The Regulators

“Rookie, why does Maxmart attract only the classiest of patrons?” Cruise asks his protégé.

“Because of the superior products and services they provide,” replies the rookie.

Eeeeeeert!

Cruise was prepared for an erroneous response from his trainee. He already had his hand in his pocket ready to press the button on the “wrong answer” buzzer on his keychain—it makes the same loud sound you hear on game shows when a contestant gets an answer wrong.

“Wrong rookie, trick question. Maxmart has nearly zero classy customers. Why the heck do you think we’re here?” Cruise chides his rookie partner of five months, thirty days and eight hours.

“Right, makes sense,” the rookie verifies Cruise’s superior ability to characterize Milwaukee’s institutions and refined subjects. Cruise knows the rookie shops at Maxmart almost daily. In the rookie’s defense, Maxmart is a one-stop shop for single guys looking for cheap toiletries and half-clothed coeds.

Cruise, not taking his eyes off the parking lot, peps the rookie, “Keep a sharp eye out. You’ve been on the job now for almost six months. This is where Regulators are made, out in the field, under pressure. You need to style the next deli you see make a violation.”

“You got it. I won’t let you down like yesterday, or the day before. Honestly, those last two style fails weren’t really my fault. In fact, I—Cruise cuts off the rookie before he can regurgitate another excuse for his last two failed styling attempts.

“Save it rookie. I’m not going to rehash your two style bombs. I’m sure you’ll get to relive them Monday morning, so focus on where we are now and do what I trained you to do.” Cruise articulates to his partner.

“You got it. I won’t let you down!” the rookie reassures Cruise. Unfortunately for Cruise, it’s been common that he does—let him down. In fact, it’s one of the rookie’s talents. Cruise wasn’t sure, at first, what this talent was called. After witnessing a couple dozen styling fails over his rookie campaign, Cruise figured it out. He affectionately calls his rookie’s talent, his Dur.

Today, hopefully the rookie’s final day as a rookie, he and Cruise are scanning the parking lot next to the entrance to Maxmart. Cruise is the most conspicuous dressed in his standard Regulator garb: shoulders to ankles in a velvet suit. His feet are encased in red moisture-wicking bamboo socks, covered with white hemp running shoes. His legs are shrouded in shimmering black velvet suit pants. His torso is sheathed in a classy white linen shirt, covered by a shiny red velvet suit jacket. Resting snuggly on the bridge of his nose is one of the Regulator’s trademarks: black-rimmed, red-mirrored aviators. The outfit is a refined reflection of the United Kingdom of America’s (UKA) national colors: red, white, and black.

Rookies wear something a little different: light blue stonewashed denim. From shoulders to ankles, the rookie dons his stonewashed denim. Slim fit pants, denim t-shirt, and denim jacket. The rookie won’t be presented with his velvet and aviators until he completes his training. He not only dislikes the look, he does his best to conceal himself behind Cruise whenever possible.

The two Regulators are so flamboyant they would stand out at a drag show—and that’s the point. They’re there to persuade subjects to obey Her Majesty’s Code of Conduct (CoC) by their presence alone.

Cruise and the rookie are getting uneasy glances here and there from random subjects, but they don’t return any of them. Their eyes continue scanning the parking lot and crosswalk for CoC violations. Cruise is usually by the book and is not the Regulator you want to give the middle finger to. The rookie is similar in his enforcement. Although—unlike Cruise—he acquired his understanding of the code from college and the Regulator Academy.

“Alright rookie, what are we looking for here at Maxmart?” Cruise asks while pointing at the rookie’s gorgeous stonewashed denim jacket.

“We’re looking for delinquents like: distracted Diane’s, short-stoppers, speed demons, slow-rollers, social media fanatics, cart shepherds, and dilly-dalliers,” replies the rookie.

Cruise encourages the rookie, “Good, but you forgot one, my favorite.”

“Uh, yeah, right… um… the spot straddlers!” the rookie declares.

“Bingo! You got it,” Cruise confirms. The rookie impresses with his grasp of not only the CoC and Regulator Handbook, but recalling nearly everything from the academy and what Cruise teaches him.

Cruise continues to quiz his rookie, “What makes the Code of Conduct so important to fine, upstanding subjects like the ones here at Maxmart?”

“The CoC sets all standards for subjects engaging in public activity,” the rookie regurgitates the academy-taught answer to Cruise’s question. “First put to parchment in 1875 by King Henry Washington II, it is now the Queen’s most effective tool for maintaining civil order and obedience. Regulators are commissioned to wield that tool for Her Majesty. Even though this Maxmart is nearly 1,000 miles from Her Majesty, subjects relish in the honor of being reminded of her standards of refinement and obedience, by us.”

“Just as the academy teaches it, I assume,” Cruise accepts the rookie’s answer, then continues to test, “Now, what about other subjects, what about other members of royalty?”

The rookie is just as quick to answer, “The CoC applies to all subjects of the Kingdom, and it applies to all royalty, to include the Queen herself.”

“Right on,” Cruise confirms once more, then mentors, “I want you to always remember that after a deli takes their legal styling, they are once again docile subjects of Her Majesty. As much as we enjoy correcting delinquent behavior, each and every deli returns to being our fellow subject, or neighbor, or even friend or family member.”

“Got it. I just hope we find a couple more delis before our shift ends,” the rookie confesses with a nervous tone.

“Me too… me too,” Cruise agrees with the same tone.

As Cruise and the rookie transition from quizzing to shooting the shat, a massive SUV pulls up and parks about twenty-five feet from them. Normally no big deal, but this wanker is half in the fire lane and half in the through lane. Cruise and the rookie don’t break stride in their conversation. They saw the SUV rolling by and park without even throwing it a glance. They can both spot a violation of the CoC from a mile away and with 20/20 peripheral vision.

They keep their conversation going and wait for someone to exit the vehicle—which takes only a few seconds. A short, overweight woman hops down out of the passenger side. She closes the door, turns, and takes three steps forward. Then, stops dead in her tracks and locks eyes on the two, unmistakable Regulators.

The rookie, with his eyes still on the lot, hollers, “Nope.” Like a nimble ballerina, the lady spins 180 degrees on one foot. She pauses for a second to lock on to her door handle. Then, takes two large steps toward it, rips the door open, and hops in. The whole act took an impressive three seconds.

The driver of the SUV signals he wishes to enter traffic, slowly pulls out, obeys the fifteen mile and hour speed limit, signals a turn into an aisle, and then drives down to find a parking spot.

Cruise, wanting to be impressed by the nonchalant manner in which the rookie just styled that deli, says, “Very nice rookie. That may have been the shortest styling that didn’t count I have ever seen.”

“Crud,” the rookie mutters.

“If this were a movie that would have looked amazing, but here in the real world we have to close ’em out. Lessons learned,” Cruise chides his rookie. “You’re still two stylings away from your two-hundredth. Today is your last day, rook, and I know you know what that means.”

The rookie, still confident, responds, “I still have an hour, I got this.”

“We shall see my young frosh”, replies Cruise.

To become a full Regulator, rookies have to successfully complete two hundred stylings of delinquents in six months (180 days) as assessed by their mentor—in this case, Cruise. They will repeat the six month assessment until they either succeed in compiling two hundred stylings, or two years have elapsed. If they can’t complete two hundred successful stylings in four tries (two years), they’re dropped from their team and return to the academy at their own expense.

Cruise and the rookie’s styling day is coming to an end. Unfortunately for the rookie, their mere presence at the entrance to Maxmart had kept the shoppers in line. The Regulators wander into the store a couple of times and make their rounds. Not a single litter bug, Edward (line cutter), or plumber (shopper with their crack showing) in the entire store—really bad luck for the rookie.

The two Regulators make their way out the exit. They both feel as if the last six months are circling the drain. Cruise is truly dreading having to go through another six months with Denim Dan. The paperwork and meetings when you have a rookie partner are tedious and numerous. When the rookie finally gets his moniker and full Regulator status, the heavy administrative burden will be lifted from his shoulders.

Cruise looks over at the rookie and sees he’s on his phone. “Rookie, eyes up, focus on the finish,” snaps Cruise—the rookie doesn’t flinch.

Cruise, visibly irritated, turns, looks hard at the rookie’s phone and in a louder voice says, “If you don’t put your phone away, I’m going to shove it between your butt cheeks and kick it so far up your pie hole you’ll have to reach down your throat to text from your stomach.” That legitimate threat gets the rookie’s attention. Without a word, the rookie slides the phone into his body-hugging right front jean pocket.

Cruise drops his head and is getting ready to call it a day when, out of nowhere, a distracted Diane wanders her way out of the Maxmart sliding doors and in front of the Regulators.

With drool starting to form in the right corner of the rookie’s mouth, he watches her roll into the street. He doesn’t have to wait long until she turns herself into a full-fledged short-stopper (stopping abruptly to check a smartphone).

As inevitable as the tide, she went from her head buried in her smartphone to stopping without warning in the crosswalk. After she forces the first car to stop, it’s time to get the rookie one styling closer to two hundred.

“Got style?” thinks the rookie.

“Get this done quickly,” thinks Cruise.

Distracted Diane is stopped in the middle of the crosswalk texting away. She is leaning on her cart with a couple bags of beauty products and her purse inside.

Cruise, eyes locked on the deli, says to the rookie, “You need this young Padawan, style her.”

The rookie is ready-set to give her the styling of the year. As cars are piling up on either side of her, she leans closer to her phone and lets out the most irritating cackle. “She’s got this one coming,” the rookie says to himself.

The deli is about twenty feet to the rookie’s twelve o’clock. He starts walking briskly toward her. Cruise starts walking behind the rookie, but at a slower pace.

This deli should be an easy one, she has no idea what’s going on in the world around her, but the rookie has the Dur brewing inside of him. The rookie is feeling confident, walking with his shoulders back toward the deli. The rookie gets five paces from the deli when she notices him over her right shoulder—he approached at a bad angle in his flashy denim.

Now, by guideline, a Regulator must “engage” with a subject verbally, or exchange direct eye contact before the subject becomes a delinquent. In this case, the rookie merely needs to identify himself as a Regulator, or she can turn and lock eyes with him. Either of these acknowledgements magically transforms her from a CoC abiding subject into a CoC violating delinquent.

So far in this scenario, the rookie had said nothing and had not made direct eye contact with the subject. So, technically the rookie had not yet engaged this subject of the Queen.

It appears the subject is aware of these rules, because in an act of unanticipated speed and agility, she takes off like the roadrunner. She’s now flying down the aisle in front of her—cart, smartphone, and all.

The rookie cries out, “Holy Shinto! Stop delinquent!”—now she’s a deli.

Cruise yells out, “You got a JJ! Get her rookie!”

The rookie’s final styling went from a slam dunk to a high-speed chase in under a second. The JJ (Jackie Joyner, a runner) is sprinting at full speed down the center of the aisle. She’s followed by the rookie, then Cruise.

In a few seconds, the rookie gets pretty close behind her. He reaches out to grab her arm when Cruise yells out from behind him, “Jebus Christe Speed Racer put the Mach 5 in park!”

That must have triggered a double flight response because the deli immediately lets go of the cart, swerves, and speeds past it. The rookie, off balance from reaching, and not expecting her to break from the cart, attempts to swerve as well.

In his mind he executes a flawless jig around the cart and continues chasing the deli. In reality, he executes a perfect Dur by doing a full swan dive into the cart.

“Fundip!” Cruise yells while glancing down at the rookie in the cart. He also thinks, “I give him a 9.5” as he runs past.

The rookie, while pulling eyeliner out of his mouth, is doing everything he can to keep the cart from wiping out.

Cruise yells back over his shoulder, “My bad rook, I got her!” Cruise typically avoids going into all-out sprints, but he flies like the wind after the deli who just embarrassed his rookie.

She’s just as fast as Cruise, so he can’t catch up. As a last resort, he decides to execute the risky, but super awesome, “sandman surprise”. Cruise is highly trained in this maneuver, and he has executed it several times in his career. For any other Regulator, this is a risky maneuver, but he has a seventy percent success rate.

Cruise reaches down to his left hip and pulls out his sixteen-inch sleepy stick (the RC400) from its holster. Cruise sees the deli is about to run up onto a grassy island at the end of the parking lot. So, he waits a second until she runs up onto the grass. Once she gets there, he puts on a short burst of speed to get within about fifteen feet. Cruise draws his sleepy stick back, takes aim at the JJ, and then chucks it directly at the center of her back. It flies through the air like a hot knife going through butter, then stops dead at the dish.

Smack! A direct hit, right between the shoulder blades. The deli drops like a ton of bricks. A pleased Cruise walks up to the sleeping deli. He drops to one knee, picks up his sleepy stick, holsters it, and then checks her for injuries. A moment later the rookie jogs up pushing the cart—he managed to maneuver his way out without falling over.

Cruise doesn’t find any injuries other than a large, growing bump on the deli’s forehead. “Great, no serious injuries,” Cruise says to the rookie. “Less paperwork”. Regulators get a lot of leeway when it comes to assessing injuries. They’re only required to call an ambulance for life-threatening injuries and broken bones that penetrate the skin. So, she could have two broken arms, but if they stay under the skin then that’s her problem.

The rookie, clearly disappointed in his performance, says to Cruise, “First, great throw. I cannot wait to get my sleepy stick. Second, did you call her Speed Racer and her cart the Mach 5?”

Not embarrassed, Cruise responds, “Yes, yes I did. Not funny?”

“Frank-n-beans Cruise that really effed me,” the rookie retorts.

“We don’t have time to drive your cart down memory lane right now, rookie,” Cruise declares, then looks down at the deli. “Any ideas on how you want to style this one before she wakes up?”

The rookie finally looks down at the deli, and exclaims, “Holy shint, she’s a freakin’ unicorn!” He looks at Cruise, “Did she get that mystical horn from the fall?”

Cruise chuckles and says, “If she didn’t, I’m mounting her on the wall of the office.” After a few seconds of silence, Cruise looks up at his rookie and reiterates his question, “Now, you have a styling plan or what? We gotta get back to the office.”

The adrenaline shower and irritation mesh to inspire the rookie. In a devious tone he answers, “Yes, I do.”

He takes out his smartphone, opens the camera, and then asks Cruise to roll her onto her back—Cruise does.

The rookie lies next to the deli and takes several pictures with her. One of him kissing her cheek, one of her with her lips on his cheek, and a couple with him in a seductive pose next to her. The rookie then gets up and finds her phone. It’s still unlocked so he gets her phone number from it. He also scrolls through her contact list and finds what he’s looking for: “Mi Amor” with lots of hearts and kissy faces surrounding it.

The rookie puts both numbers into his phone, shoots out a text, and then locks her phone and holds onto it. A few seconds later she starts to come to. Cruise helps her sit up and asks how she’s feeling.

Holding her head, she responds, “What happened?”

Cruise calmly explains to her that when she was engaged by two Regulators she was legally obligated to stop running, and that she didn’t. Cruise then takes a light pen out of his pocket and checks her eyes for signs of a concussion—she doesn’t appear to have one.

The deli takes a minute to gather her thoughts and says to them, “Fudge you two A-hats. I can’t believe you got me with the knockout rod. Where’s my stuff?”

Cruise helps her to her feet and points to her cart containing her purse and bags. The rookie hands her the phone she dropped before the Sandman put her down for a nap. She checks it for damage, but miraculously finds none. That seems to put her, momentarily, at ease.

The rookie looks at her and says, “You’re welcome for the mid-afternoon nap, but that style-nap was for running. We still owe you for walking while distracted by a smartphone and the careless delaying of others.”

She hesitates for a moment, thinking of what not to say to the Regulators. She takes a breath and responds to the rookie, “Do your worst pompous bass”.

“Clever” thinks the rookie, that’s a new one.

He tells her, “Check your phone, please.”

She unlocks it and sees she has a new text from an unknown number. She opens the text and gasps.

“This is sexual assault!” she exclaims.

Cruise quickly responds to the accusation, “According to article 8, tab 2, the tongue must breach the upper and lower lip, or make lip-to-lip contact to be considered sexual assault. Since my partner did not breach or kiss your lips, it’s not.”

“Dang it you skinny muggings!” she howls at the rookie.

Cruise quickly responds again, in a calm voice, “I’m going to ask you, politely, to calm down so we can conclude the style you’re about to receive. If you do not, I am going to put you down for another nap.”

She takes a deep breath and closes her mouth. The rookie politely says to her, “In the future please refrain from any deviation from Her Majesty’s Code of Conduct. If you are observed violating the Code in the future, I will send these pictures to your Amor.”

Her eyes widen like a bugged-out looney toon. She wants to respond, but glances over at Cruise reaching for his snooze baton, and reluctantly accepts her styling.

The rookie delivers the style closing required by handbook:

“As subjects of Her Majesty Queen Juliet Washington, we are held to the highest standards of conduct. We are Americans, and as such, we represent all that is moral, decent, and proper. We thank you for the opportunity to remind you of this, and accepting your styling. Please follow the Code of Conduct going forward. Have a terrific rest of your day!”

With the unicorn’s styling concluded, the deli walks to her cart. With a well-deserved feeling of defeat, and a slight limp, she starts the stroll to her car.

Cruise reaches out to shake the rookie’s hand and says, “Great job rookie, but you know I can only give you credit for one of those two stylings. Let’s get back to the office and write up our report for the day.”

Cruise puts his hand on the rookie’s shoulder and keeps it there as they walk back to their custom 1979 Dodge B100. The rookie looks and feels just as defeated as the unicorn deli. The rookie knows the rule book better than anyone. He knows you can’t get credit for a style if the JJ is caught by another Regulator. Cruise was kind enough to let the rookie style her for the violation before she ran, but that still leaves him one short of his two hundredth.

Cruise and the rookie know once their ten hour Friday shift is over—which is in fifteen minutes—no more stylings count. Cruise gives the rookie a light push towards the passenger side of the van and says, “Get in rook. I’ll drive us back. Maybe we’ll run into a deli on the way back.” Both Regulators get in.

Hoping to perk the rookie up, Cruise reaches down and picks up the playlist connected to the stereo system. He taps play on Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys. The rookie forces a smile as Cruise throws the van into drive and they head back to the office.