The room was full of security guards and city police. It was sharp with the smell of sweat. Two guards were restraining Joe, who was handcuffed. Two policemen held Jesse and another was beating him on the head with a foot-long flashlight. A sheet of blood covered Jesse’s face and soaked his shirt. He was screaming with pain. I walked completely unnoticed across the room. All of them were watching the policeman beating Jesse, as if they were looking at a fight on TV. I grabbed the flashlight and hit the cop on the head with it. He fell with a thud. “Oh Jesus, he’s dead,” another one said.
Jesse and I were handcuffed and then taken through the airport and down to a small police station in the basement. We sat next to each other, our hands fastened behind us to the chairs. Jesse’s eyes were stuck shut with blood. He couldn’t see and the wound on his scalp continued to bleed. I begged them to clean it or bandage it. To wash his eyes. They’ll clean you up at Redwood City Jail, the guard said.
“Fuck, Randy, the dude’s a juvenile! Somebody’s got to take him over the bridge!”
“A juvenile? This bitch is in big trouble. I ain’t taking him. My shift’s almost over.”
He came over to me. “You know the peace officer you hit? They have him in Intensive Care. He might die.”
“Please. Could you wash his eyes?”
“Fuck his eyes.”
“Lean down a little, Jesse.”
I licked the blood off of his eyes. It took a long time; the blood was thick and caked, stuck in his lashes. I had to keep spitting. With the rust around them his eyes glowed a honey amber.
“Hey, Maggie, let me see your smile.”
We kissed. The guard pulled my head away and slapped me. “Filthy bitch!” he said. Just then there was a lot of yelling and Joe got thrown in with us. They had arrested him for using obscene language in front of women and children. He had been angry when they wouldn’t tell him anything about us.
“This one is old enough for Redwood City.”
Since his arms were cuffed behind him, he couldn’t hug us, so he kissed us both. Far as I remember he had never kissed either of us on the lips before. He said later it was because our mouths were so bloody it made him feel sad. The police called me a pervert again, seducing young boys.
I was disgusted by then. I didn’t get it yet, didn’t understand the way everyone would see me. I had no idea that my charges were adding up. One of the policemen read them to me from the counter across the room. “Drunk in public, interfering with arrest, assaulting a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, resisting arrest. Lewd and lascivious behavior, sexual acts upon a minor (licking his eyes), contributing to the delinquency of minors, possession of marijuana.”
“Hey, no way!” Joe said.
“Don’t say anything,” Jesse whispered. “This will work for us. Must have been planted. We had all just been searched, right?”
“Shit yeah,” Joe said. “Plus we would have smoked it if we had it.”
They took Jesse away. They put Joe and me in the back of a squad car. We drove miles and miles to the Redwood City jail. All I could think of was that Jesse was gone. I figured they would send him to Albuquerque and then he’d go to London.
Two nasty butch cops gave me a vaginal and rectal exam, a cold shower. They washed my hair with lye soap, getting it in my eyes. They left me without a towel or a comb. All they gave me to wear was a short short gown and some tennis shoes. I had a black eye and a swollen lip, from when they hit me after they took the flashlight away. The cop who took me downstairs had kept twisting the cuffs so there were open bloody cuts on both wrists, like stupid suicides.
They didn’t let me have my cigarettes. The two whores and one wino with me let me have their last wet drags at least. Nobody slept or spoke. I shook all night from cold, from needing a drink.
In the morning we went in a bus to the courthouse. I talked through a window, by phone, to a fat red lawyer who read the report to me. The report was distorted and false all the way through.
“Advised of three suspicious characters in airport lobby. Woman with two Hell’s Angels, one Indian. All armed and potentially dangerous.” I kept telling him that things said in the report were total lies. The lawyer ignored me, just kept asking me if I was fucking the kid.
“Yes!” I finally said. “But that’s just about the only thing I’m not charged with.”
“You would have been if I had written it. Statutory rape.”
I was so tired I got the giggles which made him madder. Statutory rape. I get visions of Pygmalion or some Italian raping the Pietà.
“You’re a sicko,” he said. “You are charged with performing sexual acts upon a minor in public.”
I told him I was trying to get the blood off Jesse’s eyes so he could see.
“You actually licked it off?” he sneered.
I can imagine what hell prison must be. I could really understand how prisoners just learn to be worse people. I wanted to kill him. I asked him what was going to happen. He said I’d be arraigned and a court date would be set. I’d come in, plead innocent, hope that when we went to court we got a judge who was halfway lenient. Getting a jury in this town is a problem too. Far right, religious people out here, hard on drugs, sex crimes. Hell’s Angels were Satan to them and marijuana, forget it.
“I didn’t have marijuana,” I said. “The cop put it there.”
“Sure he did. To thank you for sucking his dick?”
“So, are you going to defend me or prosecute me?”
“I’m your appointed defense lawyer. See you in court.”
Joe was in court too, chained to a string of other men in orange. He didn’t look at me. I was black and blue, my hair curled wild around my face and the shift barely covered my underpants. Later Joe actually admitted I looked so sleazy he had pretended he didn’t know me. We both got assigned court dates in January. When his case got to court the judge just laughed and dropped the charges.
I had called home. It was hard enough telling Ben where I was. I was too ashamed to ask anyone to post bail, so I waited another day for them to let me out on my own recognizance. Stupidly I got that by having them call the principal where I taught. She was a woman who liked me, respected me. I still had no idea how people were going to judge me. It baffles me now how blind I was, but now I’m sober.
The police told me that Joe needed me to put up bond for him, so when I got out I went to a bondsman. It must not have been much, since I wrote him a check.
We figured out how to get to the airport. But it’s like seeing Mount Everest. It just looked close. We walked in the rain, freezing cold, miles and miles. It took us most of the day. We laughed a lot, even after we tried to take a shortcut through a dog kennel. Climbing a fence with dobermans barking and snarling beneath us. Abbott and Costello. No one would pick us up when we got to the freeway. Not true, some guy in a truck