Five more days. Now this. Thank you, Holtz-Thank you, Carla. Thank you, fucking police. At least in Romania they just shoot you and get it over with.
He twisted the blinds shut all the way again and went into the kitchen. He made a big Bloody Mary with the mix from the fridge and the vodka from the freezer and about a tablespoon of hot sauce.
MAKE our NElGHborhood
SAFE for the CHILdren!
His phone rang again. Holtz had called once yesterday and once today. Kaufman, the ACLU lawyer, had called twice today and promised to call again. Sure enough:
Mr. Colesceau, this is Seth Kaufman of the American Civil Liberties Union again. I just wanted to make it clear that we’re concerned about you and your rights. We think we can help you and we’re willing to do so. I’ll leave my number again and encourage you to call. We can’t help you if you won’t help us help you. My home number is...
Colesceau felt a rush of anger surge through him and he picked up the phone.
“This is Matamoros.”
“Good, great. I’m glad you picked up. Now, how are you holding up?”
“It is difficult. I feel like an animal.”
“They’re treating you worse than an animal. I hear something in the background. Are those your neighbors?”
“They chant like monks, hours at a time. I feel like it may cause me to lose my mind.”
“Can I come over? Like right now? I think we can get a court order to desist against them, or at least move them back to the nearest public place. You live in an apartment complex, correct?”
“The Quail Creek Apartment Homes in Irvine.”
“Well, that’s private property. Do you have a back door into your unit?”
“None.”
“All right. Look, there are a lot of people out there who are on your side. And we can convince a lot of others, if you’re willing to stand your ground and speak your piece. We’ll talk about our options. Would you mind making a statement on-camera? It could go a long way to getting some public sympathy coming our direction.”
“I have nothing to hide. But I don’t like cameras.”
“No cameras, then. Until we meet, don’t say anything to anybody. Don’t open the door. Don’t say anything to those people. I’ll be coming down from L.A. so let’s say exactly one hour from now. I can get you out of there, we can go get some coffee or dinner if you want. Or I’ll bring some takeout.”
“That would be welcome. I need to go out.”
“Do you have a copy of the medical protocol you signed when they released you from the hospital?”
“I have it.”
“Perfect. Give me your address.”
Kaufman brought an overcoat that Colesceau pulled on over his own before they walked through the front door and into the jeers of the crowd. Even with his face buried down in the big coat he could see the bright jolts of light from die photographers’ flash attachments, and he could feel the white brightness of the lights set up for the video shooters. And the chant tripled in volume as he moved toward the driveway and Kaufman’s car.
... get out of Irvine... miserable creep... pack your bags... the fuck out... rapist, raper, human swine... don’t come back... keep on going... filthy animal... don’t sleep or we’ll bum your place down with you in it...
“Middle America snarls,” whispered Kaufman as he swung open his car door and guided Colesceau in. “You’re just this week’s entertainment.”
A moment later Colesceau’s head pitched forward as Kaufman backed out of the driveway and swung wide, then shifted into drive and gunned it down the street.
Kaufman suggested a family-style restaurant on a busy boulevard up in Costa Mesa. He spoke to the waitresses by name and seemed expected. Colesceau was shocked to be introduced and not see them recoil in disgust. Pratt and his sneaky sidekick Garry had told all their customers about him before he even started work there, apparently, and rarely did he meet someone who failed to register morbid interest. You could see it in their eyes.
The booth was back in the corner by the rest room hallway. It was large and private and upholstered in vinyl. Plastic ferns hung above it from thin chains. There was a bus tray piled high with dirty dishes across the aisle from the table in front of them, but other than that the table was fine.
He studied the lawyer for the first time: a pretty man of perhaps thirty, physically fit, sandy brown hair and very blue eyes. Pretty in the sense that he was so vibrantly groomed: teeth and gums sparkling, fingernails coated with clear polish, casually perfect hair. Colesceau, no stranger to fine menswear — at least as a window shopper — priced out Kaufman’s tie at $80. It made absolute sense to him to be represented by a lawyer who was successful.
First Kaufman told him what the ACLU was, how it stood for protecting individual constitutional rights, often from those very agencies that were supposed to guarantee them — government, law enforcement, the courts of law, and so on. There was no charge for their representation. All ACLU attorneys were paid an annual salary, modest at best. They had been behind some of the biggest decisions ever made in this country, and had successfully defended men and women from small civil courtrooms to the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Kaufman personally saw his organization as the best and final weapon a citizen could use against the powers of the state. A weapon against fascism, racism, the abridgment of personal liberties. A sort of David to the state’s Goliath.
Kaufman spit all this out in a hurry, and Colesceau had the impression he’d said it a million times before. The waitress took their orders.
“Are you willing to speak to me frankly?” Kaufman asked when she was gone.
“I have nothing to hide.”
The lawyer studied him with his cool blue eyes. “Did you bring the protocol for the hormone treatment?”
Colesceau withdrew the document from his coat pocket and handed it to Kaufman.
Kaufman unfolded it and smoothed it out against the tabletop. “Have you had all the injections, every week?”
“Every week.”
“What’s it feel like? To have that hormone in you.”
Colesceau looked hard at the lawyer, then out toward the bus tray of dirty dishes still sitting in the aisle, then to the stout redhaired waitress busying herself under the flickering fluorescent light behind the counter. She glanced at him with exaggerated indifference.
“Don’t answer that if you’re uncomfortable. I just remember reading the Assembly floor analysis of AB 3339 — the chemical castration bill — and thinking what a goddamned barbaric thing it was.”
Colesceau almost liked this man. “It feels terrible. It turns you into a woman very slowly. But not all the way. I have gained weight and my genitals got small. My breasts have grown unnaturally. The hair on my face turned to fuzz. I’m irritable and emotional in a way I never was before. I feel like my soul has been asked to change. I feel like I am being forced to become a person different than the one I was born.”
Kaufman had produced a narrow notebook and was writing in it now. “What’s it done to your sex drive? Do you get erections?”
“Almost never.”
Colesceau looked at the lawyer. This lawyer is really no different than anybody else, he thought: he’s nosy, impudent, disrespectful and gleefully fascinated by the plight of my testicles. Colesceau imagined his own right arm in a short, chopping motion, totally unexpected, delivering an ice pick straight through the expensive cotton shirt and through the attorney’s stunned heart.