Page 22 of Over You
“That’s it?” I arched an eyebrow at the portly cop sporting a graying porn-stache. The plastic bag he held out had nothing but a sheet and terry cloth slippers from the day spa. No wallet. No jeans. No shirt.
The man hitched up his shoulders.
“You want me to change out of this jumpsuit and into a fucking sheet?”
“It’s what you came in with.” A smartass smirk turned his lips. “Although, the sheet was tied around your neck like a cape. Looks like that satanic music you play has gone to your head, son.”
Devil music. With a sigh, I snatched the bag from his grasp. “The person posting bail didn’t bring any clothes?”
With a frown, the cop shuffled to the side of the room and took the receiver from the phone on the wall. His fat finger pressed the button. “Darlene, are there any clothes up there for the Caped Crusader?”
I wanted to cup my hand over his mouth and shove that self-righteous chuckle back down his throat.
“Alright.” He hung up. “Darlene’s bringing your fancy clothes to you.” He hitched his slacks back under his gut. “What makes you want to wear eyeliner?”
“Satan.”
His brows pulled together, his mustache wiggling. He busied himself by fiddling through Tupperware containers of inmate’s belongings. The heavy, metal door creaked to my right, and a wiry woman with bouffant brown hair stepped in and handed me a folded pair of jeans and my Van Halen shirt.
No shoes.
After I changed, the cop led me down a corridor and into the booking room.
Booking rooms in jails are something a person needs to experience to truly appreciate. And I’d had my fair share of experiences—in multiple cities and countries. They all reeked of piss and locker-room feet. There was always the woman standing at the payphone in nothing but a stained undershirt, shouting about bail money. At a minimum, there would be one drunk puking in the corner. Everything felt corroded by a combination of Ebola and fecal matter, and while that typically didn’t bother me, this particular time, I was barefoot.
Familiar with the drill, I walked to the counter to wait on my paperwork. The cop went over the ins and outs, the bail that had been posted, the trial date. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I scrawled my signature over the line marked with anX, then pushed it across the stand.
The cop looked to his left and then his right. He leaned over the counter. “‘Dolly Want A Screw’ is the best song. Could I get an autograph?”
The pen rolled across the worktop, stopping next to my hand. Although I wanted to tell the guy to fuck off, I was in the middle of a police station, so I scribbled my name on a blank piece of paper.
After admiring it for a second, he mumbled something about getting laid by Jessica, then slid that autographed paper beneath his keyboard.
On my way to the exit, the glass doors slid open. Ricky stormed in, cheeks puffy and hellfire-and-brimstone red to which I gave a one-fingered wave when I brushed past. “Do you know the amount of legal shit I’ve had to handle today?” His hand seized my shoulder, and I elbowed his side, shoving him away.
“If I remember correctly, when I first signed, you told me the troubled-rocker image sold.”
“Troubled rocker, not the bat-shit crazy, I-ate-bath-salts drug addict, you idiot.”
People stared as we made our way through the waiting room. Paparazzi and a handful of news stations crowded the exit, cameras at the ready.
Ricky pulled a pair of Aviators from his shirt pocket and handed them to me.
“You brought sunglasses, but you couldn’t bring me shoes?”
“Two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars bail!”
“Ah, come on.” I patted his back when we stepped to the doors. “That’s chump change for all the publicity this is getting. Right?”
Ricky mumbledassholeunder his breath as we stepped into the California heat and an array of clicks and whir of shutters and a flurry of flashes. We fought our way through the parking lot to Ricky’s Range Rover. The paparazzi followed with their cameras. After I’d climbed inside, they closed in with their lenses to the window.
“Vultures,” Ricky muttered once he’d shut the door.
There was a pack of gum on the console. I grabbed it, tossed a stick into my mouth, then I took one of his woodgrain pens and wrote:Pro: She never had to see me like this.The engine cranked, but the pap didn’t budge. Ricky laid on his horn, swearing as he threw the car into reverse. The vehicle jolted back, giving a few of the guys a good shove. Another blast from the horn and the crowd finally dispersed.
The Range Rover tousled over a speedbump, the movement jostling Ricky’s jowls. “What kind of drug did you take to make you do something so idiotic?” he asked.
“Something Danté had.”
