The One With The Prison Bitch
During the twelve-minute ride to the local precinct, I realized two things about my best friend: First, he was an overconfident, pompous asshole who required a severe beating as soon as humanly possible. Second, he was obnoxiously denser than he seemed upon first inspection. As we sat handcuffed next to each other in the back of the police cruiser, I lamented the fact that, while our situation was due in large part to his quasi-sexual existence, it also had to do with the copious amounts of alcohol consumed.
I was also fairly confident this wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been off gallivanting at a gay bar.
When we got to the booking area of the police station, we were fingerprinted and had our mug shots taken. A short time later, we were sitting in separate interview rooms, waiting for an officer to take our statements. The officer who came into my room was a petite woman, who spoke rather sharply.
“Can you tell me what you were doing on Dorsey Avenue this evening?” she asked, staring at her clipboard.
A million snarky retorts zipped through my brain before I selected my final response. “Taylor and I had just left Medusa’s. We had called a cab, but it was going to be about twenty minutes before it arrived, so we decided to start walking up the street to meet it at the next intersection…we were a little drunk, and we were just talking and joking around. That’s when the office rolled up on us, and started jumping to conclusions.”
The lady cop nodded her head, writing on a pad she had set on the table in front of her. When her notes were sufficient, she glanced up at me, snapping her gum, and asked: “Is there anything about your statement you would like to add, revise, or remove?”
“That’s all,” I smiled sourly at her until she stood up, snapping her gum again before disappearing out into the hallway.
It was almost forty-five minutes before anyone came back in to retrieve me. “Well, your friend has not been as cooperative as you, Mr. Hanson,” the lady cop sighed as she came back in the room. “Which means unfortunately, unless you both can post bail, you’ll be spending the night with us.”
For a minute, I could only blink at her. Finally, a word formulated and pushed its way out of my mouth. “What?”
“We need to hold you and Mr. Wright until the morning, unless you can post bail.” She repeated.
“How…how much is bail?” I asked, fearing her answer.
She looked at her pad, then back up at me. She snapped her gum. “Five-hundred.”
“Oh, well, that’s not bad; we should have that in the savings,” I spoke more to myself.
“For each of you,” the lady cop added.
My head snapped up. Again, my brain functioning failed and all I could say was: “What?” I finally regained control of my thought and speech processes, and looked at the cop. “Seriously, are you people nuts? Five hundred dollars bail for each of us, when we did nothing wrong? The cop picked us up on an assumption, and an assumption you can’t prove. You can’t hold us; we haven’t committed a crime.”
“If Mr. Wright had been a little more forthcoming with information, the two of you might be out of here already; sadly it does not appear your friend has the same respect for law enforcement that you do,”
Her words confused me. If anything, Taylor was the goody-goody around cops and other forms of authority carrying guns, and I was the one who didn’t respect authority. It wasn’t even that I didn’t respect it so much as I felt like a majority of the time the cops were more interested in numbers and dollar signs than what was actually going on. Or, such as what was going on right now, they had nothing better to do than bother and harass two innocent people.
Before I could respond, the officer had pulled me to my feet by my arm and started to lead me out of the room. Taylor and I were placed in one of the drunk tank holding cells alongside what looked (and smelled) like a homeless guy sleeping off his last bender. I curled my nose up, rubbing my wrists after the office removed my cuffs. As soon as they closed the door and walked away, I charged at Taylor with only the smallest amount of common sense telling me not to pummel him—yet.
“What the fuck, Tay?!” I growled. “Why didn’t you tell them what happened? We could be on our way home right now.”
Taylor shrugged, turning his nose up slightly. “The police are not your friend, Zachary,” he advised. “Best to exercise your right to remain silent rather than say something they will use against you.”
I blinked several times, willing myself away from Hulking out on Taylor while trying to collect my thoughts. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Seriously, Zac, it’ll be fine. I asked for a lawyer; they can’t do anything to us until I have my lawyer–they can only hold us or release us on bail. Which, honestly, five-hundred isn’t that much.” Taylor was walking back and forth in the cell, his face calm and easy as he spoke.
“It’s five-hundred each, Taylor.”
He paused mid-step, cocking his head to the side like a puppy. I could see my words turning over in his head, the end result causing his face to fall and shoulders to slump. As reality finally sunk in, his eyebrows knitted together and his lips formed into a frown. “Damnit,” he whispered.
I watched him pace around the cell for a few more minutes, arms crossed over his chest, before finally getting fed up. “Stop pouting; we get a phone call each. Let’s call Ruby and see if she can get us the fuck out of here.”
Despite her persistent grumbling and protests, Ruby was, unsurprisingly, willing to bail is out–contingent on us working off our debt with…well, with whatever Ruby decided she need us for. Knowing Ruby, we’d end up fixing some plumbing work, working a few extra shifts, and maybe giving a few more lap dances. Despite the fact that I loathed lap dances and crawling around on my hands and knees, it actually wasn’t a bad deal. That is, it would have been if Ruby didn’t feel the need to remind us repeatedly of our agreement. We hadn’t even gotten out of the building and she’d mentioned it three times.
Once the cool air of early-morning hit us, Taylor and I both heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks for getting us out of there, Ruby,” Taylor said as we walked across the parking lot.
“Yeah, it was only a matter of time before Tay wound up someone’s bitch,” I ducked as Taylor sent a punch flying in my direction. Even if his aim had been good enough to hit me, I doubted it would have hurt, but I felt the need to act offended and defensive at his actions.
Ruby kept walking and talking, shaking her head and rolling her eyes at our interaction. “How the hell did you two nitwits wind up in there, anyway?” she inquired as we got into her car.
“I don’t even want to talk about it,” I muttered, clicking my seat belt into place.
Much to my dismay, Taylor couldn’t pass up an opportunity to be be the center of attention–or to be melodramatic–so he giddily launched into the task of recounting our evening. “So, it was all a complete misunderstanding. Zac and I were merely walking down the street, a little tipsy, and this cop drives by and starts harassing us.”
“For no reason?”
“Well…we may have been slightly more intoxicated than just tipsy…and we might have been having an argument–”
“An argument? As I recall you were essentially throwing yourself at me,” I scoffed, shuddering at the memory.
“I was most certainly not throwing myself at you. You’re not my type, remember?” Taylor shot back.
Ruby was laughing, trying her hardest to navigate the streets to our apartment while tears poured down her cheeks. “Good Lord,” Ruby laughed. “Please tell me this doesn’t happen often–my bank account can’t handle a grand in bail every week, and my bladder can’t handle laughing this hard after drinking an entire Big-Gulp.”
“Not as much since college,” Taylor replied. “Back then, it was hard to keep Zac out of lockup.”
“Please,” I shook my head. “Loitering in the campus security office hardly counts as lockup, Taylor.”
“Not the times you chose to go bother them, Zachary. But what about the time you were actually brought down to the police station for Indecent Exposure at the Styx concert?”
“I had to pee!” I defended. “How about the time you got caught trying to steal the Wright Avenue sign? Or the time you built a snowman in the dorm hallway?”
“That time all I got was campus community service,” Taylor replied.
“But you had to speak in front of the Student Life Committee! You almost got kicked out of the dorms!”
“If we hadn’t have gotten picked up with that shopping cart full of liquor bottles after the frat party, it would have just been a first warning!” Taylor nudged my shoulder from the back seat.
“Um, I don’t think so. You’re forgetting about Melanie Evans,” I reminded him.
“Melanie Evans? Who’s Melanie Evans?” Ruby asked, rather excitedly.
“Just a girl who lived down the hall in the dorms,” Taylor said quickly.
“…who had Taylor brought in to the Dean of Housing on harassment charges because he, and I quote, ‘is always standing outside the bathroom door, waiting after I get out of the shower.’” I elaborated. I could hear from the low grumble coming from the back seat that Taylor was not happy with me.
Serves him right for taking me to a gay bar.
“I was not harassing her! We had the same schedule and I just happened to be on my way to the boys bathroom the same time, every day, that she came out of the shower.” Taylor defended.
“Wow,” Ruby was shaking her head from next to me. “You guys are something else. Let’s just not make this a habit? You won’t live long enough to pay me back if it happens again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, we know, Ruby. You’ve got us and our first born children,” I sighed, shaking my head.
“It really wasn’t our fault,” Taylor grumbled.
“Alright, boys. Here we are…you better get some sleep–I need you at the club at noon.”
“Noon?!” Taylor and I said in unison.
“Yeah. I need some work done before we open.” She smiled at us as we climbed out of her car, then waved and she drove away.