Harrison pulls the car away and I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing, how maybe they didn’t need to force a confession out of me, because who would have cared anyway? But he is probably thinking about getting away from the protesters, about how wrong they are to hate him, about the sacrifices he makes to protect the people of this city. He’s probably thinking that the cost of one life or one thousand is a price he’s willing to pay. That the ravaging of a sad girl with frizzy three-month-old braids is a price he would happily pay for this car, this gun, this power.
I don’t remember much about the rest of the ride home, except Harrison wouldn’t look at me and I think he turned the sirens on because we sped like we were on a car chase. He dropped me off in front of the Regal-Hi and it looked bigger than it did this morning. He didn’t say goodbye, but he looked at me and bit his lip and something told me it wasn’t over.
I open the door to the apartment and expect to see Trevor on the couch or bouncing his ball and pacing, but he is lying on the mattress, snores up and running like an engine. My cake sits on the counter. Uneaten.
His contact name identifies him only by his badge number, 190, and I pick up reluctantly, the first person I’ve talked to except Trevor since my birthday a couple days ago.
“We had another girl bail on us and we need you tonight. Birthday present for my colleague,” he says. His voice reads cold over the phone.
“I can’t,” I tell him, thinking of Jones and Harrison. I want out of this mess.
“No really isn’t an option tonight. We need a girl, he likes ’em young, and we don’t have time to find another one.” He pauses. “I didn’t wanna have to do this, but you’re looking at an arrest if you aren’t here by nine. I’ll pay you, five hundred up front.”
I wonder if he’s really sorry, if he really doesn’t want to threaten me, or if it’s all for show like the rest of what they do: the uniforms, the smirks, the good-cop-bad-cop routine. I’m starting to think there is no such thing as a good cop, that the uniform erases the person inside it.
I’m ready to give up, to let them arrest me just for the possibility of never having to feel another one of them inside me, but then the image of Trevor’s mouth covered in stale syrup cake springs into my mind. I can’t leave him and we need this money. What’s one more night?
“Okay,” I say.
He sighs and his voice sounds a little more like I remember it: soft. “I’ll text you the address.”
The phone beeps off and I am left thinking back to all the moments I might have been able to avoid ending up here, then I go to the bathroom to prepare myself, leaving my selfhood in my apartment with Trevor, untethered.
When I arrive at the door of the house, which is really more of a mansion, I’m welcomed in by men dressed in undone button-downs and slacks, no uniforms, but their badges fastened tight to their pants pockets. Everyone has a different badge: Richmond to Berkeley to San Francisco to Oakland. I recognize a handful of them from smaller gatherings over the months.
190 pays me and then leads me through the door, holding my hand, and everyone within sight explodes into applause and beer-fueled roars that remind me of Marcus and Cole when they think they got a platinum song on their hands. 190’s hand is colder than mine, but they’re the same color and it almost looks like our skin has been knitted together. From what I remember from the last time I saw 190 at the Whore Hotel, he likes to talk. Takes me to the parking lot and gets me in the backseat of his car, fondles a little, but mostly he just divulges everything he’s been sealing into the lining of his throat. Told me about how his daddy’s not happy he joined the force, said he done raised his daddy like he was the parent and not the child, let the crevices of his body flood. Men don’t mind crying as much if they pay for it, knowing they won’t have to see me again if they don’t want to.
Not surprised he’s cold, though. The house is clearly air-conditioned, walls lined in paintings I’m sure no one knows the names of, and I’m guessing the price tag’s more important than the art because I could paint something better in the dark and nobody’s hanging it in their house.
“Boys, this is Ms. Kia Holt.” 190 holds both our hands up like we just won a championship, my lifted arm pulling my skirt farther up and none of their eyes look at me, just at my thighs.
They make a chorus of greetings, all seated on leather couches watching some baseball game, drinking beers, and glancing at me. There are others up the stairs to my left—I can hear them howling—and more walk in and out of the room, coming back with plates of food and drinks they down in single gulps. 190 leads me toward the room with the couches and two men make room for us, let me sit. I cross my legs and eyes shift.