The Italian Hall

The door slams shut behind me, a noise lost in the cacophony inside, and I scramble down three cinderblock stairs, which wobble and turn under my feet, nearly tossing me aside, into a grey and dusty twilit alley. The sun’s diminishing and reddening grasp can’t reach through the black stone walls surrounding the dimly lit passage, achieving a purplish hue through which I must stumble. Overturned trash bins and ripped garbage bags fill the air with a foul odor of soggy fur and rotten banana peels. I hold my breath against the smell and hurry down the alley, slipping on a fallen pile of newspapers and magazines before grabbing the ground with my feet and sprinting in whatever direction my instincts tell me to go.

It’s not my fault.

I turn down the first perpendicular alleyway, certain that a path of random twists and turns will only lead them – police, vigilantes, whomever my pursuers may be – astray. I hear sirens in the distance, pulsating and growing stronger, gnawing their way through my skull and into my brain until their incessant wail convinces me at every step that the echo I hear is an inimical police detective giving chase, that behind every corner I pass lies an angry mob of survivors crying out for my blood. I know they’re after me, and I know they’re headed for the hall, but I can’t remember whether I took only two rights or three since my last left turn and I’m completely uncertain as to whether I’m moving toward or away from the hall. There’s not much time to think, either, as the seldom-used backdoors pass by in a blur and the seldom-fed alley cats flee my thundering footsteps.

I wonder, if I only had a chance to explain…

“So, you see,” said David Ternaski, leaning back in his swiveling office chair with his elbows planted on the armrests and his hands firmly clasped in front of his chest, “I can’t let you leave here, now, without giving me your full one hundred percent assurance that you will do everything I say.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but only a feeble squeal escaped my lips. I could feel his security guards behind me, huge and daunting as their eyes burrow into the back of my neck. I tried to nod, but the first forward movement of my head nauseated further my already sickened stomach. I shut my eyes until my vertigo passed.

“Hmm,” said Ternaski. “I don’t like that silence. You know what silence tells me? It tells me you’re faltering. Not sure what to say or how to say it. You do understand, though, why I can’t let you leave here alive until you say, ‘Yes, Ternaski, I’ll do it all.’”

“I swear,” I muttered, straining just to open my mouth, “I won’t go to the cops. I…swear.”

Ternaski laughed. Not a cynical chuckle or a sarcastic howl but a deep belly laugh. He was honestly amused, and my heart sank. “I’m sorry, Eddy, no can do. It’s a shame you came here expecting to have the option to back down, but hey, you’re just gonna have to suck it up, and do a little dirty work you normally wouldn’t do. Okay?”

“But, it’s not just…I mean, it’s murder, Mr. Ternaski!”

“Well, my boy, it’s either you or him, now. How do you expect me to let you leave, knowing full well we intend to murder Mr. Whitfield? Come on, Eddy, that’s bad business. However, if you do accept my little job, you get not only your life but also the five thousand dollars, as promised.”

My shoulders lurched, my eyes watered, and pretty soon I was bawling like a little baby. “You don’t understand, though,” I cried. “I’m not…like you. I can’t just kill someone.” I knew he wouldn’t let me leave, but I wouldn’t give up on the possibility.

“Eddy, my man. It’s not like it’s even you killing him, you know? I mean, you obviously don’t want to kill him. It’s all me. It’s my anger and hate that I’m, shall we say, channeling through you. The intent is all over here, baby. You’re nothing but a tool, a puppet. You’re morally removed. It’s not you killing him, but me working through you. You dig?”

“I…I…I…I…” I didn’t say anything.

I rush out of the maze of alleys. Light splashes me from all sides, blinding and warming me, and for a moment I imagine there must be a semicircle of police cars all waiting for me with their headlights pointed at the exact spot whence I emerge. As my eyes adjust, it becomes apparent it is only the dimmed sun and a few early streetlights that seem to exclusively spotlight me. I bolt to the right. My pace quickens and my heart follows suit. Sweat glides down my face, drips from my bangs to my ever-quickening heartbeat. A step, a beat, a drop. A single isolated system of order amid the chaos of a twilight inner city police chase.

Stop it, you fool! You’re going to get yourself caught!

I slow down to a walk, breaking the chain as my heart tries to catch up with my feet and sweat floods my hair as fast as ever, my only sense of organization and familiarity in this foreign and unfriendly place. But at least I’m not so conspicuous.

“I’m bored,” said Jenny.

“You want to watch a movie or something?” I asked. I rolled over on my bed to look at her.

“No, not like that,” she said, struggling awkwardly to find the right words to express herself. “I mean…with our relationship.”

“What?” I asked, bolting upright.

“All we ever do is, like, sit around and talk.”

“I thought that’s what you girls like!” I shrieked.

“No!” she shouted. “I want to fuck. I want to go to parties and get trashed. Or to concerts, or clubs. I just want to go somewhere. I just want to get out of this stinking apartment.”

“Wow,” I said, honestly baffled. I wondered if I should have seen this coming.

“I’m sorry,” she said, crying. I knelt down and hugged her, rubbing her back and stifling her tears with my shoulder.

“I had no idea,” I told her. “How come you never said anything before? If you had just said, ‘Let’s go do something,’ well, we could have gone and done something. I thought you liked it here.”

“I do,” she sobbed. “But…Oh, I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
“Of course you did.” I rubbed her back. “But don’t worry. I’ve got just the thing. You’ll love it.”
The train is packed. It’s a risky move, my taking the subway. If the police are on my trail, there’s absolutely nowhere to run. Even in an ordinary car, I’d trapped at both the front and rear, but in this car I can’t move three feet without hitting a wall of people. If the police find me here, there won’t even be a chase. But I’m not too worried. I figure they would have caught me by now if they were really on my trail.

I recline as much as I can in my cramped seat, knees propped against the seat back in front of me, head lolled across the flattened top cushion. I close my eyes and don’t intend to go to sleep, but it’s getting harder as the hum of the other passengers’ murmuring becomes more and more hypnotic, massaging my ear drum with its quiet private whispers, twisting into all shapes and colors behind my closed eyelids. I realize I’m approaching unconsciousness, yet helpless to stop it. The police! The police! You can’t go to sleep or they’ll most certainly find you!

Ignoring myself, I shift slightly to the side and curl up into as much of a fetal position as I can. I go to sleep.

The hotel was dark and musty, smelling of sweaty perfume and steam cleaned carpet. It was the first time I’d ever been inside, though I’d picked up Mason a number of times from the front gate. It was a low class hotel, cheap and in a dirty part of town; only poor black folk and travelers who had somehow botched their previous reservations ever stayed the night. Even fewer ate the food.

I found Mason folding towels in a room behind the front counter that I was certain was off limits to a mere customer like myself. “Hey,” I said, and he looked up.

“Hey,” he answered. “I don’t get off for another hour.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m not here to pick you up. I was in the neighborhood, visiting a friend, and figured I’d stop by.”

“Oh,” he said, uninterested. “There’s not much to do here.”

“I know, I came here for a reason. I need to borrow some money.”

“How much?” he asked.

“A thousand, maybe two.”

“Damn, dude. That’s a lot of money.”

“You’ll get it back, don’t worry. You know I’m good for it, right?”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t think I have that much, not to just give out willy-nilly. What do you need it for?” he asked. He stopped folding towels and listened carefully.

“I need to go on a vacation. I want to take my girlfriend and myself out to New York for a few nights. I need to do it quick. I don’t have enough time to save it up from work.”

“Shit, man.” He shook his head, looked down, and resumed folding towels. “Why do you need to go to New York?”

“It’s like…I don’t know…I mean, she said she’s getting ‘bored’” – here I made quotes in the air – “with our relationship. I figure a couple nights in New York will give her a chance to let loose for a while and she won’t be so uptight when we come back.”

“Well,” he said, half sighing, and I knew I would get no money from Mason. “I’m sorry. I just don’t have any money.”

I turned to leave, when he said, “But I know where you can get some.”

“Where?” I asked.

“My boss could probably hire you out for a job. Just a one-time kind of thing, you know. Maybe one day out of your life, and you’ll get your couple grand.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“All kinds of things. My boss is a rich bastard that will hire a guy to do anything – even eat his food for him!”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said hesitantly. “Yeah, put in a word about me and see if he wants anything.”

“Will do,” said Mason.

I awake with a jerk to find the train has reached my stop. I start to get up and push, climb, and crawl my way through the crowd to the doors, when I remember the brief dream I had while sleeping. “Mason,” I say under my breath to myself. A women whose face is an inch from mine glares at me with abhorrent arrogance, as if asking how I dare stand in her presence, let alone whisper nonsense to myself. I push, climb, and crawl my way back to my seat, which I find to be taken by a large Italian, forcing me to stand.

Mason. God, I need that money, Mason.

“Hey, stop!” called Mason. “Get back here. You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“Fuck it,” I called back, though without turning around or speaking up and probably only speaking to myself. “If I die, I die.”

“You have to come back.” He hurried to my side, caught me as I stumbled into a row of bushes lining the house. “I won’t let you leave.”

“I have to be at work in like four hours,” I pleaded. “I have to get home, go to sleep. Now let me go!”

He pushed me down into the grass and dug through my pockets as I slowly and drunkenly expressed my contention with unintentionally gentle punches. He fished out my keys and made off for the front door.

“Hey,” I called. “Get back here.”

I tackled him as we entered the foyer. After a brief scuffle, we sat in opposite corners of the living room, all but abandoned now, nursing our wounds. “If you need a place to stay,” he said at length, “you can stay at my place.”

“How?” I asked. “You won’t let me drive there.”

“We don’t need to. It’s just down the street. You can crash there for the night. I’ll wake you up before you have to work, don’t worry.”

“Are you serous?” I asked.

“Sure. Come on over.”

“Thanks, man.” I crawled across the room, too dizzy to walk, and hugged him across his shoulders. I may have even cried a bit. “Thank you, man. You’re a good friend.”

I speed up with every step I take, and by the time I’m within five blocks of the hotel, I’m running. I reach the front door, panting and massaging a cramp in my side, and pray that Mason is working. I find him once again in the back laundry room, folding towels.

“I need that money,” I say between gasps. “I need it right now.”

Mason, unaware of my presence at first, looks up with a start and stares at me as he forms a reply. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t give you any money.”

“What?” I cry. “Why not?”

“Because,” he looks back down at the pile of towels and, clearly uncomfortable, perhaps even ashamed, mumbles the rest. “Because Roger Whitfield is still alive.”

I gape, stunned. The rustle of the folding towels overwhelms me, muting even the rapid pound of my heart. “Still alive?” I shriek. “Still alive!”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, but…until Roger Whitfield dies, you can’t see any of that money.”

“No,” I say,” No, there’s no way he’s still alive. How do you know? How can you know?”

“One of Ternaski’s…” He fumbles for a word. “…employees saw him.” He glances up at me for a brief moment, but, perhaps once again frightened by the troubled desperation on my face, quickly looks back down. “Just after whatever…commotion you caused.”

For an instant, I don’t move; my mind is a blank, the thundering in my chest neither anger nor excitement nor despair. I’m a tabula rasa. Then I yell, “God damn it!” I grab the pile of folded towels Mason has stacked at his side, and scatter them across the floor. Now the thundering in my chest is anger and excitement and despair, all pulled together into one large ball of emotion that I can’t contain. I toss around the already displaced towels, yell obscenities at Mason, and even throw a couple of punches at him, before security finally arrives and carries me, screaming, to the front door.

“I didn’t want this,” I call down the hall to Mason. He follows me at a distance, shaking his head. “I didn’t want this. You bastard!” I scream, and the security guard holding my arm twists it sharply to silence me. “I wanted a job, a goddamn job, and this is what I get? I thought you were a friend, I thought you were my goddamned friend!” Next thing I know I’m lying face first on the sidewalk outside, with my forehead pounding where it struck the ground. My bleeding mouth tastes of copper and salt.

What to do, what to do, I thought. I rolled over in bed, placing my back to Jenny and clearing my head of any distraction she provided. Oh, man, I thought. Where to begin?

Maybe we should just go see a movie or something. Start off with something small. Hell, keep on with small things. It’s the small things that count, anyway, right?

But what if it doesn’t get her attention? I mean, it’s not like we never go to moves now. I doubt a movie or anything will make her realize I’m making an effort, or whatever.

I could propose.

Ha! How silly! I don’t want to marry her…not right now, anyway. I mean, maybe eventually, when we’ve been dating longer, and…

How about a vacation? A little trip somewhere fun, that would get her attention.

I don’t have enough money.

Although, I could probably borrow some from some people, pay them back later. It won’t be too much for a weekend in the Big Apple or anything.

That’s a good idea, I guess, except then I’ll be in debt for a while, but hey, I have a job, I can pay it off.

Why not just save up for it then?

It might be too late. I’ve got to do something now.

Goddamn you, Mason.

Or she might leave me.

Why did you let this happen to me?

And I don’t want that.

I wanted a job, a quick two-hour stint, and this is what I get.

I think…I think I love her, and I don’t know…

This is all your fault, Mason.

…if I could stand it…if she left.

What’ll I do now?

Then we’re going to New York!

I’ve got to get home!

I pull myself up off the pavement, finger a broken tooth in my mouth, dust myself off, run. I’ve never seen so clearly, never heard so sharply; never in life have I felt so alive. The brightening streetlights leave almost tactile green and blue images on my retinas, images that fade away for almost a minute before finally disappearing. Perhaps this is what murder does to one. Perhaps the thought of almost certain life in prison has jarred my brain into hypersensitivity for the few moments of freedom I have left. Perhaps it’s the adrenaline.

I don’t take the bus, I don’t take the subway, the two hardly cross my mind at all. I just run. It may take a while to get home, and I’m almost certain to be caught along the way, but what better way to spend the rest of my life than heading quickly through a twilit city, enjoying all the sights and sounds with my newly acquired acuteness of perception. Forget Mason. I don’t know if I can forgive you, Mason, but I can sure forget you. If I get to see Jenny one last time, that might just make my life worthwhile. But until then it’s running. Running from the police. Running from you, Mason, and your dirty boss and whatever scumbag henchmen he’s got after me. Running from the guilt and self-reproach that thinking and looking back on it will bring about. The one thing I must not do is to remember how I sat in the air duct with the gun draped across my shoulder. It was cold because the air conditioning was on; I could see my breath flash in puffs of mist through the grate. The overcoat I had worn did nothing to warm me. I studied the party through the bars, waiting for Roger Whitfield to stand up and make his speech. That was my cue.

I brush the thought away, already my throat tightening and my heart sinking. I’m in my neighborhood now, away from the flashing lights and blaring sounds of the city, nearing home, the only safety I have left. Three or four small, darkly colored birds peck and pick at a dead cat in the middle of the street, run over by some unwitting driver. A homeless man on the corner of my block sits on a flattened cardboard box, shivering though it isn’t cold, with a shopping cart half full of stolen merchandise and trash at his side. He turns his head and stares at me, imploring me – for what, I don’t know. He has a scar under his right eye, crescent shaped like the moon and following along the curve of his cheekbone, almost caressing it. He looks like a man I used to know, used to treat when I interned at the Three Rivers Psychiatric Hospital. One day, when I was late to work and had missed giving the man his daily pills, he got out and ran amok through the hospital. My boss was furious. When I arrived, he’d been chasing the sick patient (who I believe had post traumatic stress disorder) for nearly a half hour. I promptly joined in the race and spent a half hour myself chasing the man down. I finally caught up with him near the rear of the second floor. I wasted no time and took no chances; I tackled him. I slowed down none and did my least in the way of cushioning either of our falls. He was a large man, much larger than myself, and was much less dazed by the collision than I was. He quickly tossed me aside and continued on his way. As my breath made its slow way back to my lungs, I scrambled for something, anything that might help me bring down this beast. I found his shoe (which must have flown off when I tackled him) lying within arm’s reach. I picked up and tossed it, no, threw it at him, with all my strength and then some. It hit him in the back of the head and instantly brought him to his knees. At that moment my boss, who hadn’t quit the race but had certainly lagged quite far behind, arrived.

“What the hell are you doing?” he cried. “You can’t throw shoes at patients, even if they are mentally deranged and running around without supervision. Go to the lobby, now, and wait there until I finish with this guy. We have some serious talking to do.”

I did as I was told. Sitting in the lobby, a young man (perhaps he could even be called a boy) of about eighteen or nineteen entered the lobby. He sat down in the chair next to mine. His hair was blonde and brown, almost at the same time. It had a hint of blonde where the light hit it, but even there it suggested of a deeper, somehow ominous, brown. “Hello,” he said. He told me of the Alzheimer-afflicted grandfather he was picking up, of his tedious job at the Last Days Hotel, of his controlling and demanding mother at home. I told him my troubles in return. I don’t know why the two of us were so talkative or so friendly to each other, but we immediately clicked. The man I met that day is named Mason Smith. He took me home from a party not too long ago and even less time ago got me a job when I was desperately in need of one.

Thinking of that moment now, I shudder. I stare back at the homeless man across the street. I’m not sure if he’s really the PTSD patient who started this whole mess, but I yell anyway, “Fuck you!” and run the rest of the way home.

When I walk into my apartment, Jenny shrieks, “Where’ve you been?” She spent last night here, and I had to sneak out of bed this morning to avoid any interrogation from her. The events of the Italian Hall pushed all of this from my memory, so I’m honestly surprised when she runs down the hall and lunges at me into a giant bear hug. “I was worried sick. Where were you?”

So I tell her. I start from the beginning, from when I met Mason Smith, and I get almost to the end before I run to the nearest chair, sure I’ll never make it in time, and collapse into it in a rage of weeping. I try to control myself, try to finish the story. I run through it one more time in my head before attempting to speak such horror aloud.

I lay in the air vent, the rifle no longer across my shoulder but raised and positioned for fire. I fingered the safety off as Roger Whitfield stepped on stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. I stared through the sight, my finger resting on the trigger. I was surprisingly calm. “We are gathered here today on very important business. As you all know –” I shifted my weight slightly forward and ready myself to fire. “– the Miles Mining company has refused to listen –” I felt sweat dripping down my forehead and became determined to shoot before the drop reached my eye, which would then, of course, necessitate me removing my hand to wipe the sweat away, and if I took my hand away from the trigger, I knew it wouldn’t go back. I pulled the trigger. “– to any of our suggested improvements for the field workers,” Whitfield continued. I paused, unsure of what exactly had happened. Whitfield was still standing, still talking even; certainly not the signs of a man who’s been shot. A second of panicked thought brought about the realization that there had been no bang, no boom, no crash. The gun hadn’t fired. I shook the gun, as if that might knock the unfired bullet into its correct slot and suddenly cause it to fire. Nothing, not even a rattle. I aimed again, fired again. Whitfield continued prattling on – about what, I couldn’t say; I was too busy to listen. I pulled the trigger again and again, and again and again. The gun just wouldn’t shoot. My heart, surprisingly calm before, sped up a great degree and became so loud I was sure the crowd below would hear it. I wondered why the gun wouldn’t fire, scrambled for an answer. Is the safety still on? Am I doing it wrong? Did they give me a rigged gun? I pulled the trigger more, hoping each time whatever was wrong would be fixed and that I could get this dirty job over with and get home, but the gun would just make a small click and the bullet would go no where and I felt tears of frustration building in my eyes.

“God damn it,” I finally screamed. “Fire!”

Roger Whitfield stopped speaking. The scattered murmurings of the died off. People looked around and at each other, looking for the one who’d yelled “Fire!” or perhaps looking for the fire itself.

“Fire?” someone asked at length.

“Fire!” someone else cried. Then the crowd erupted into chaos; screaming, shoving, and heedless of Roger Whitfield’s pleas for calm and sanity, the crowd moved to the exit. There was only one exit, a door, on the other side of which was a stairway leading down to the main hallway, and which was almost directly under my air conditioning grate, obscuring my view of the mayhem below me. I didn’t wait long before crawling backwards through the ducts to the place I had entered in the basement. I ran upstairs.

The only path out of the basement led straight to the front hallway, which by now was full of mad and shouting people, desperate to be away from the nonexistent fire upstairs. The doors, I realized later, leading to the sidewalk outside – and to freedom – opened inward, and the rear of the crowd was so determined to leave – and too loud to hear the shouts of pain and anger below – that the people in front had no way to open the doors, no two or three feet in which they could step back and open the liberating front doors. They were stuck; they were doomed.

I stared at the horror before me. Parents, doing only what they knew to be best, had pushed their children to the front that they may be saved even if the adults were consumed in flames. Some were still shoving their children toward the obviously closed door. I nearly screamed as I saw a small girl – she looked no older than eight – was bashed again and again into the unyielding door. She screamed in pain and fear, and I at that moment, lost in rage and chivalry, decided to dash through the crowd and tear the girl free of the unrelenting crowd’s grip. I took a step forward and hit the wall of people standing before me. I squeezed through what few gaps there were, but they led me away from the girl. I stared at her, at the tears streaming down her face, at her trembling hands pressed involuntarily tight against the door, at her tongue quivering in her shrieking mouth. I couldn’t stand it anymore, the incessant battering she received, so I averted my gaze. What I saw was another child, perhaps even younger, in the same position. I looked away again, and saw yet another kid pinned against the unmoving doors. Everywhere I looked, I saw suffering and pain and anguish. I couldn’t take it. I bolted.

I weaved through the crowd toward a second door, one leading not outside but to another room – which would lead to another room, which would lead to perhaps yet another, which might lead outside – and one which no one else seemed to have any awareness of, one which everyone else completely ignored. It was a selfish thing to do, perhaps, ditching the chaotic and self-destructive crowd inside, but it was something I did nonetheless. In time – nearly an hour it felt – I made it to the door, and, with luck, the door opened outward. I stepped over the threshold. I was free.

And I ran.

Jenny stares at me, confused, incredulous, waiting for more. “What…what then?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say. “I just came here.”

I can see her brain hard at work, punching all the numbers into the equation, gears kicking and turning. She doesn’t want to believe. If she hadn’t heard the intensity with which I told her, if she hadn’t see the pain in my face, if she hadn’t felt my remorse flowing out in waves, she wouldn’t believe. But she has no choice. “Wh…why?” she asks.

I pause, unsure of how to answer. “What do you mean, ‘Why?’” I ask.

“You killed them!” she screams. “You killed them, poor little children! Why would you do such a thing?”

“I didn’t want to,” I shout in return. “I didn’t want to kill anyone!”

“Then why did you?” she shrieks. “Why the hell did you!”

“Because…because…” I shake my head, searching for an answer. “This is all your fault!”

“My fault?”

“Yeah! Your fault! If you weren’t so damn greedy, needing attention twenty four seven –”

“That’s ridiculous!” she cries. “I asked you to take me to a movie once in a while, not murder half the people at a union meeting.” I sit in my chair, shaking my head, unbelieving of the whole situation. “I knew I should have left you a long time ago. I knew it would all end up bad! You’re nothing but trouble, Edison! Trouble!” She picks up the few things she has over here and gathers them together in an armful. “I don’t want anything to do with you!” she says. “Stay away from me, you…you murderous bastard!” She storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“It’s your fault,” I mumble to myself. “Your fault.” I drag myself from into my bedroom where I lay down in an attempt to fall asleep. My efforts fail, and I lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling and remembering unpleasant memories.

I hung upside down, the wind chapping my lips into cracked and peeling leather, the lights of the city spinning fourteen stories below me. David Ternaski held my feet.

“What do you say?” he said, yelling to be heard over the howl of the wind. “Still not sure?” He swung me from side to side, small and slow at first, but gaining momentum as he continued. “I don’t want to drop you,” he called. “But I might have to.” He let go of one of my feet, and I screamed in fear and frustration. “Come on, Ed,” he said. “You don’t want to die, do you?” I could feel my ankle slipping through his fingers.

“Okay!” I yelled. “I’ll do it!”

I awake the next morning tired and sick to my stomach. I got hardly three hours of interrupted and discontinuous sleep. I grab the newspaper on my way to the kitchen, where I pour a bowl of cereal. I eat my breakfast and read through mundane and uninteresting articles as, in the back of my mind, I recall the previous day’s events. I’m just about to throw the paper aside and actually address yesterday’s terrible happenings when I encounter a story that catches my eye. Italian Hall Massacre: 72 Dead reads the title.

“Seventy-two!” I shout to myself. Reading the article, I am informed that fifty-nine of those deaths were children. “My God!” I cry out. “What have I done?”

A knock on the door, later that morning, jars me out of my self-reproaching musings, and I answer it.

“You’re under arrest,” says the police officer standing opposite me.

“No,” I yell. “It’s not my fault!” But he’s not listening; he’s already got me in handcuffs and he’s dragging me to his squad car. “It’s not my fault, I tell you. It’s not my fault!”