What Happened That Night

by Sandra Block

  “Fuck it,” Christian says. “She’s gonna blow me. That should take some of the fight out of her.” He straddles me and scoots up to my face. Pinning my shoulders with his knees, he unzips his fly, releasing a smell of sweat and musk, and yanks my head viciously toward him.

  Out of the corner of my eyes, I see the others like an audience. Watching with fascination, like I’m some animal in a zoo. They have lightened their grip on me in the meantime for the show.

  “Lick ’em, bitch,” Christian says, dangling his testicles in my face. His weight is heavy on my chest, and I pause an instant and bite down hard on him. His screech is shattering. Before the others can react, I shoot my legs up over his shoulders and throw him backward. I hear his head smack against the floor.

  This is followed by stunned silence.

  “Fuck. Dude.” The ponytailed one stares at Christian’s body. “I think she killed him.” The others are glaring at me, the audience not so friendly anymore as they start to close in on me.

  “What the fuck did you do, bitch?” the skinny kid says.

  I reach down into my boot and pull the gun out. Slowly standing off the mattress, I move the gun from side to side, and the men scuttle backward. The Beretta trembles in my hand, clicking against my ring. I steal a glance at Christian, whose head is awkwardly cocked to the side but appears to still be breathing. “Okay,” I say. “Who’s up next?”

  No one answers. They all stare at the gun, which apparently wasn’t in the script. “No one?” I ask. “Come on, you were all hot and bothered a minute ago. Who’s the big stud here? Who’s going to rape me first?”

  Again, no one answers, but someone bursts through the door behind me. A pop goes off, so loud that it hurts my ears, and only then do I realize that my finger has pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Eighty-One

  James

  The sound snaps through the air. A pop like fireworks, then glass breaking.

  Our heads swivel toward the upstairs window.

  “Holy lord.” The officer leans down into his walkie-talkie. “Backup needed. Shots fired at the Hawk Club. 99 Lowell.” He pounds a leather-gloved fist against the door, which looks like a bear paw. “Police! Open the door. I repeat, open the door.” We wait four long seconds, and he slams it with his shoulder. “Damn it.” He slams it again, and it doesn’t budge.

  “Here,” I say, backing up a few steps and wallop myself against the door, as hard I as have ever hit anything in my entire life, and my shoulder feels like it got dislodged, but the thing opens.

  The officer flashes an appreciative look and starts up the stairs. “Stay down there,” he calls to me, but I ignore him. The place is wild. People are running around in a panic, and the officer is screaming, “Police! Get down! Everyone get down!”

  Some people get down and others run past us. A girl in a black, poofy cocktail dress says, “Upstairs. Someone’s shooting up there.”

  Again, he runs and I follow, and when we open the door, Dahlia is sitting on a bare mattress, cradling something in her arms. One of her eyes is puffy and her lip is bleeding. Her cream-colored sweater is ripped and lopsided. “They’re gone,” she says, her voice hoarse.

  The officer stares at her. “Who?”

  She stares back at him, through him, and doesn’t answer. I don’t see a gun anywhere, so it’s probably back in her boot. The officer puts his gun back in the holster without taking his eyes off her. The sirens blare, closer and closer outside.

  “What have you got there?” the officer asks, motioning to the square in her arms. Car doors slam outside. Red and pink flash in streaks against the windows.

  She doesn’t answer, though I already know what it is. She just sits there, her arms wrapped around the box, like she’s guarding it with her life.

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  Dahlia

  At the police station, they unlock the cigar box.

  Opening it, I am reminded of the scene in Pulp Fiction, where some glowing angelic or demonic being emerges from the briefcase. In this case, it is a rainbow of underwear.

  Blazing red, pale pink, plain white and black. Lace, satin, cotton. Zebra stripes, cougar spots, hearts. Briefs, thong. The year is written in black sharpie. Including mine. Crumpled, dark purple flowers.

  “Lots of underwear in there,” I say, dumbly, putting my pair back down in the box with latex-gloved hands.

  “Yeah, I’d say they’ve been in this business for a while,” Detective Harrison says with disgust. He’s the same man who investigated Alethia’s attack and said he took the call when he heard my name on the dispatch.

  Underneath the jumble of underwear are tapes. They show the march of technology. A smattering of mini camcorder tapes, then DVDs, and now, of course, you just take out your phone and plaster it on a website. Which is probably why there’s no tape with my name on it. I’ve searched through it twice now. Which also means no way to find the guy with the Red Sox hat, unless there’s a longer clip out there somewhere.

  “Pretty stupid to film yourself though,” he adds.

  “I suppose,” I say, shifting the bag of ice from my lip onto my eyebrow. “Unless, of course, you know there’s a ninety-eight percent chance you won’t go to jail anyway.”

  The detective’s expression darkens, but he doesn’t debate the point. “It doesn’t help when you don’t press charges though, does it?”

  “Why press charges when no one ever goes to jail?” I return.

  We stare at each other in a stalemate. He knows I’m right too. Victims get torn apart on the stand, then nothing ever comes of it. The guy walks. This is not a script I’m willing to follow.

  Detective Harrison mulls over his notebook. “So, let me ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.” I take the ice off, because it’s stinging.

  “Why does a woman who’s not even in college anymore go to a college party, tell everyone her name is Sarah, wander around the place talking about skulls, and happen to be carrying a handgun in her boot?”

  “How’d you hear about the skulls?” I ask, knowing I told just one person. “I take it Christian is okay?”

  He shrugs. “Bit of a headache.”

  I smile, feeling my bottom lip cracking. “Uh-huh.”

  “Much like the other guy. Sergei.”

  “Funny that is,” I say as a text comes over my phone from James.

  Called Connor. He said he’s getting a lawyer for you and don’t say anything.

  I won’t, I text back. Where are you?

  Waiting in the car.

  “Funny, yes,” the detective says. “That’s one way to put it. You just always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  I reposition the ice again. “Guess I attract that kind of thing.”

  “Or you’re looking for it.”

  I look him in the eye. “Sort of like asking for it, you mean?”

  “No, I didn’t say that,” he says carefully. He plays with a pen on his desk, moving it back and forth like a rolling pin. “It’s just the coincidence thing again. I don’t like coincidences.” He stops rolling the pen and looks at me. “Let me float a theory out there for you.”

  “Float away.”

  “Here it is. You were raped at that place when you were in college, and now you’re trying to get revenge on the folks in the club. And they don’t like it.”

  I shrug. “It’s a theory.”

  Detective Harrison leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know what happened in the past. I don’t know how the police treated you. I’m guessing not well. But listen. I’m not the enemy. I can help you. But we do it my way. Not the vigilante way.”

  “If you want to help me, give me the cigar box,” I say, turning the tables.

  He frowns. “Unfortunately, I can’t do that. It’s evidence. And I suspect you know
that.”

  But it strikes me what he can do for me. There’s no use hiding it anymore. The secret’s out. I have nothing left to lose. “Okay. I’ve been getting threatening texts.”

  His eyes widen. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say. I take my phone out to show him. “That’s my sister,” I say.

  Reading the threat, he winces. “Have you told anyone about this?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  He nods and smiles, deepening his crow’s-feet. “Let me grab some information from your phone on this.”

  I hesitate just a second, then hand it to him. Fuck it. If he can help Shoshana, let him.

  “And your sister’s phone number?”

  I give it to him, and he disappears into another office. After fifteen long minutes, he’s back. “We’re putting a trace on the number, and I’ve already contacted campus police, the Boston station, and your sister’s precinct in California.”

  “Thank you,” I say. The feeling is unfamiliar, gratitude to the police. But it’s not entirely unwelcome. And I do feel a tiny bit better.

  A text sound interrupts us, from James again. How are you?

  Good, I answer. Coming soon. A yawn escapes, which stretches my lips. “I’m sorry. I really need to get going. I’m really tired.” I stand up, a bit stiffly, and the detective stands up too.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he says.

  I nod, gingerly putting on my coat. My face hurts and my shoulder is sore, but all in all, I’m okay. To be honest, I’ve gotten as much after a tough judo workout. “Oh, can I have my gun back?”

  The detective crosses his arms. “You have an LTC?”

  I give him a blank look.

  “License to carry,” he answers, and I don’t respond.

  “I didn’t think so,” he says and starts sorting some papers on his desk. “The gun is evidence for now. I’ll let you know if and when you can have it back.”

  • • •

  As I push the heavy metal door, a cold wind sweeps over me. Across the way, I see a car waiting at the curb, a soft snow falling in its headlights. James lowers the window as I get closer.

  “Hey,” he says. Snowflakes tilt toward the window. A few cling to his hair.

  “Hey,” I answer back, then walk around to the other side to climb into the warm, inviting inside. He revs off, and I lean back in the seat, finally relaxed.

  “The detective give you a hard time?” he asks, checking his rearview mirror.

  “No, not really. You?”

  “No, I didn’t say much.” He slows down at a red light.

  “Good idea to call Connor.”

  “Yeah,” he answers, waiting out the light. “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Definitely,” I answer, to squash any doubt on the matter. “He’s on our side.” We keep driving in a comfortable silence, and I can feel my eyes closing. When my phone buzzes with a text, I pop awake. I rub my eyes, but then remember that hurts and drop my hand.

  Call me back. You are an idiot.

  Eli, of course. He’s left five messages by now.

  You are an idiot, I write back. Call you tomorrow.

  “I assume you told Eli?” I ask.

  James shifts in his seat. “Yeah. After we found you. Thought he should know.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, through yet another yawn. Headlights from an oncoming car flash across his face, lighting up his eyes. I notice that they are watery. And his jaw muscle is popping.

  “Hey,” I say, touching his stiff sleeve. “Are you okay?”

  Lightly, he sniffs then clears his throat. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  “You should never have done that.” He turns to me with a burst of anger. “I should never have let you.”

  “Let me?” I ask, annoyed. “I don’t need your permission to do anything, James. I don’t need anyone’s permission.”

  “I know that.” His voice is raspy. “I was so scared though. I thought I was going to lose you.”

  “Like you lost her,” I say.

  He nods.

  “Ramona,” I say, and he nods again. “Maybe…” I start. “Maybe it would be a good time to talk about her.”

  “Okay,” he says, sighing with resignation.

  The snow dances in the headlights, dots jumping and swaying before dying on the windshield. “Because I don’t think there is a Ramona,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “There was a Ramona.” Tears spill from his eyes.

  “I looked her up,” I say softly, touching his arm again. “I found your brother. I didn’t find her.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then tell me,” I whisper.

  But he starts crying harder. His hands are gripping the wheel as he sobs silently, his chest shaking.

  “Pull over, James,” I say.

  And he does. Slowly, carefully, like he does everything, he pulls over to the side of the road and turns on the hazard lights. The noise clicks rhythmically as he sits there, hiccupping in the seat and wiping his eyes. The headlights flash through the trees in the copse by the road.

  Finally, his breathing steadies, and he turns to me.

  “I had a brother,” he says, “named Robert.”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  James

  “He was my big brother,” I say, “and he was everything to me.”

  I sit a minute to let my thoughts settle. The blinking noise of the hazards soothes me. “He never judged me. Not like other people, other kids…even my parents. Everyone thought I was weird.” I tap on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the hazards, then stop. “I am weird, but he didn’t care.”

  I sniffle and Dahlia digs through her purse and pulls out a crinkly, clean tissue. It smells nice, like lilacs. I would never use anyone else’s tissue, even a clean tissue, with all the germs from sitting around there. But I take Dahlia’s without a second thought.

  “Over time, I got it though, why he was so nice to me. Not just because we were brothers, because I’ve seen a lot of brothers hate each other, like crazy. But Robert understood me, because he felt weird too.” I wipe my nose again, using up the tissue and she hands me another one. A deer trots through the forest, turning to us, eyes turning white in the lights. Then he disappears.

  Dahlia pats my arm to continue.

  “I should have figured it out, if I were paying attention. The clues were all there.” I smooth the soft, clean tissue against my fingers. “Like when he got in trouble for dressing up in my mom’s clothes. And how he always wanted to play with girl things.” Balling up the tissue, I put it in the empty coffee cup. “People called him a faggot, but that wasn’t right. Because the summer before he was going to college, he told me the truth. I remember, because he was trembling so hard I thought he was sick or dying. But he told me that wasn’t it. He just felt like he was really a woman. Inside. That he’d always felt that way and wanted to become one.” Dahlia nods, her eyes understanding. She doesn’t seem weirded out at all.

  “He asked me to call him Ramona and keep it a secret from Dad.”

  She frowns. “That’s a big secret to have to keep.”

  “Yeah. It was.” Dahlia was right. So was Jamal. Secrets are like a black hole. They suck you right up. “But she told my mom. I think she kind of already knew anyway.” I touch the rim of the paper coffee cup. “It went really fast. She was taking the medication, the hormones or whatever. And she really looked like a girl, if you didn’t know her.”

  “Yeah,” Dahlia says. “She looked pretty in the picture.”

  I think of her picture in my wallet. I never had one of Rob, never needed to. “She was so happy that summer. The happiest I’ve ever seen her. She went to Italy and met this group of kids who were really cool to her.” I think back to her coming home. Tann
ed and smiling, with lip gloss. “Then, she told my father.”

  Fog lifts off the street ahead of us, cold pavement, warm air. A car whirs by us, then it is silent again.

  “He didn’t take it well,” she guesses.

  I shake my head. “Wouldn’t accept it at all. Called her Rob. Told her to take all that shit off her face. She went back to Cornell early.”

  Dahlia bites her lip. “That’s too bad.”

  “I’ve always wondered if…maybe he had just…” But I let the thought go. As Jamal told me, the what-ifs aren’t helpful. The endless loop again. “Anyway, she went back. And before classes began, she went out to a bar with a friend.”

  Dahlia looks down at the car floor. I feel nauseated going on, but I do. “She had too much to drink and her friend ended up leaving. And some guys figured out that she wasn’t really a girl.”

  Dahlia takes a breath, and her face looks both angry and sad. “And they didn’t like it.”

  “No,” I say. “They didn’t. And they beat her up. Bad.” I start crying again, tears running down my face, but I don’t wipe them this time. It feels kind of good, just to let them go. “She was never the same. She wasn’t sure of herself anymore. She stayed in her dorm all the time. She didn’t even go to class.”

  Dahlia swallows, and her eyes fill up too.

  “She left me a note though, before she did it. She said she was sorry, and she’d always love me.” I take a deep, steadying breath. “And the note said, ‘I know you think you’re weird, but you’re not. You’re you. Always be yourself,’ it said. ‘Don’t forget that.’”

  Dahlia holds my hand, hers warm and strong. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” I say, taking another deep breath. “And what’s so sad is that she tried to be herself. And it killed her.”

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Dahlia

  Finally, we get to my street and walk through the velour-soft snow up to my apartment. The place seems empty without Simone, but hopefully I’ll get her back soon. I drop my keys on the kitchen table, and James sits on the edge of the couch. I reach into the refrigerator, uncap a half-full glass bottle of Dr Pepper and take a long, wonderful sip. I shut the door to the refrigerator.