Ch. 7 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

Deirdre shivered, leaving the precinct. Even with Castellanos and Virgil lingering by the exit, she shook. Even with her jacket back on, a bag with her personal effects and an envelope with her ‘personal effects’ bundled in her arms; even halfway across the parking lot.

The sun blasted noon down on the city.

“Ay!”

Somehow how all the masks had made the police look more threatening. The medical-grade wraps over their noses and mouths made them seem prepared for apocalypse. In the dystopic wasteland ever-after, they’d stand armed and ready.

“Ay!”

Deirdre blinked.

Rehani leaned out of her driver’s side window, her car parked in the lot of a convenience store. A colorful sash wrapped her waterfall dreadlocks. Otherwise, she wore the same clothes she’d worn the night before. She waved Deirdre over. Deirdre, having no other direction, followed.

“I was worried sick,” Rehani said, slipping back into her seat.

Deirdre opened the passenger side door and sat down.

“You know I actually went in there and asked about you. They said they didn’t have anybody in under your name. Or Paul’s. For a second I thought they Guantamo’d y’all. You know they still do that.”

Deirdre chuckled. The noise set her back in the present.

“I’m sorry I left you,” Rehani continued. “But the driver’s whole job is don’t get caught. I think. I got the gut feeling about cops—I smell pork from a mile—but you two were halfway ‘cross the neighborhood already. I circled back. I even made some phone calls and got it so I could bail you out if I needed to. Well. One of you, at least.”

“Funny,” Deirdre meant to sound flat, disapproving, but she really did find it funny.

And she’d stopped shaking, at least.

“And, besides, you know my rule.”

“No cops.”

“No cops,” Rehani confirmed. “I keep Kosher. Just not my diet.”

Deirdre leaned her forehead against the window. “Can we go somewhere? Just…somewhere else?”

“Uh-huh.” Rehani pulled out of the spot, peering overshoulder through the rear windscreen. “So, you heading home?”

“Could you just drive for a bit?”

“Sure. Gas is cheaper than bail, anyway.” Joining traffic, Rehani pointed the vehicle westward, away from the Oceanrest Historic District and into Bayside, one of Oceanrest’s more urban suburbs.

“I think Paul was right,” Deirdre said, watching the scenery change. “I think before we did the ritual…maybe we didn’t have to get involved with this at all.”

“’cause he doesn’t take his gift seriously.”

“He doesn’t consider it a gift.”

“So call it a responsibility, then. Somehow we end up doing things no one else can do. I get visions…you would not believe some of them. I work for them, a lot of them. I want to know. Chuh, and who doesn’t?” Rehani grinned, maneuvering traffic north into Deer’s Head, Oceanrest’s oldest suburb, just south of the wealthier and much newer Denton. “The answers I work for, those belong to me. But when something hits me out of nowhere? That’s the universe calling. And for that motherfucker, I pick up.”

“So the universe wants us to do this?” Deirdre half-heartedly snarked.

“It wants us to do something. Besides, it’s too late, now, anyway. We’re in the stew like it or not.”

Deirdre watched the city roll by her window. Rehani cut east from Deer’s Head into Downtown. Seven nine- and ten-floor buildings dominated the skyline, nothing else around them taller than five. Even the majority of the five- and four-floor buildings clustered around a handful of intersections. As their surroundings grew and shrank, Deirdre thought about what ‘the universe’ might mean in the context of an entity or entities with agency, with a want for them to do anything in particular. How did dreamer work, anyway? She sighed. “The universe can wait. I have a cat to feed. And I need some goddamn sleep.”

“You and me both,” Rehani replied. “I’m skipping the rally tonight for some self-care.”

“I thought that was last week?”

Rehani shrugged. “Why not both? So far we’ve only had twelve people hit with tear gas and not a single rubber bullet fired. I know the bar is low, but I’d say we’re winning.”

“Yeah. Twelve people tear-gassed. What a victory.”

“Everything either starts small or ends up that way. Nobody built a ziggurat overnight.”

The conversation lulled.

“Are you…okay?” Rehani asked.

Deirdre swallowed. “No.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” 

She reached into her bag of personal effects and took out her phone. She texted Paul to meet at her place when he got out. A stone-heavy feeling pitted her gut. Rehani had told the truth: regardless of what options they’d had before, they’d jumped into the heat, now. They had no choice but to figure out how to survive it.

A shot of cold memory blew through her.

(YOU.)

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