that. I thought about dialing Nancy Meagher at the district attorney’s office, but I was already seeing her for dinner at her apartment in South Boston . We’d been back together, in my sense of the word, for only a few weeks, and I didn’t want to push it. I also thought about driving to Southie a little early, but I’d visited the cemetery the day before, and Beth’s hillside was just five blocks from Nancy ’s building.
    I decided to lock up and go for a walk. Out into the sunshine across from the Park Street subway station at the corner of the Common. Past Old Granary Burial Ground, resting place of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, where rubbings from the gravestones had to be prohibited because the copying also eradicates. Through Government Center , the utilitarian tower of the McCormack federal building in stark contrast to the massive, award-winning City Hall designed by I. M. Pei. And down into Quincy Market, Boston ’s refurbished waterfront, which has served as a model for a dozen such projects elsewhere.
    The market area was vibrant as ever, the pillared and domed center