Wildfire (2 page)

Her face didn’t have to tell me. The generously loud laughter of the man at the next desk didn’t have to tell me. The murmuring of the word “bitch” from the guy chained to the chair behind me didn’t have to tell me. I knew. I knew the minute it came out of my mouth it was the wrong thing to say. But it hung there in the air, and there was no way to take it back.

“Are we messing up your tea party, sweetie?” the booking officer crooned and held a “tea-cup pinky” in the air. “Or do you have some other laws you need to violate before noon.”

“I’m sorry,” I blurted. “That was rude and short sighted, and I really shouldn’t have said—”

“Honey,” the cop put her hand up to let me know she didn’t want to hear an apology, no matter how long. “The only time I look at that clock is seven o’clock, because that’s when my shift is over. So just sit there and hang tight and I’ll get you done when you get done.”

“Yes, Officer,” I mumble. Can I possibly screw up my day even more?

“Hey Ruth,” an officer from the doorway calls.  There is some kind of tussle in the hallway and a string of profanity erupts into the otherwise quiet and efficient processing room. Frankly, I’ve never heard that many F words in thirty seconds before. Four tough, rowdy young men are led into the room chained together by hands and feet. The one on the front kicks the bench in front of him sending it spinning and pulling the legs out from under the others, causing them all to lean to the side.

“Sit your asses down and stop that shit,” an officer calls. The smell of rotten food covered in moldy pasta and over fermented grape juice fills this air.  The officer approaches my booking agent.

“Can you book these assholes and get them into interrogation before they smell up the whole building?” He asks her.  I sit up and listen to the conversation, realizing if she decided to book the four of them before me, I’m never getting out of here.

“What the hell?”

“It’s the Arturi brothers from Delancey Street. They were roughing up an elderly street vendor when the staff of La Russo caught them in an alley and treated them to a dumpster beating before the beat cops could get there.  Precinct asked to bring them here to get them out of home turf and give them a good long sit before some Capo comes to release them.”

“You bet, but they ain't gonna need no Capo. Their salvation just walked through the door.”

“Oh?” the officer turns to look but shrugs. I’m dying to turn around but I don’t dare.

“Clank and Clack, the bail guys, both just walked through the door,” Ruth explains. “But, they can settle down and wait.”

“Fucking piece of stupid shit!” One of the chained men calls and kicks the desk in front of him sending papers all over the floor.

“Right!” says Ruth. “No time like the present.”

She grabs a pen and begins walking toward them.

“Wait,” I call out. “What about me? I was here first. I should be booked first.”

Ruth runs her fingers through her butch-man hair and sighs again. She places a meaty hand on the desk in front of me and commands my utmost attention.

“Look, Princess Periwinkle,” she says, curling her lips with every word. “If I let that mess sit in here any longer they are going to break up our room and maybe send someone to a hospital. So, yea, I’m taking them first and no, babycakes, it’s not fair. But it’s smart, and that’s what we do here – what’s smart.” She turns her back to me, and then whirls around to tell me one more thing. “Besides, you smell a hell of a lot better than them, so you I can keep around a while.”

I look up at the clock and feel my blood boil. How dare she speak to me like that? She can’t delay me just because someone is smellier than I am or represents more trouble than I do! I have rights. I probably pay more taxes than the four Arturi brother combined. I look up and see the watch commander staring my direction. I make a plan.

I am going to stand up, walk over and tell him that I am an investigative reporter and the Editor-in-Chief of Lynx magazine. It’s true for another thirty minutes or so. I’m going to make him very aware that I am making notes about the inherent unfair booking practices of this station and the delaying tactic that is causing me to lose valuable time. By the time I’m done he will have someone rushing to process me and I won’t have to smell like putrid fruit to do it.

I put my hand on top of the desk and start to rise out of the chair when Mark’s voice rings in my head.  Sitting up, I can hear his words with amazing clarity. I almost look to see if he’s in the room but I know that he’s at court waiting on me. Still, he is strong and clear inside my thoughts.

“All you do is push and bully. You don’t use your brain or power to collaborate or negotiate. You just throw your weight around, stomp and threaten. It works for you now, but it won’t always work for you and I’d hate to see the day your strategy lets you down,” he told me early in our journey. He’s right. That’s exactly what I was preparing to do, bully them into speeding me through the system.

But that’s not who I am any more.

I sit back in my chair and stop looking at the clock. If I lose Lynx, I lose it. I can’t swim upstream forever. I can work for another magazine, and someday maybe start something else. I accept the reality that throwing a fit isn’t going to help so I might as well act like I have some dignity while I’m here. Like a lady. Like Mark’s lady.

“Hey Ben,” Ruth calls as she points to the bench and glares the cuffed brothers into their seats. “Can you book that lady right there? She’s a repeat so you just have to confirm and send her down to wait for arraignment.”

Ben nods and takes the seat at her desk, looks at my arrest sheet and starts typing in numbers. I laugh to myself. Even when he isn’t here, Mark is still right. The officer confirms my name and numbers, prints out a stack of notes for me to sign, lines me up for another booking photo (and Valerie thought her photos were bad?) and leaves me on a bench to be taken to the connected series of cells in the hall below. I see Robert Clank walking over to where Ruth has the subdued gang members, but before I can wave or get his attention, I hear my name.

“Sharp, Julia Sharp.”

“Here,” I say as if I’m still in sixth grade and the teacher is taking attendance.

“Hey, Rich Bitch,” the guard calls. I instantly recognize her as the woman from last time and it’s pretty clear she remembers me too. “Back again, eh? You becoming a career criminal or what?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I uselessly try to tell her as she grabs my upper arm and walks me to my cell. “He told me to see him. He asked me to come. I didn’t purposely violate the protection order. Hell, if anyone needed protection it was me!”

“Uh-huh. All a big mistake. He really loves you. You’re back together. You just forgot to tell the judge,” she responds in a sing-song voice. “Heard it all before. Only usually with restraining orders, it’s the guys who jump the wire.”

“He conned me,” I say with a sigh filled with equal parts honesty, acceptance, and profound regret.

“Hey! My phone call. Hey! I gotta go. Hey! That man is going to hurt somebody! Hey! Hey! Hey!” The familiar chorus begins before I can even see the bars of the holding cells. They see me as soon as I turn the corner.

“Blonde baby,” one of the men whistles. “Come sit near me sugar and give me your honey.”

“You better check yourself, Ray,” the guard says. “I’d leave this one alone before she kills you too!”

I try not to look shocked by her comment but I see it already has the intended effect. The men pull back against the wall of their cell and the women in mine give me a wide berth to walk. I try to make eye contact with her and show her I’m oddly grateful but she turns before I am even fully in the cell.

The chorus of voices start again as soon as the door closes and I make my way to an empty spot on a back bench beside the wall.

“He conned me,” I say again to no one.

I sit in silence for a few minutes, the eyes of everyone in both the male and female cells glancing my direction. It’s clear that most of them realize that the guard’s comment was pure bullshit, but a few are not so sure. A young woman with a group of streetwalkers cautiously approaches and sits just outside of arm’s reach. She looks at me with the world weary eyes of an eighty year old though she can’t be more than twenty-two.

“You really kill somebody?” She asks. I’m tempted to act like it’s true, but the last thing either of us probably need in our lives right now is another lie.

“No,” I say quietly. “But I’ve thought about it.”

“Me too!” She laughs with a big broad smile. Her friends watching the conversation relax and go back to talking amongst themselves. “That pimp on 23
^rd
, Stomper, I’d like to take him down. You here like us? You know, working for a livin’?”

My mind flashes back to Sandstone Ventures and presents a vivid image of me on my knees, Blake’s grotesque hand pulling me toward him. I think of the pictures of Valerie James in various positions with interview subjects. I think of every assignment the members of my journalism class begged for and made promises to get. I realize, in some way, everyone in media is  “working for a livin.”

“Something like that,” I say, trying to sound more streetwise than I am.

“You a pretty girl,” the young woman says. “You should try Lexington and Dale. They’d probably find a spot for you since you’re an uptown girl.”

“Um, well, after this experience I think I’m gonna stop.” I say in a non-committal hush. If I was going to lie anyway I should have stuck with the murder – it would be more believable.

“Duh. That’s what I mean,” she gives me the eye roll that proves I’ve already said something stupid. “You know, Walden House on Lexington? They have those classes to get you certified as assistants and shit. Off the streets and in the doctor’s office or whatever. I wanted to do that but they only have the money to take three or four at a time. But you being uptown and new? They could get you in school.”

“Thanks,” I say and look toward the wall hoping she reads non-verbals well enough to know I’m done.  She does. I try to make a mental note to check out this place she’s telling me about because there might be a story there, and then laugh at myself. Here I am thinking like a magazine owner when at this very moment some judge is handing my magazine to Blake Stone and Valerie James.

There’s no clock in sight from the holding cell and of course none of us have a watch or any other personal belongings. It makes sense. If we could actually see the hours of our life ticking away while we wait for our destiny we would riot, or at least go insane. Insanity is what I’m trying to hold off as I obsess over what Mark must be doing now. I know he needs my verified signature and I know I am as far from being able to sign those forms as humanly possible. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.  The clock on the wall may be absent, but the one in my head just keeps counting down – like a time bomb.

I lean back and try to calm myself with thoughts of soothing blue oceans and Enya music, but a timeline of events keeps interrupting the peace. I remember the confusion of walking in and seeing that sleazy lawyer, Kenneth Allen in my office, the twisting burning knot in the pit of my stomach when I realized I was being displaced, the searing anger as I drove over to Sandstone Ventures and the wet, primal desire when Mark bent me over his desk.

From there my mental train switches tracks and the scenery stops showcasing Blake or Valerie or Lynx. All I see is Mark and me.

I’m swept up in the whirlwind of the last thirty days.  It began with Mark, his heavy body pushing me over the desk, the feeling of him behind me – his strength – his lust – creating a powerful longing in me I thought was long since dead. My ears burn when I remember his hot breath on my ear as he said to me, “This is what you need.”  That was the door that opened a whole new world to me.

After that, I went from the frigid and bitter woman, dedicating what was left of my life and energy to words that could be printed on a page to a woman pressed up against an Escalade in a parking lot, my skirt hiked up around my hips as Mark’s hardness pushed into me, thrusting himself into my body over and over until all I could do was wrap my arms around him and hang on as my body spasmed to his rhythm and my mouth fell open in unbridled pleasure.

“You will submit every part of your body, your mind and your soul to my will,” Mark said at the beginning. I agreed having no idea how much truth that statement would hold.  I remember doubting him at the time, even as I dropped to my knees before him wrapping my mouth around his thick cock, taking him as far into me as possible. My head bobbing up and down as I felt his hand guiding me, encouraging me, filling me with his seed. My mouth waters now, just wanting his taste and girth filling it.