The Assistants(61)

“Can I come with you?”

“Ms. Fontana, please step aside.”

They stuffed Emily into the back of their black sedan. She locked her eyes on mine through the window.

“I’m going to get help,” I screamed at the glass. “Don’t be scared.”

Then they drove her away. The uniformed cops got in their squad cars and peeled off in sporadic directions until everyone was gone but me.

I stupidly never asked where they were taking her. When I turned around to go back into my apartment, throw on some sneakers, and call a cab, I realized I had no idea where to have the cab take me.

I took my computer into the kitchen and tried a few searches, but Google was failing me. I needed Kevin, but I couldn’t ask him for help now. Wendi, Lily, and Ginger would all be at work by now, and there was no sense terrorizing them with this unexpected turn of events any sooner than necessary. It would only transform the next few hours into a cacophony of opinions and scolding, finger pointing and self-reproach—and I needed to think!

What would Emily do, I wondered, if I’d been the one taken? There was an acronym that would never find its way onto a rubber bracelet. What Would Emily Do? But she would do everything in her power to help me, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t run, right? Just last night she’d professed that we were in this together, that she wasn’t going to jail, so neither was I. And I promised her the same just now when she had her hands up against the glass of that cop-car window like a new breed of Pound Puppy. So I couldn’t just pack my blue IKEA sack and go—I had to do the right thing. I had to preserve what was left of the goodness in my soul. But for the record, this was exactly why I never wanted to have friends.

So much for being an island.

Thanks to the Legal Aid website, I eventually figured out that Emily had most likely been taken to the local precinct, and the best I could do for now was wait for a phone call. I couldn’t even bring her some clothes. Some moisturizer. Her hand lotion, so she could at least smell like herself while she was there.

I moved back into the bedroom, sat down in the middle of my bed, upon the checkered tablecloth and bath towels Emily had laid out the night before. I pulled my knees into my chest, observing a circumference of spilled-whiskey stains and cookie crumbs, and I shuddered at the thought—it was all up to me now.

—

BY THE TIME evening drew near, I’d stared my entire day away and not come up with any ideas of what to do next. Emily hadn’t called. And I needed to leave the apartment. I needed to speak to another human being, so I texted Ginger, Wendi, and Lily.

It was shocking news to deliver over a table of drinks at Bar Nine—that early this morning one of us had been put into a cage. But their initial reactions, across the board, weren’t what I had expected. I thought Ginger would immediately insist that she actually had nothing to do with any of this. I thought Wendi might smash a glass against the wall or break someone’s neck. And I thought Lily would just pass out. Instead, they all went still.

I’d never seen such stillness over our table at Bar Nine. The only positive element I could glean from their sincere surprise and terror was that business at Titan today had obviously gone ahead as usual. Only Emily had been taken out, and it had been kept black-ops quiet.

“How many hours has it been since they carted her away?” Ginger asked after a solid sixty seconds of no one saying anything.

“I got the runaround all day,” I said. “They wouldn’t let me talk to her and she’s not allowed visitors.”

We all stared at my taciturn cell phone on the tabletop.

“How can they not even allow her a phone call?” Lily said, her voice cracking.

“Probably because Robert has everyone in his pocket,” I said. “Everyone answers to Robert. Anything he wants.” I could hear my own paranoia regarding Robert’s superpowers, which made them no less real. Even that big book of mental disorders used by psychiatrists worldwide to call crazy as they see it stated that you could be paranoid and also be right. I’d read that in an issue of The New Yorker at my dentist’s office, mistaking it for an article on the season finale of Homeland—but it still applied here.

“I hate to be the one to ask this”—Ginger’s usually sharp eyes had dulled to cloudy sea glass—“but should the rest of us be preparing for the police to yank us out of our apartments next?”

“Is that all you can think about right now?” I fired back at Ginger. “Yourself?”

“I hate to be the one to agree with Ginger about anything ever,” Wendi said, nervously flipping her Zippo lighter on and off. “But she’s right.”

If I knew Robert—and I did know Robert—he’d taken out Emily to make a statement so loud and clear that he wouldn’t have to be bothered going after everyone else. “I don’t think you should be worried,” I said. “Emily’s the one he chose to sacrifice. That’s how Robert operates.”

Ginger took a sip of her vodka gimlet, a sure sign she was beginning to feel better. “I guess it makes sense that Robert would want this to end quietly. It would only make him look bad if what we accomplished got out to the public.”

Wendi nodded her sad horns, which had faded to near invisibility. “This way he still wins. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky. But I don’t feel lucky; I feel like I want him to lose.” She flipped her Zippo on and off, then threw it onto the table with a force that nearly scared Lily off her chair.