"Sure, Glitter. What do you want? Cheetos again?"
The officers start walking us toward a large white police van while Ricky and Glitter continue negotiating what sounds like a planned snack stop. She asks him to grab snacks for all three of the women. Cheetos for her, Doritos for another, and a Snickers bar for the third. No one asks me what I want. Which would be to go back to sleep and start this day over again tomorrow.
I do my best to step up carefully in the van in my dress and heels, and trust me when I say that it isn't easy when you're daisy chained to a woman in front of you and in back of you. I wince slightly when the backs of my thighs touch the ice cold metal benches in the van.
"I've never seen you before. Where you do work?" The woman Glitter asks me with high suspicion in her voice.
"At Memorial Hospital," I say out loud. Hoping that both cops sitting up front will see the error of their ways. I am a normal, upstanding, law abiding citizen.I don't belong in hereis what I really want to scream.
"Memorial hospital? You're a square?"
"Umm, a what?"
"People with normal jobs. People who don't hustle."
"Oh well, then yeah, that's me. The square. I'm a nurse."
"What'd they arrest you for? You beat up your old man or something? Kill a patient?"
"Nothing that interesting I'm afraid. I was arrested for non-payment of a traffic ticket."
I almost topple over to one side as the officers recklessly ride over the many potholes in the streets.
"A ticket?"
"Yep."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"Aww, girl, that's fucked up."
"Sure the hell is." One of the other women agrees.
"Why'd you arrest this poor square, Ricky?"
"Wasn't me," he responds while still facing forward in the passenger seat.
"Y'all arresting squares for tickets now just to get your arrest quotas up?"
Detective Ricky turns around with a scrunched up expression across his face. Clearly not liking the insinuation my new best friend is making.
"It's because of the new quality of life laws on the books. Trying to clean up the city from the likes of you girls and your employers. You break the law and we're arresting you. Regardless of what law it is. Now if you want me and Paul to stop at the store before your long night in holding, I suggest you shut it."
Glitter completely ignores his warning.
I'm starting to really like this girl.
"That's fucked up, Ricky. She's a nurse. Hope you never end up at her hospital on a gurney."
He glances at me briefly, but then doesn't respond to Glitter's words. I think it's pretty evident that he knows my arrest is bullshit, but he also doesn't care.
The impact of what is happening right now is starting to hit me.
Hard.
I'm handcuffed to a group of working women, hustlers, prostitutes.
I'm going to a place called central booking.
I'm going to be charged with a crime.
And I'm scared shitless.
* * *
