“That’s a strip club?” Noah says. “I didn’t even know.”
“Deliberately obtuse, obtuse,obtuse!” I say.
Alex walks over to me. “Calm down. What did the police say?”
“The cop I spoke with said they believed the boys were in the laundromat to vandalize it, and then apparently when your son was confronted by the cops, he told an officer of the law to…and I quote…‘bite my shiny metal ass’!”
Alex buckles over with laughter.
“Are you serious?” I say to him. “You’re laughing?” Noah and Ethan are still silent, staring up at us.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t believe he said that. It…actually sounds like something you would say, Dani.”
“So this ismyfault now?”
He breathes out and drops the smile. “No. I’m not saying that. What happened, Noah? Tell us everything.”
“You guys won’t listen because you believe that cops are always right.”
“No, we don’t, actually, but we believe in abiding by the law and respecting other people,” I say.
“I still haven’t heard what happened,” Alex says.
Noah takes a deep breath. “Listen, the washer at Jose’s house broke—”
“So you were doing their laundry at ten-thirty at night?” I say. “Bullshit! You don’t even do your own laundry.”
Alex looks at me. “They need to start doing their own laundry, it’s getting really out of hand.”
“Did you forget that we were talking about how your son got arrested?”
“I didn’t get arrested, I wasn’t even sitting in the cop car, I was leaning against it. Mom, you’re exaggerating!”
“You were handcuffed,” I say.
Noah shrugs, “They just did that for show.”
“I don’t care what it was for,” I shoot back.
“Noah, tell the whole story, start to finish. Dani, stop interrupting,” Alex says.
“Jose’s mom, Suzanna, did her laundry earlier that day. She asked us to walk down to the laundromat, which is only two blocks from their house, and look for a sweater she thought she left in a dryer. When we got down there, we were going throughall the dryers looking for the sweater, and the lady that works there freaked out and called the cops.”
I’m breathing in and out, trying to listen. I think I believe him.
“Go on,” Alex says.
“So the cop comes in right when we miraculously find the sweater. Jose has the sweater in one hand and his cellphone in the other. The cop tells us to come outside, so we do. He then starts grilling Jose about the cellphone and Jose is like, ‘It’s mine, I promise.’ Jose tries to tell him what we were doing, but he wouldn’t listen, kind of like what you guys were doing to me a minute ago,” he says.Smart-ass.
“Keep going,” I say. “And leave out the commentary.”
“So, the cop is, like, pestering Jose. He’s like, ‘You steal those cellphones so you can get initiated into gangs or to talk with your gang boys,’ and we’re like, ‘No, this isourstuff!’ ”
I look at how Noah is dressed. He’s wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt that has an atom symbol on it, with the wordsDon’t Trust Atoms, They Make Up Everything!I mean, Noah is like the epitome of nerd in the best possible way, and I know for a fact that Jose won both the science fair and the geography bee three years running, I don’t think he’s petitioning to be in any gangs.
“So,” Noah continues, “the cop was, like, obviously talking that way to Jose because he’s Mexican.”
“We don’t know that,” Alex says.
