“Linda,” he said quietly. “Hit the garage door and call security.”
She touched the switch on the wall, then disappeared into the house. With a soft clattering and humming, the garage door lifted into its track, letting in a slab of yellow sunlight. David picked me up and half carried, half dragged me toward the opening.
“Let go of me!” I said in a panic, still clutching my cane with both hands. “You’re hurting me!”
“I’m hurting you?” he said, his voice ragged.
“It’s a goddamned car!” I screamed at him. “I’m a person! I’m a person!”
But I wasn’t, a familiar voice whispered to me. Not to him. Not to anyone.
He said nothing, just set me down ass-first on the driveway and turned to walk stiffly back into the garage. “Pull yourself together and get out of here,” he said as he went, still not looking at me. “We’re done.”
“David,” I called after his back as he walked under the door. I wondered for a moment if I should get up and follow him, do something, but then the door began to rattle back down, and I realized that everything hurt too much for me to stand.
There didn’t seem to be much point in moving, anyway. Even if I called a cab, security would get here first, and I certainly couldn’t outrun anyone on foot. I thought about calling Caryl, but given that I was already on probation, I didn’t want to explain why I was sprawled on my ass in her number one donor’s front yard.
A Prius pulled up to the curb before long, repainted in officious black and white with HILLSTAR SECURITY on the side. A uniformed rent-a-cop got out and approached me with a stormy expression. He was heavyset with suede-colored skin and a broad nose. He did not look like the kind of person prone to sympathy, and contrary to what you see in the movies, giving attitude to law enforcement types never ends in hilarity.
“You’re going to need to come with me,” he said.
I tried to get to my feet, but it was complicated. I seemed to have wrenched something pretty badly during my explosion of violence, though I hadn’t noticed when I was still flooded with adrenaline.
Rent-a-Cop stared at me suspiciously. “If you do not cooperate, I will have to encourage Mr. Berenbaum to press charges. You are guilty of malicious mischief, which means up to a year in jail and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. Do you want to spend a year in jail, or do you want to move things along?”
“I’m injured,” I said. “And as you can see, I am also an amputee. I am trying to get up, but I’m in a lot of pain.”
“Do not try to play the victim, lady. You might as well take a blowtorch to the Liberty Bell. If you think you’re going to file a lawsuit, by the way, you had better think again.”
“I would never—”
“I don’t care how many limbs you’re missing; this is David Berenbaum you’re fucking with. Do you know how much money he and his wife gave to battered women’s shelters last year? He didn’t touch you, and no lawyer in the world could convince anyone otherwise.”
This is the problem with security guards sometimes. Some of them have frustrated ideals and a tendency to editorialize when they have a bad guy in their sights. Thing is, though, he was right. Berenbaum hadn’t assaulted me. But the guard’s diatribe sounded so much like some of the stuff I was told about Professor Scott that my brain short-circuited. Suddenly I felt as though Berenbaum were responsible for my injuries. I gave up on standing and just started to sob.
“Stop that,” said the guard. “That doesn’t work on me. Get up. Now.”
I forced myself to my feet and bit my tongue. Rent-a-Cop was looking for a reason to throw me on the mercy of the LAPD, and I was close enough to a complete mental breakdown without having a slumber party behind bars in Lynwood.
I painfully lurched my way over to the Prius and crawled into the backseat, still crying. I didn’t have a tissue, and so I took great pleasure in wiping the snotty back of my hand against the seat when he wasn’t looking.
“Where is your vehicle?” he asked me.
I resisted the urge to reply, Probably in an impound lot in Westwood somewhere, and instead just said, “I don’t have one.”
“Where do you live?”
“Near USC,” I said.
“Do you have enough for bus fare?”
I did not say, I have enough for a cab, jerk-off; I am not a bag lady. I just said, “Yes.”
He dropped me off at the nearest bus stop, and a heavily outnumbered faction of my brain cells noticed that this was more courtesy than he really owed me. The rest of my mind was fully occupied with imagining humiliating ways for him to die.