He pointed the gun shakily at her. “Ma’am, keep your hands inside the car.”
Denise shrieked and cowered with her arms over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut. She heard him speak into his portable radio and report his location. She wanted to say that this was all just a misunderstanding. She tried to explain herself, but nothing came out except a stream of tears—real this time—and short, labored breaths.
Someone radioed back. She peeked one eye open; the gun was still pointed toward her window. She made a squeaking noise when she saw it there so close to her face, and ducked farther down, squeezing her eyes tighter.
“Copy that,” she heard the boy say into his radio. He let out a sigh.
She peeked again and now looked up at the boy. The gun was back in his holster. He was looking at her with an intensely worried expression on his face.
“Ma’am,” he said, and she watched him with one squinted eye as he lowered his face to window level so that the worried expression was hidden away. “It’s okay. I’m not going to shoot you.”
Slowly she opened her eyes and lifted her head.
“You can’t touch me again,” he said. “Do you understand?”
She nodded emphatically. “I won’t.”
“It’s a felony,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, wiping away a tear. “I didn’t know.”
He looked around. The other cops hadn’t arrived yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and exhaled. He put his face into his hands. He pressed his palms into his eye sockets and groaned.
When he removed his hands, his eyes were red from the pressure or maybe from tears. Denise couldn’t tell.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I panicked.”
“That’s okay.” Denise sat up straight. She wanted to touch him again, but in a comforting, maternal way.
“It’s my first week on the job.”
She nodded. He looked so uneasy. He was searching her eyes for reassurance. “You’re doing great,” she said.
—
The East Fishkill Police Station was a small gray brick building on a quiet country road. A stone pathway led to a modest garden up front, which a Hispanic man was happily tending. The building looked more like a tourist center in a nice country town than a police station.
“Hola, Oscar,” said the older cop now accompanying her—Officer McGill’s backup.
“Hola, se?or,” Oscar said back to him.
But inside, the station looked like what Denise had only seen on TV: linoleum flooring, fluorescent lights, one open room with a few folding metal chairs at the front, an old woman at a reception desk, and, behind her, rows of desks facing one another, mostly unoccupied, with scattered papers on top of them all.
“Hiya, Doreen,” the cop said to the woman at the desk, who wore her hair in a frizzy gray bun and sipped coffee from a mug that said I’M SILENTLY JUDGING YOU.
“Hey, Bud,” she said, looking up from her clunky desktop computer. She made eye contact with Denise and tilted her head in surprise, as if this were the first time in years she was seeing a stranger.
“She needs to use the phone,” Bud said, and Doreen skeptically pushed the tan rotary phone across the desk.
Denise dialed Mark’s cell number, which she knew by memory, and waited for him to pick up.
“It’s me,” she said.
A pause. She could hear some cheerful domestic commotion: a teen boy’s laugh, a dog barking, the wife’s upbeat voice in the background: “Who is that, sweetie?”
“Hold on a second,” he said into the phone. She heard something muffled, imagined him covering the receiver, telling his wife it was work. Then shuffling and a door shutting.
“What the hell are you doing?” His voice was hushed. “It’s a Sunday.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s an emergency.”
“What’s going on?” he said with sudden urgency. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. She’s doing great.”
Denise looked up at Bud, who was standing expectantly, watching her, listening to the conversation, his arms crossed. And then at Doreen staring stone-faced, holding her oversized mug in both of her wrinkled hands.
“I got pulled over,” she whispered into the phone, as if the people at the police station didn’t already know.
“So what?” Mark said.
“So my license is suspended.”
When Bud had gotten to the highway and run Denise’s info, he’d discovered those many envelopes that had been accumulating over the year, and that another envelope had come informing Denise of the license suspension.
“Jesus, Denise.”
“They won’t let me drive,” she said sheepishly. She felt like she was a little girl again, confessing to her father right before he spanked her that yes, she had stolen five dollars from his drawer.
“How the fuck were you able to even take out a car?”
“I dunno.” She’d just gone to the same shoddy Avis that she went to every year, the one with the Mexican guys behind the counter who always flirted with her.
A sharp, angry exhale. “Where are you?”
—
After she hung up, Denise waited in one of the metal chairs near Doreen’s desk. A few cops were milling in and out of offices, drinking coffee. Some made phone calls from their desks in the open room. Doreen typed, periodically looked at Denise, sipped her coffee, typed again.
“You work here long?” Denise finally said to break the silence.
“Thirty-seven years,” Doreen said.
“Wow,” Denise said. “Impressive.”
Doreen raised her eyebrows in a way that said Yeah, I know.
“I’m a secretary too,” Denise said. “In the city.”
“The city, huh.”
“That’s right.”
“Never liked it.”
Denise nodded. “It’s not for everyone.”
Doreen leaned forward, took another sip from her mug. “That was your husband before?”
Denise shook her head. “We were never married.”
“But you wanted to be.”
Denise considered this. “It’s complicated.”
“But you got a kid with him?”
“I do.” She thought this might be her in with Doreen. “Rachel. She’s thirteen.”
“Never had kids,” Doreen said. “We didn’t want ’em.”
—