They came for me and led me off the boat and over uneven ground. Up three metal stairs. My wrists were unshackled. My hood was removed.
I was back in the truck. Severe haircut woman was there, at the little desk she’d sat at before. She had a ziploc bag with her, and inside it were my phone and other little devices, my wallet and the change from my pockets. She handed them to me wordlessly.
I filled my pockets. It felt so weird to have everything back in its familiar place, to be wearing my familiar clothes. Outside the truck’s back door, I heard the familiar sounds of my familiar city.
A guard passed me my backpack. The woman extended her hand to me. I just looked at it. She put it down and gave me a wry smile. Then she mimed zipping up her lips and pointed to me, and opened the door.
It was daylight outside, gray and drizzling. I was looking down an alley toward cars and trucks and bikes zipping down the road. I stood transfixed on the truck’s top step, staring at freedom.
My knees shook. I knew now that they were playing with me again. In a moment, the guards would grab me and drag me back inside, the bag would go over my head again, and I would be back on the boat and sent off to the prison again, to the endless, unanswerable questions. I barely held myself back from stuffing my fist in my mouth.
Then I forced myself to go down one stair. Another stair. The last stair. My sneakers crunched down on the crap on the alley’s floor, broken glass, a needle, gravel. I took a step. Another. I reached the mouth of the alley and stepped onto the sidewalk.
No one grabbed me.
I was free.
Then strong arms threw themselves around me. I nearly cried.
Chapter 5
This chapter is dedicated to Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles, my drop-dead all-time favorite comic store in the world. It’s small and selective about what it stocks, and every time I walk in, I walk out with three or four collections I’d never heard of under my arm. It’s like the owners, Dave and David, have the uncanny ability to predict exactly what I’m looking for, and they lay it out for me seconds before I walk into the store. I discovered about three quarters of my favorite comics by wandering into SHQ, grabbing something interesting, sinking into one of the comfy chairs, and finding myself transported to another world. When my second story-collection, OVERCLOCKED, came out, they worked with local illustrator Martin Cenreda to do a free mini-comic based on Printcrime, the first story in the book. I left LA about a year ago, and of all the things I miss about it, Secret Headquarters is right at the top of the list.
Secret Headquarters: 3817 W. Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90026 +1 323 666 2228
But it was Van, and she was crying, and hugging me so hard I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t care. I hugged her back, my face buried in her hair.
“You’re OK!” she said.
“I’m OK,” I managed.
She finally let go of me and another set of arms wrapped themselves around me. It was Jolu! They were both there. He whispered, “You’re safe, bro,” in my ear and hugged me even tighter than Vanessa had.
When he let go, I looked around. “Where’s Darryl?” I asked.
They both looked at each other. “Maybe he’s still in the truck,” Jolu said.
We turned and looked at the truck at the alley’s end. It was a nondescript white 18-wheeler. Someone had already brought the little folding staircase inside. The rear lights glowed red, and the truck rolled backwards towards us, emitting a steady eep, eep, eep.
“Wait!” I shouted as it accelerated towards us. “Wait! What about Darryl?” The truck drew closer. I kept shouting. “What about Darryl?”
Jolu and Vanessa each had me by an arm and were dragging me away. I struggled against them, shouting. The truck pulled out of the alley’s mouth and reversed into the street and pointed itself downhill and drove away. I tried to run after it, but Van and Jolu wouldn’t let me go.
I sat down on the sidewalk and put my arms around my knees and cried. I cried and cried and cried, loud sobs of the sort I hadn’t done since I was a little kid. They wouldn’t stop coming. I couldn’t stop shaking.
Vanessa and Jolu got me to my feet and moved me a little ways up the street. There was a Muni bus stop with a bench and they sat me on it. They were both crying too, and we held each other for a while, and I knew we were crying for Darryl, whom none of us ever expected to see again.
We were north of Chinatown, at the part where it starts to become North Beach, a neighborhood with a bunch of neon strip clubs and the legendary City Lights counterculture bookstore, where the Beat poetry movement had been founded back in the 1950s.
I knew this part of town well. My parents’ favorite Italian restaurant was here and they liked to take me here for big plates of linguine and huge Italian ice-cream mountains with candied figs and lethal little espressos afterward.
Now it was a different place, a place where I was tasting freedom for the first time in what seemed like an eternity.
We checked our pockets and found enough money to get a table at one of the Italian restaurants, out on the sidewalk, under an awning. The pretty waitress lighted a gas-heater with a barbeque lighter, took our orders and went inside. The sensation of giving orders, of controlling my destiny, was the most amazing thing I’d ever felt.
“How long were we in there?” I asked.
“Six days,” Vanessa said.
“I got five,” Jolu said.
“I didn’t count.”
“What did they do to you?” Vanessa said. I didn’t want to talk about it, but they were both looking at me. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I told them everything, even when I’d been forced to piss myself, and they took it all in silently. I paused when the waitress delivered our sodas and waited until she got out of earshot, then finished. In the telling, it receded into the distance. By the end of it, I couldn’t tell if I was embroidering the truth or if I was making it all seem less bad. My memories swam like little fish that I snatched at, and sometimes they wriggled out of my grasp.
Jolu shook his head. “They were hard on you, dude,” he said. He told us about his stay there. They’d questioned him, mostly about me, and he’d kept on telling them the truth, sticking to a plain telling of the facts about that day and about our friendship. They had gotten him to repeat it over and over again, but they hadn’t played games with his head the way they had with me. He’d eaten his meals in a mess-hall with a bunch of other people, and been given time in a TV room where they were shown last year’s blockbusters on video.
Vanessa’s story was only slightly different. After she’d gotten them angry by talking to me, they’d taken away her clothes and made her wear a set of orange prison overalls. She’d been left in her cell for two days without contact, though she’d been fed regularly. But mostly it was the same as Jolu: the same questions, repeated again and again.
“They really hated you,” Jolu said. “Really had it in for you. Why?”
I couldn’t imagine why. Then I remembered.
You can cooperate, or you can be very, very sorry.
“It was because I wouldn’t unlock my phone for them, that first night. That’s why they singled me out.” I couldn’t believe it, but there was no other explanation. It had been sheer vindictiveness. My mind reeled at the thought. They had done all that as a mere punishment for defying their authority.
I had been scared. Now I was angry. “Those bastards,” I said, softly. “They did it to get back at me for mouthing off.”
Jolu swore and then Vanessa cut loose in Korean, something she only did when she was really, really angry.
“I’m going to get them,” I whispered, staring at my soda. “I’m going to get them.”