Talk Talk

by T. C. Boyle

  He’d called every attorney in the phone book and got nothing but recordings, You’ve reached the law offices of Merker, Stillman; our hours are ten a.m. to five p.m., Monday through Friday; if this is an emergency, please call 565-1608. It was an emergency and he did call—some fifty-four different attorneys at law—and all but one of the emergency numbers fed him a recording as well. The one that didn’t—this was Saturday morning—was answered by an overwrought woman who demanded to know who in hell had referred Bridger to her private number and what was so goddamned earth-shattering that he had to interrupt her on her day off. There were shouts in the background, the thwack of a tennis ball connecting with the sweet spot of a racket. He explained the situation to her and suddenly she was the most reasonable and beneficent woman in the world, outraged over what the legal system had done to his significant other—Dana, that was her name, right? Dana?—and willing to fight for her till she dropped…as soon as she got her retainer in the amount of $75,000, that is.

  At eight twenty-five the room began to fill, people of all ages ducking through the door with a nervous glance at the judge’s dais before sliding noiselessly into one or another of the pews. Their demeanor indicated how modest, submissive and blameless they were, men and women alike, each of them a dutiful citizen who wouldn’t dream of causing the least disturbance or questioning the authority of the court. Their hair was freshly shampooed and they’d made an effort to dress for the occasion, the men in clean pressed shirts, some even with ties knotted meekly round their necks, the women in muted colors and clutching their best purses: these were the people who’d been arrested for brawling in the streets, public intoxication, domestic disturbances and DUIs, the ones who’d been bailed out to sleep in their own beds and see to their grooming and makeup. The others, the ones like Dana, were waiting in the wings somewhere, and Bridger felt his pulse jump each time the door behind the judge’s desk swung open.

  The cop had been joined by a colleague now—same shirt, muscles, walkie-talkie, but shorter and darker, with a hard incriminatory gaze—and the two of them stood sentry while the clerks filed in from stage left as if this were the opening of a play, which, in some sense, Bridger supposed, it was. When everyone had taken his place, the judge’s door flew open and shut and the judge was amongst them and the taller cop cried out, “All please rise and come to order, the Honorable Kathleen McIntyre presiding.”

  Bridger’s hopes rose: a female judge. He studied her face even as he lifted himself from the seat and subsided again, and it was an interesting face, sympathetic, kindly even, poignant eyes, tasteful makeup, tasteful hair. He felt sure this whole fiasco would be resolved as soon as she got a look at Dana—she’d see in an instant that the woman before her was no forger, thief, batterer, no assaulter with a deadly weapon or fugitive from justice. Not Dana. Dana was lithe and beautiful. She was a teacher. She had no record of any kind. She was deaf. And innocent, purely innocent. Surely, Justice McIntyre would see that. Anybody would.

  But Dana didn’t appear. First a whole squad of lawyers in expensive suits, perfectly groomed, signed in and conferred with the judge on one motion or another or on behalf of so and so, and then the Spanish interpreter gave his spiel to the courtroom and everyone was admonished to watch the fifteen-minute video—first in Spanish, then in English—that explained their rights. Once the video was over, the judge started hurtling through the docket, people stepping forward as their names were called, the judge reading the charges aloud, apprising them of what the DA (cocky, square-shouldered, young, his hair right out of a fashion magazine) advised in their case and asking how they pled. Most, including the male half of the young couple with the comic pages, were charged with public intoxication and/or driving under the influence and most pleaded no contest and got off with time served, a fine and a contribution to the Victims’ Assistance Fund. There were more compelling cases—an old woman with madhouse hair and staring eyes who’d been accused of driving on a suspended license, leaving the scene of an accident and failure to appear; a gangbanger sporting the ritual tattoos who’d been charged with distributing drugs in prison and who was there after surrendering on a warrant, only to be handcuffed and led away—but the real meat of the calendar, the serious charges, had to wait until after the noon-hour recess. Bridger couldn’t believe it—he’d wasted a whole morning and Radko would have his ass—and for what? He still hadn’t laid eyes on Dana since the night before she’d been arrested. He wanted to hit something with a mallet—with the judge’s hammer, with a plank torn from one of the pews—hit it and hit it till it splintered.

  Then came the afternoon. More lawyers, more criminals, suits, hangdog looks, Justice McIntyre growing sharper and more irritated as the day wore on. Finally, at a quarter past two, the door to the rear of the jury box opened and two long rattling files of prisoners in orange jumpsuits and leg restraints shuffled into the room, men and women taking seats in alternating rows. Bridger half-rose, straining to see as the face of one woman after another appeared framed in the doorway and was replaced by the next. When he did ultimately spot Dana coming through the door sandwiched between a rangy black-eyed woman with a teetering head and angry shoulders and a big butterball of a girl with her scalp shaved to stubble and a silver stud punched through her right eyebrow, he barely recognized her. Her shoulders were slumped, her head down, her hair unwashed and uncombed. There seemed to be a smear of something on her chin.

  She sat with the others, her legs shackled, and she never even lifted her eyes to scan the gallery for him. He was riveted with anger, with horror. It was all he could do to stop from shouting out, and he saw too the insidious way the system worked, varnished wood and the grain of history notwithstanding—if you spent the weekend in jail, no matter how innocent you might be, you were doomed to the jailhouse look, to the look of incrimination and guilt. You were dirty, your spirit had been crushed, and if you weren’t guilty of the charges against you, you were guilty all the same, of being accused, of being listless, hopeless, dirty and alienated. He made a promise to himself in that moment: never, no matter how much time passed, would he let this rest, never.

  When the judge called her name, Dana rose to her feet and cried out that she was present, her voice ricocheting from one side of the courtroom to the other, and there standing beside her and responding in a high redemptive singsong, was her court-appointed attorney, a woman of fifty in a skirt and blazer and with a face that shouted out for justice. “Your honor,” the woman sang and it was a song she’d practiced on a hundred other afternoons in court, “I’m Marie Eustace from the Public Defender’s office appearing for Dana Halter, who is in custody here beside me, and I’d like to request an immediate identity hearing in this case—it’s obviously a TODDI. My client is locally known as an educator here in San Roque, she suffers from a disability and has no record whatever. She’s been falsely arrested, Your Honor, and endured a weekend in County, and I’m confident we can fax these jurisdictions for fingerprint and photo ID and have her out of here this afternoon.”

  And now Bridger saw the second figure there, standing in the row in front of her, a little windup toy of a man almost as short as Deet-Deet, who was interpreting for her in ASL. His hands worked and twisted in small Sign, elbows pressed to his side, and he paused for the judge’s response.

  Bridger looked to the judge. She was frowning, glancing from the attorney to the interpreter to Dana, her brow creased under a descending wave of professionally dyed and blow-dried hair. “All right, Counselor,” she said, letting out a long exasperated breath, “see what you can do and when you’ve got something to show me we’ll proceed.”

  It was then that he finally caught Dana’s eye—she saw him, locked on him; it was unmistakable; she saw him right there in the courtroom doing everything he could do—but the look she gave him wasn’t a look of love, gratitude or even relief. She looked into his eyes, burned into him, and then she looked away.

  Five

  THEY LEFT THE COUNTY JAIL
at four a.m., a breakfast of white bread and processed cheese with a dried-out tangerine and the fruit drink distributed to them in the brown paper sack as they boarded the bus, and she ate every morsel, though she had to chew gingerly around the bad tooth, and licked her fingers afterward. She even felt the smallest pulse of optimism—they were moving, the wheels of justice grinding forward as the bus lurched and bounced and the safety glass rattled like a machine gun against the steel mesh, and she didn’t care where they were going as long as it put distance between her and the hellhole she’d just vacated. People let their heads loll against the backs of the seats, their eyes closed and legs splayed. There was a taint of exhaust leaching in from under the floorboards and it was a small mercy because it cut through the human smell. The only light came from the green glow of the dash and the pale wash of the headlights beyond and Dana focused on it. The others might have been asleep, but she sat rigid with anticipation, staring out over the driver’s silhouette to where the dark slick of the roadway unraveled before them and the hills and trees opened up on amber streetlights and the shadowy roofs of condos and tract homes where people lay dreaming.

  The bus deposited them at the courthouse, a policeman with a shotgun standing guard while they shuffled through a corridor and into a holding cell located somewhere in proximity to the courtroom itself. Once they were safely inside the cell, a guard released the handcuffs and they were allowed to mingle and gather as they saw fit. Dana kept to herself, or tried to. She made her way to the far corner of the cell, eased herself down on the floor and was careful to avoid eye contact with anyone, but the fat girl was there like a picked scab, dodging into her frame of reference every two minutes, and Angela careened from one group of women to the next, her fingers locked in the nicotine gesture, until finally she collapsed beside Dana and began a long spittle-flecked monologue on a subject—or subjects—that remained mysterious. Nothing happened through the long morning and into the early afternoon, when everyone began to bristle and stir as if an electric current had been switched on, and a man from the Public Defender’s office swept into the cell and gave a speech Dana didn’t catch at all. Shortly thereafter Iverson appeared, weaving his way through the clutch of prisoners, a woman with a briefcase at his side.

  And what did she feel when she spotted him there amidst the crowd swiveling his head from side to side, looking for her? Elation. Pure elation. She might not have liked him, might have assigned him a good measure of the blame for what had happened to her—he should have intervened, should have explained to them that they’d got the wrong person, should have persisted and used his influence and got her out—but she gazed on him now as if he were her savior. Finally, finally something was happening. He introduced the woman, who handed her her card—Marie Eustace, Public Defender—and leaned in close to quiz her sufficiently enough to understand that this was all a mistake, Iverson simultaneously translating in his rigid mechanical Sign. It took no more than five minutes. They would establish the identity of the true criminal and have her out of here ASAP, that was the promise, and Marie Eustace put on a look of high dudgeon and told her how outraged she was that the court had fallen asleep on this one. “Don’t you worry,” she told her, “we’ll have you out in no time,” and then she moved on to huddle with Angela.

  Dana had never been in court before and the flags and the arras and the great seal and all the rest might have impressed her under other circumstances, but all she felt as she sat there in the dock (that was the term, wasn’t it?—yes, from the Flemish for hutch, pen, cage) was the same shame and anger she’d felt on the morning of her arrest, though it was multiplied now. By the power of ten, ten at least. She couldn’t lift her head, couldn’t scan the cluster of spectators for Bridger’s face, couldn’t do anything but go deep and close herself down. All through the weekend she’d distracted herself by mentally conjuring the poems she made a practice of beating out in class for her students so they could feel the music of them, the dactyls, iambs and trochees singing in their heads even as her hands thumped the rhythm on one desktop after another. She did it now, head bowed, vanished from the scene: Just as my fingers on these keys / Make music, so the self-same sounds / On my spirit make a music too.

  When they finally got to her, after Angela, after the big girl with the shaven head (with the unlikely name of Beatrice Flowers), after half a dozen men who tightened their jaws and flexed their shoulders as they stood before the judge, she came out of her trance long enough to startle the whole courtroom with the unleashed power of her voice: “Yes,” she said, standing as Iverson signed that they’d called her name, “I’m present.” That was when she looked up and saw Bridger, his face crying out to her, and he was the only one in the courtroom who didn’t flinch at the sound of her voice. She gave him nothing, not hope or joy or love. Then she sat down again and dropped her head.

  More waiting. Eternal waiting. Cases came and went, charges were read aloud, pleas made and recorded, bail set and fines levied. At four-fifteen Marie Eustace reappeared to confer with the judge and present into evidence faxes from each of the jurisdictions in question, and the judge put on her reading glasses while the court went lax and people studied the ceiling or ducked in and out of the door on urgent business. Then the judge removed her glasses and called Dana’s name again, Iverson signing, and Dana found herself edging past people to approach the bench, and at least they’d released her shackles, at least there was that.

  The judge’s eyes were a milky blue, faded and blanched as if all the vitality had gone out of them, yet she had a smile in reserve, a rueful smile, which she somehow managed to summon for the occasion of this, Dana Halter’s exoneration. Dana could see it all before it happened—yes, it was a case of mistaken identity, or worse, identity theft—and the lethargy she’d felt was replaced suddenly by anger, by a rage that built in her till she couldn’t contain it. “The court must offer you our deepest apologies,” the judge was saying, as Iverson’s hands worked and twisted before her, “because this was an ordeal you’ve been through, I know that, but until the evidence came in”—and here she held up a handful of faxes, the first of which, from Tulare County, showed the shadowy likeness of a stranger, a white male nonetheless, under the tag Dana Halter—“there was nothing we could do. But we do apologize—I apologize—and we will give you every consideration we can in straightening this out. Our victims’ assistance people are as good as they come and will be available to you immediately on release.”

  But she had to speak, had to push it. “Is that it?” she said, and she had no idea whether she was shouting or whispering. “Is that all you’re going to do?”

  Marie Eustace blanched. Iverson signed frantically, That’s enough. No more. She’s going to dismiss.

  Dana swung round on him, signing back, big Sign, angry Sign, her arms looping and elbows jabbing: You shut up because I don’t need you—and when I did need you you weren’t there. All of it came out then, all the hurt and confusion, and she turned back to the judge and let her voice lash out like a physical extension of herself, of her furiously signing hands:. “I’ve been locked up, I’ve been abused—I missed two days of work with no way even to call anybody—and you give me this, this apology and it’s supposed to make everything all right?” Her face twisted. She felt absurd, hateful, a clown in an orange jumpsuit, and she could see the judge’s eyes hardening, and what word was on her lips, what curse?—Shit, shit, that was what it was, she was about to proclaim it all shit—but before she could spew it out Marie Eustace stepped forward and said something to the judge and the judge looked directly at Dana and her lips said, “Case dismissed.”

  She had no intention of sitting in an airless office disclosing herself to the victims’ assistance people, answering their idiotic questions, filling out forms, lip-reading the banality of their clichés while Charles Iverson juggled his hands—she didn’t have one more second to waste. Not one. She wanted out of the jumpsuit, wanted her clothes back, her keys, her car—and the papers, t
he student papers. And she had to call the school and explain herself, had to go in in person and throw herself on Dr. Koch’s mercy, had to meet her class and do her job—if she still had a job. Because who was going to believe her? People didn’t just get thrown in jail for no reason, not in this country, anyway. Even as they began the paperwork to process her out, even as Marie Eustace arranged for the court to provide her with an affidavit proclaiming her innocence, she could picture the look of incredulity and anger on Dr. Koch’s face, less than a week left in the term and one of his teachers skipping out early…

  But what she wanted most of all, sitting mutely in a colorless anteroom somewhere in the depths of the building and waiting for them to file their papers and rescind the charges and give her back her life, was a shower. She worked at her fingernails, one nail under the other, and they were black with the filth of that place, with the filth of those ugly jeering women, the prostitutes and street people and addicts and drunks, common drunks. She’d passed them in the street a hundred times, felt sorry for them, always one to reach into her purse for a handful of change or a dollar bill, but never again. They were common, she knew that now, common as in not refined; vulgar; low; coarse. And petty. Nasty. With no human feeling and no love but for themselves. The menu peuple, the mob, the hoi polloi. That was what they were—it was Lord of the Flies in that cell, on the streets, everywhere she turned, and where did that leave her? Where it left Ralph, where it left Piggy. But she was no victim, she refused to be, and once she got home, once she shut the door behind her and locked out the world, she was going to stand under the shower and scrub the dirt off her till the water ran cold and then she was going to call Dr. Koch and go straight to the impound yard, wherever that was, and get those papers out of the backseat of the car. Just the thought of it gave her a pang—she was so far behind. It was insane. Like the nightmares she’d have in the moments before waking, the ones in which she appeared in front of the class with no lesson, no plan, her hair a mess, her clothes fallen in a heap at her feet. Naked. Frozen. Unable to speak with her hands or her tongue either.