Eastern Standard Tribe

paperwork, and so I spat out the crud from my mouth, stopped sniveling, hawked back my spit and put on my best voice. 'This isn't necessary, sir,' I said. 'I'm not a thief. My mother owns the dealership. It was wrong to take the car, but I'm sure she didn't intend for this to happen. Certainly, I don't need to be tied up in here. Please, take off the restraints-they're cutting off my circulation.' The Sony cop flipped up his goofy little facemask and squinted at me, then shook his head and went back to his paperwork.

''Look,' I said. 'Look! I'm not a criminal. This is a misunderstanding. If you check my ID and call my mother, we can work this all out. Look!' I read his name off his epaulettes. 'Look! Officer Langtree! Just let me up and we'll sort this out like adults. Come on, I don't blame you-I'm glad!-you were right to take me in. This is my mom's merchandise; it's good that you went after the thief and recovered the car. But now you know the truth, it's my mother's car, and if you just let me up, I'm sure we can work this out. Please, Officer Langtree. My wallet's in my back pocket. Just get it out and check my ID before you do this.'

'But he just went on filling in the paperwork. 'Why? Why won't you just take a second to check? Why not?'

'He turned around again, looked at me for a long time, and I was sure he was going to check, that it was all going to be fine, but then he said, 'Look, I've had about as much of your bullshit as I'm going to take, little girl. Shut your hole or I'll gag you. I just want to get out of here and back to my job, all right?'

''What?' I said, and it sounded like a shriek to me. 'What did you say to me? What the hell did you say to me? Didn't you hear what I said? That's my mother's car—she owns the lot I took it off of. Do you honestly think she wants you to do this? This is the stupidest goddamned thing-'

''That's it,' he said, and took a little silver micropore hood off his belt, the kind that you cinch up under the chin so the person inside can't talk? I started squirming away then, pleading with him, and I finally caught the desk sergeant's eye. 'He can't do this! Please! Don't let him do this! I'm in a police station— why are you letting him do this?'

'And the cop smiled and said, 'You're absolutely right, little girl. That's enough of that.' The Sony cop didn't pay any attention. He grabbed my head and stuffed it into the hood and tried to get the chin strap in place. I shook my head as best as I could, and then the hood was being taken off my head again, and the Sony cop looked like he wanted to nail the other cop, but he didn't. The desk sergeant bent down and cut my straps, then helped me to my feet.

''You're not going to give me any trouble, are you?' he said, as he led me around to a nice, ergo office chair.

''No sir!'

''You just sit there, then, and I'll be with you in a moment.'

'I sat down and rubbed my wrists and ankles. My left ankle was oozing blood from where it had been rubbed raw. I couldn't believe that the Sony Family could inflict such indignities on my cute little person. I was so goddamn self-righteous, and I know I was smirking as the desk sergeant chewed out the Sony cop, taking down his badge number and so on so that I'd have it.

'I thanked the cop profusely, and I kept on thanking him as he booked me and printed me and took my mug shots. I was joking and maybe even flirting a little. I was a cute fifteen-year-old and I knew it. After the nastiness with the Sony cops, being processed into the criminal justice system seemed mild and inoffensive. It didn't really occur to me that I was being arrested until my good pal the cop asked me to turn out my pockets before he put me in the cell.

''Wait!' I said. 'Sergeant Lorenzi, wait! You don't have to put me in a cell, do you, Sergeant Lorenzi? Sergeant Lorenzi! I don't need to go into a cell! Let me call my mom, she'll come down and drop the charges, and I can wait here. I'll help out. I can get coffee. Sergeant Lorenzi!'

'For a second, it looked like he was going to go through with it. Then he relented and I spent the next couple hours fetching and filing and even running out for coffee-that's how much he trusted me-while we waited for Mom to show up. I was actually feeling pretty good about it by the time she arrived. Of course, that didn't last too long.

'She came through the door like Yosemite Sam, frothing at the chops and howling for my blood. She wanted to press charges, see me locked up to teach me a lesson. She didn't care how the Sony cops had gassed and trussed me-as far as she was concerned, I'd betrayed her and nothing was going to make it right. She kept howling for the sergeant to give her the papers to sign, she wanted to swear out a complaint, and he just let her run out of steam, his face perfectly expressionless until she was done.

''All right then, Mrs. Walchuk, all right. You swear out the complaint, and we'll hold her overnight until her bail hearing. We only got the one holding cell, though, you understand. No juvenile facility. Rough crowd. A couple of biowar enthusiasts in there right now, caught 'em trying to thrax a bus terminal; a girl who killed her pimp and nailed his privates to the door of his hotel room before she took off; a couple of hard old drunks. No telling what else will come in today. We take away their knives and boots and purses, but those girls like to mess up fresh young things, scar them with the bars or their nails. We can't watch them all the time.' He was leaning right across the desk at my mom, cold and still, and then he nudged my foot with his foot and I knew that he was yanking her chain.

''Is that what you want, then, ma'am?'

'Mom looked like she wanted to tell him yes, go ahead, call his bluff, but he was too good at it. She broke. 'No, it's not,' she said. 'I'll take her home and deal with her there.'

''That's fundamentally sound,' he said. 'And Linda, you give me a call if you want to file a complaint against Sony. We have secam footage of the Boardwalk and the Station House if you need it, and I have that guy's badge ID, too.'

'Mom looked alarmed, and I held out my raw, bruisey wrists to her. 'They gassed me before they took me in.'

''Did you run? You never run from the cops, Linda, you should have known better-'

'I didn't run. I put my arms in the air and they gassed me and tied me up and took me in.'

''That can't be, Linda. You must have done something—' Mom always was ready to believe that I deserved whatever trouble I got into. She was the only one who didn't care how cute I was.

''No mom. I put my hands in the air. I surrendered. They got me anyway. They didn't care. It'll be on the tape. I'll get it from sergeant Lorenzi when I file my complaint.'

''You'll do no such thing. You stole a car, you endangered lives, and now you want to go sniveling to the authorities because Sony played a little rough when they brought you in? You committed a criminal act, Linda. You got treated like a criminal.'

'I wanted to smack her. I knew that this was really about not embarrassing her in front of the Sony Family, the nosy chattery ladies with the other franchises that Mom competed against for whuffie and bragging rights. But I'd learned something about drawing flies with honey that afternoon. The Sergeant could have made things very hard on me, but by giving him a little sugar, I turned it into an almost fun afternoon.

'Mom took me home and screamed herself raw, and I played it all very contrite, then walked over to the minimall so that I could buy some saline solution for my eyes, which were still as red as stoplights. We never spoke of it again, and on my sixteenth birthday, Mom gave me the keys to a Veddic Series 8, and the first thing I did was download new firmware for the antitheft transponder that killed it. Two months later, it was stolen. I haven't driven a Sony since.'

Linda smiles and then purses her lips. 'Unrehearsed enough?'

Art shakes his head. 'Wow. What a story.'

'Do you want to kiss me now?' Linda says, conversationally.

'I believe I do,' Art says, and he does.

Linda pulls the back of his head to hers with one arm, and with the other, she half-shrugs out of her robe. Art pulls his shirt up to his armpits, feels the scorching softness of her chest on his, and groans. His erection grinds into her mons through his Jockey shorts, and he groans again as she sucks his tongue into her mouth and masticates it just shy of hard enough to hurt.

She breaks off and reaches down for the waistband of his Jockeys and his whole body arches in anticipation.