“You reported a robbery?” The officer wore a Hoodie but didn’t raise it, instead placing an old-fashioned tablet on the table to take notes. Less intimidating, she guessed. They had a smooth Southern accent.
“Yes.”
“Did they do that to you?” The officer pointed at her left hand.
Her pinkie looked like a swollen sausage, the skin tight and angry. Now that they mentioned it, pain came rushing in. She nodded.
The officer rapped on the wall of the booth. “Can you grab a bag of ice and a towel?”
The server, who’d lingered by the table, disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and returned a moment later. Rosemary accepted the ice and towel through the pass, and held it against her finger.
Officer Selsor started with the basics. Rosemary gave her local address, hoping to avoid questions about why she’d come to town.
“Okay, now, can you tell me what happened?”
She recounted the moment. The details felt useless now—a young white guy she’d barely seen, an attacker she could only describe by his clothing and his left hand.
“What about when he ran away? Did you get a sense of his height? His hair?”
She shook her head. “Baseball cap, red maybe. Short hair, I guess, since I didn’t see it? The jacket was bulky so I don’t know his build. Hard to tell how tall he was because he was standing over me. Five-eight, maybe?”
“And the other guy? Any other details?”
“I barely glimpsed him. I don’t even know if he was trying to help me or working with the second guy.”
“Working with,” said Officer Selsor. “We’ve heard similar from a few people over the last couple weeks. What were you doing out this late? It’s close to curfew.”
“Close to curfew isn’t past curfew. I had the right to be out.”
“Of course. I was just curious what you were doing on that street.”
Rosemary had no reason to withhold any information from the officer, but the question reminded her of her last encounter with the police, when they’d chased everyone out of the 2020. “I was walking. I like to walk at night.”
Officer Selsor opened their mouth, closed it, paused like they were trying to decide what to ask next. “Can I take you to the hospital for your finger?”
“No, thank you. I’ll ice it.” Change of subject worked for her.
“Look, maybe it’s only jammed, or maybe it’s broken. That’s way easier to fix earlier than later.” They lifted their left hand. The middle finger bent back at a bizarre angle before joining the other fingers again, taking the long way when the rest had gone direct.
“No hospital. It’s not that bad. I can go to a clinic tomorrow if it’s still swollen.”
They shrugged. “Your choice. Can I give you a ride back to your apartment?”
Rosemary considered the blocks between the diner and her room. “Thanks, yeah. And, um, I forgot my cash had been stolen when I ordered this food. What should I do?”
“I’ll talk to the manager. I’m sure they’d be fine if you sent them money when you got home.”
The officer left the booth, and returned a minute later with a takeaway box. “It’s on the house. Manager said come back sometime and buy a sandwich under better circumstances.”
The handful of people still in the diner all watched Rosemary go. She followed Officer Selsor out to their patrol car, where they opened the back door. “Sorry, protocol. I can’t have you in the front seat.”
She didn’t really care. She watched out her window, examining the shadows for people.
Her street was dark and quiet. She groped for the door handle and realized there were none; she was in the seat where suspects rode. She waited for Officer Selsor to let her out.
“You’re okay? Do you need to call anyone to stay with you?”
“No, Officer. Thank you for your help.”
The muggers hadn’t taken her keys. Really, they’d caused her as few problems as a mugger could. She didn’t have to apply for a new ID or deal with reaching her landlord to say the keys were gone. She didn’t have to worry that they’d followed her home or knew where she lived.
She poured herself a glass of water, drank it, filled another, then flopped onto the bed. Her energy drained away, leaving only her throbbing finger. She reached for her phone to report her stolen Hoodie to SHL, then realized that if Management looked at its location, it would say she’d been in her room all night. Crap.
All she wanted was to sleep. Instead, she rummaged in her bag for a pen and paper and wrote out the phone numbers for SHL Emergency, Logistics, and Management from her phone. Checked the time: 12:40 a.m. Twenty minutes until Asheville’s curfew, an hour later than Baltimore’s. She filled a pot with water, grabbed a tissue, and headed back downstairs one more time. Looked both ways, but the street was deserted. She probably made a strange picture, wandering the street with a pot of water and a finger like a sausage. Somebody could do her a favor and steal the phone now, too, but nobody came along. She was oddly calm. Impervious.
She walked three blocks, to a restaurant where she’d had tacos two days before, and ducked around the back to the dumpster. She removed the data chip first and put it in the pot, then took it out and snapped it in two. She used the tissue to wipe her own fingerprints off her own phone.
The screen spiderwebbed as it hit the ground. Her heel did more significant damage, grinding it into the pavement, which was strangely satisfying. When she picked it up with the tissue and tossed the pieces in the dumpster, she knew she had finished it off.
Now she was noncomm for real, at least for the night. She made it back to her room a minute before curfew. Iced her finger, took two anti-inflammatories, and passed out.
31
ROSEMARY
Career Suicide
The usual combination of violin and sunlight woke Rosemary. She pulled the pillow over her head, a movement that brought the events of the previous night back to her with finger-screaming clarity. She raised her hand to her face: still swollen, but maybe a little less? Maybe.
She iced it while she rummaged through the kitchen drawers, eventually finding a roll of masking tape, which had enough adhesive left for her to bind the pinkie to its neighbor. Good enough.
She was waiting at the coffee shop door when it opened.
“Thanks for coming last night! You look like hell,” Sadie said. “And you’re not usually here this early. What’s up?”
Rosemary told her about the mugging. “Can I use your phone to call my work and my parents so they don’t worry?”
“Of course. God, I feel awful that happened on your way back from my show. I shouldn’t have let you leave alone.”
“Did you leave alone?”
“Yeah.”
“See, it could’ve happened to you, too. Freak thing.” She’d walked down the wrong street at the wrong moment. For all her worry about strangers with guns and strangers with germs, she’d never even noticed how other people also added safety to a situation. Sure, it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t left Jory, but she couldn’t imagine not having left anymore.
She called home and told her mother she’d smashed her phone (true!), and could she drone one to French Broads Coffee, Rosemary would send her the money when she got back to her room, and yes, she was fine and she’d talk for longer as soon as she had a phone again, sorry for the long silence. Management got a different story: She’d been heading out to a late show when she’d been mugged. She’d given a police report. She’d hurt a finger, but it was okay, and yes, she’d go to a clinic if she needed. They wanted to send an incident report immediately, but she pointed out she had no device with her. They promised to send a new Hoodie right away.