Sunset City (5 page)

“Go wait in the car,” he said to Sonja.

“I thought you wanted to be friends,” I said. I was about to cry.

Suddenly, magically, Peter appeared at my side.

“Eliza! There you are. Is this guy bothering you?”

“No,” Michael said. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I think you should leave,” Peter said. He was doing some kind of macho posturing with his hands on his hips, leaning towards Michael. It cheered me up immensely. I smiled at Peter. I liked being saved. More people should save me. I would like to be saved all the time.

“She's not interested, fella,” Peter said.

Michael shook his head. “Y'all have a great night,” he said, disgusted. He went to the front door.

“I have your stuff,” Peter said. “You left it on the couch.”

I squinted at my purse, my phone, my pink sweater. I felt his fingers on my neck.

“When you touch me,” I said, “the room swims.”

“Who were those people?”

“Nobody. Are they gone?”

“Yeah. Want another drink?”

“No, let's go back outside.”

Outside we smoked some more weed and he pushed me against somebody's truck and kissed my neck until I shivered. I loved this part. Sex was so simple. I could give him what he wanted without having to worry about doing something wrong. He fumbled with the buttons of my blouse. The jukebox got louder as someone opened the door to the bar. After a while we decided to leave and Peter went in to close his tab. I tried to remember if I had brought the car or ridden my bike or what. I couldn't see the cars very well, not until I got close enough to touch each vehicle. I groped from one to another, squinting at each truck and sedan to see if I recognized it. Not that finding the car would do any good—my keys were trapped inside my bag. I would never manage to get them out. They were as
remote as winter. I gave up and turned away from the yellow Volvo I'd been leaning against. Peter came outside and put his arm around me. He walked me to a red car and unlocked it with a button in his hand.

“Get in,” he said.

I
n the car Peter told a story about how one of his friends set a fire in a park. He meant it to be a funny story, but I had trouble following it because the lights on the road kept getting in my eyes. Red lights and white lights, and the yellow ones that hung above the streets. I tried to concentrate on a faraway landmark, an old technique I'd learned to avoid getting carsick, but I kept misjudging distances and my landmarks slipped past the sides of the car. He got on 59 headed south. I studied his profile, watched his mouth moving.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“My place.”

That sounded good, to be at a place. If I could lie down on a cold floor and stop moving I'd be all right.

“Is there a floor?” I said.

“A floor in my apartment? Of course there's a floor.”

“What's it like?”

“It has carpet. And there's tile in the kitchen and the bathroom.”

“Okay,” I said.

We passed the Denny's sign and the Hooters sign. A car to the right of us honked its horn and Peter swerved left. He must be fucked up, too. We passed under the Loop, and gloom closed around me. We were practically halfway to Sugar Land. Far from home. I rolled my window down for air, to help me think more clearly. I stretched my arm out the window, let my hand ride the current of wind. It didn't look like a hand, it looked like an animal. It wasn't until they were right behind us that I saw the red and blue lights flash in the mirror.

“Peter, pull over,” I said.

“I am! What the fuck. Fuck,” he said. “This is your fucking fault.”

This sounded unlikely to me, so I ignored it. He parked on the shoulder.

“You're the one distracting me,” he said. “Talking about my fucking carpet while I'm trying to fucking drive. Get me the insurance card. In the glove compartment.”

I reached for it, and the cop on his loudspeaker yelled, “Hands on the dash.”

We waited in the car. Peter was freaking out in the seat beside me.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he kept saying.

I examined my hands. Bits of chipped polish remained in the center of each nail. Maybe tomorrow I could get a manicure. Fake nails like Danielle's.

“This is exactly what I don't need,” Peter said. Like a grouchy kid.

“He's coming,” I said.

“Eliza—” he said.

“My name's not Eliza,” I said.

“License and proof of insurance,” the cop said.

The cop, a Latino guy with a big belly, examined Peter's documents and shined his light in Peter's face, then mine.

“Do you know why I stopped you, sir?” he said.

“Uh. Speeding?” Peter said.

“Step out of the car, sir.”

Peter had some trouble with his seat belt. The cop made him kneel behind the car with his hands on his head. I hadn't been stopped by the police since I was about seventeen, ran a red light, I think, and the guy let me off without a ticket. Unlike Peter, I was an excellent drunk driver, having had a lot of practice. I strained to listen through the waves of traffic. Peter argued. He stood up and the cop watched him try to touch his nose with his finger. I sat there and sat there. Another squad car stopped behind the first one. Peter yelled, the cop yelled, and the cop cuffed him and shoved him in the backseat of the cruiser. The two cops stood around talking to each other.

I hoped one of these guys would give me a ride home. After a while I wondered if they'd forgotten about me, then I thought how silly, of course they hadn't, then I wondered again. My head was filling with gravel. A big truck charged past and blew a cloud of dirt and exhaust into the car. Exhaust, my fellow inhabitant. We lived together in Peter's car.

The rhythm of pain in my head matched itself to the beat of traffic. Normally I loved the sound of cars on the freeway; it oriented me, comforted me. I'd gone to sleep to the sound every night of my life. Now the wind rattled the gravel in my head, knocking the pieces against each other. Each stone had its own headache. I reached over to the ignition and turned the key so I could raise the windows against the noise. I was thirsty.

The speaker blasted inside my head. “Hands on the dash. Don't move.”

I began to imagine the many possible ways I might have
avoided my current situation. I could've told Peter I had gonorrhea, for instance. Or I could've called a cab. I'd be home, I could pour a glass of cold water and count out some aspirins. I could be in the bath, I could be in bed. I wondered how late it was. Shit, maybe I could even be at the bar.

The gravel inside me mutated into pulsating living animals. They were eating my internal organs and spitting them out and eating them again. I sweated and bristled where anything touched me—the seat of the car, my clothing, the air. I pushed the car door open and fell to the ground on my hands and knees, retching and gagging.

“Fucking fuck, man,” one cop said to the other.

I stood and leaned against Peter's car, picking pieces of gravel out of my knees. My head still pounded steadily, but at least the animals in my body held still. I spat bile. I faced the cops, squinted to hear them.

“You take her, man.”

“Fuck.”

“I had mine done yesterday. Fresh pine scent.”

“Fuck.”

“'Sides, I got the dumbass already.”

“Fuck, man.”

“Plus I was here first.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The second one glanced at me. “All right, lady.”

“Please,” I said. “Can you take me home?”

“Sure, honey, tell me where you wanna go.” He snorted and the other one shook his head, a weary acknowledgment.

“Come on, I didn't—”

“Public intox.”

“What?”

“Soon as you got out of the car. Public.”

“Sir, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—”

“Public intox and resisting an officer. You barf in my car, I'll charge you with property damage, too.” He looked me over carefully. “You gonna barf again?”

“I don't think so,” I said.

A wrecker parked in front of Peter's car. A guy got out and came towards us. I held my phone in my hand. Who could I call? I scrolled through my contacts. Nobody. I thought of the business card, Detective Ash's card. I dialed and left him a message.

The second cop came over and cuffed my wrists behind me. He led me by the arm. His grip crushed me.

“Ow,” I said.

“All right, honey. Settle down.”

He pushed me into the backseat, encased in hard plastic like a prefab shower stall. Easy to clean, I guess, but no one had lately. The car smelled sour from leftover sweat and vomit. I had to sit sideways to accommodate my cuffed hands. My officer muttered into his radio and joined the other two men by Peter's car. After a while he got in and nosed the cruiser into traffic. We headed west, towards the edges of the city. It became clear that someone, at some point during the night, had made a bad decision. I felt glad to be so wasted. If I'd been sober, I was sure I would be panicking.

After a few miles and many bursts of staticky speech on the radio, the cop stopped the car in a bright lot, got out, and opened my door. With the same grip on my arm he hauled me through the entrance to a squat building.

“Please,” I said. “I'm innocent.”

My head was killing me now. He pushed me down a hall of painted cinder block, the ceiling lined with fluorescent lights. Their buzzing got inside me and pried at the front of my skull, splintering it apart. We went into a room that contained two
cells filled with women. Sweat and perfume replaced the air. The noise fluctuated enough so you couldn't get used to it, couldn't tune it out. He uncuffed me.

“I'm putting her in Two,” my officer yelled behind him.

I needed to lie down. Bad. I had to get away from those lights. He unlocked a door to the cell and pushed me in. The room was cold, too air-conditioned. I felt not the least bit drunk anymore.

I glanced at the other women inside—there were seven or eight of them—and cast my eyes down immediately. One woman's teeth chattered. I could hear it from where I stood. She rubbed her arms and stamped her feet, crazed and exhausted, probably coming down off crack. I marveled at the force of her suffering. She had one whole corner of the cell to herself. A couple of others, young girls, kept their eyes on the floor. Two Latinas stood together whispering. They glared at me.

I stayed at the front of the cell, staring into the hall. The steel wall smelled like the metal risers we sat on in grade-school music class, hitting our triangles. A different cop came and retrieved one of the quiet girls. The crackhead began a high undulating keen, like rabbits dying, which I'd heard once, on a science class field trip in ninth grade. We were supposed to be cataloging the plants in a square meter of this meadow, and some stray dog discovered a nest nearby and killed the baby bunnies. Jail kept reminding me of school. The crackhead's dark skin looked gray. She smelled like she'd shit herself. Each of us shrank farther into our respective corners.

An aerosol scent hovered around the whispering girls, who were edging towards me. I wished I had a cigarette. I breathed in a cloud of hair spray and coughed.

“I don't think so,” the girl said. “You did not just cough your nasty up in here.”

“Sorry,” I said, keeping my eyes down.

“This white bitch say sorry,” the girl said to her friend.

They snickered. One of them came closer, stood right behind me.

“I like your hair,” she said into my ear. I tried not to recoil.

“Hey!” she shrieked. “I'm talking to you!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Thanks.”

The other one edged behind me now. She had a blurred tattoo on her cheek that I couldn't make out; I didn't look directly at it. Her eyebrows were plucked and scabbed over and covered in pencil.

“You not being rude to my girl,” this eyebrow person said. “Are you?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry.”

“She say she like your hair.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

I yelped at a sudden sharp sting on my scalp. The girls cackled. The one with the eyebrows held a few strands of my hair.

“What the fuck?” I said.

She twisted my hair in her fists like she could strangle me with it and took a sudden step forward. I jumped back, banging my head on the wall. The girls snickered and reclaimed their corner, whispering to each other. Every few minutes one would say, “What the fuck!” in a whiny white girl voice—it sounded exactly like me. The other one would say “Sorry,” and double over in laughter. I gazed resolutely out through the bars, flinching at every noise behind me.

“Ford,” a lady cop said. She unlocked the barred door. “Come on.”

She motioned down the hall and closed the cell behind us, but I could still hear the crackhead's muted wail. We stopped at a desk and the cop gave me my purse, sweater, driver's license.
I signed for them and walked into the lobby. Detective Ash leaned against a desk.

“You're here,” I said. “You came.”

His hand pressed the small of my back and propelled me out the door. I had to close my eyes against the bright lights in the parking lot.

“Jesus,” he said. “I can smell the whiskey.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I mean, for coming. Thank you, you have no idea how much this means to me, in there, it was horrible—” I started to cry.

“You're welcome,” he said. “Did they process you? Get your prints?”

“No,” I said.

“Good, that's good.”

We headed north. The downtown skyline clumped on the horizon. I relaxed in the seat and rubbed my head where I'd banged it. He exited before my street and parked in front of House of Pies.

“Breakfast?” he said.

“You really don't have to—”

“Why not. Let's get some pancakes.”

“I used to come here a lot.”

“Why'd you stop?” he said.

“I realized I hated it.”

He laughed but I was serious. House of Pies is a shithole. We sat in a vinyl booth textured to resemble leather. The place had been done up in orange and brown and yellow—to simulate grease, perhaps. The rips in the upholstery were patched with plastic tape that peeled up and stuck to my legs. We ordered coffee and eggs and strawberry pie piled high with Cool Whip. They brought the pie first. A maraschino cherry leaked red rivulets in the topping. The eggs came. Suddenly I was starving.
When had I last eaten? I scarfed the food. Ash stretched his arms along the back of the booth.

“Better?” he asked.

I shrugged. I decided to never drink again
.

“Not the greatest night of your life, is it?”

“I'm sorry about this,” I said. “I've never been to jail before.”

“I know,” he said. “I checked.”

“Oh.”

His lips turned up slightly at the corners. His shirt was open to the second button, sleeves cuffed to the middle of his forearms. Neon from the window lit his face. Even in this oily light he looked handsome, in control.

“Why did you come?” I asked. “I didn't think you would.”

“Why did you call?”

I smashed the pie with my fork, didn't answer. He must have figured it out already—there wasn't anyone else.

After a minute he said, “I owe you an apology.”

“You?” I said. “What for?”

“I shouldn't have shown you those photographs,” he said. “I didn't know you'd react like that.”

“It's okay,” I said.

“How's your head?”

“Fine.” The cut scabbed at my hairline, but my bangs covered it and you could hardly tell.

“I'm glad,” he said. “I wondered if I should have taken you to the hospital.”

“No need,” I said.

“Good. So. How well did you know him?”

“Who?”

“The driver of the car. Peter Randall Sones. DUI, marijuana possession, resisting arrest.”