Finn by Matthew Olshan Read Free Book Online

why not use them, if they’re almost always true? The stereotype I’m thinking of here is a fairly minor one: the fact that there’s always a police car parked in front of a donut shop. People like to make jokes about policemen and donuts, probably because they’re afraid of the police and like to imagine them as big donut-eaters. There’s definitely something childish about eating donuts. It’s hard to imagine someone being violent if you can picture him stuffing his face with a French cruller.
    Lock me up for Trampling the Inalienable Rights, but there was a shiny police cruiser parked sloppily in the handicapped space in front of the Krispy Kreme. One cop was in the cruiser, fiddling with the radio. The other cop was ordering donuts at the counter. The bright lights and colors and the spotless glass walls made the insides of the Krispy Kreme look like a game show.
    Bobby said something lame about criminals and cops not being so different because they both liked Krispy Kremes. When I said that we weren’t criminals because we hadn’t broken any laws yet, he said, “Speak for yourself,” in an extremely pompous way. Mom laughed in his face and said that where she grew up, B.O. wasn’t a federal offense. Bobby tried to look hurt by that comment, but he was clearly excited by the prospect of donuts.
    It was hard to imagine why Bobby would marry a woman who was so mean to him, but I was learning that some people actually liked that. And besides, Mom was a very beautiful woman, in a wild kind of way, when she wanted to be. She never had a problem attracting men. Since Dad, she’d just been specializing in losers.
    I asked if I could run to the bathroom. Mom didn’t want to let me. She told me I could hold it until we got back, but I pointed out that there was a pretty long line in the Krispy Kreme and that “casing my grandparents’ house”—which was what Bobby insisted on calling it— had been a little scary, which made me have to pee even more. Mom finally agreed, but not without threatening to come in with me. I knew that what she really wanted was to wait in the van and have a cigarette, so I said, “Fine, be my guest.” She gave me a hard look, but finally told me to go on and hurry up. I thanked her, if you can believe it. I really did have to pee and it would have been nothing for her to say “too bad” and make me hold it until we got back to her place.
    Bobby was at the counter, involving all the customers in helping him choose his donuts. He was in hog heaven, probably because he’s so rarely the center of attention. He grinned when he saw me, flexing his thick continuous monobrow, as if to say, “Is this place not the greatest?” I ignored him and went to the ladies room.
    On my way out of the Krispy Kreme, I bumped into the policeman, who was packing up his coffee and donuts at the counter by the door. I apologized. He gave me a very friendly policeman wink, which carries a lot more meaning than the average wink, at least in my book, because the person doing it is wearing a gun.
    Seeing the policeman up close reminded me of Dad for some reason. Dad was definitely the kind of person who would wink at you if you bumped into him. It wasn’t just the wink. There was something else. Maybe it was the barbershop powder smell. A lot of policemen smell like barbershop powder. Dad did, too.
    Bobby came up behind me and handed me a box of donuts and put his fat fingers around my arm. I don’t know why, but in front of that policeman, Bobby’s hand on me made me feel guilty, as if I actually had broken into my grandparents’ that night, and not just scoped it out. I wasn’t worried. I knew I could fool the policeman into thinking I was perfectly innocent.
    A school counselor told me once that lying can be a kind of survival skill, like knowing how to drink water from a cactus or eat raw frogs. I could see that, but it still didn’t make it right.
    Bobby was shoving me along, saying, “Your