TWENTY-THREE

The day I was arrested the sunlight was heavy on College Avenue. We were suffering one of those late summer, early fall days that settle in over the Bay Area and dry out every living thing. You get a spark walking across the living room, touching a doorknob. It was one week before school started, my junior year, right after Perry moved north.

Brush fires flickered on television, the Bay filling with smoke from a blaze near Point Reyes. It was a day that changed my life, but I can’t remember where I was going, or why. I was wandering north, pausing every time I reached a shadow, past the upholstery shop, ANTIQUE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN, and the tropical fish store, poster-painted fish in circus colors on the plate glass. Three or four guys with a stunningly beautiful girl lounged all over the place, blocking the sidewalk, making a show of owning the thoroughfare.

I had gotten into fights and collected a few trips to the vice principal’s office, but I still had a hopeful attitude toward school at that point. The truth was that I was wearying of summer and looking forward to a routine, relishing the idea of work.

I could have crossed the street. I bumped into them, shouldering through. One of them said something; I didn’t even hear what it was. I spun on him and gave him my best stare. It’s important to get it right, that mix of contempt and arrogance. And boredom, too. You want to look a little bored so if you have to back down you can act like it’s just too much trouble.

The tallest of them gave me a little, preliminary shove. I took a step toward him, closing in, crowding him, getting way too close inside his personal space. Like I was getting intimate so I could whisper a secret.

He hit me with an elbow, the point of the bone right there on the lower lip. A sudden taste of warm saltwater blossomed in my mouth.

I spat in his face. The three of them were on me, holding on to me while the other hit me, and they beat me up, my face, my ribs, knocked the air out of me, stunned me, almost knocked me down. But then they got tired on that hot day, hard work, staying mad and getting all sweaty. When they slowed down, I picked one of them up and dumped him through the window of the tropical fish store.

Partway. The window spidered into pieces, but only one arm and part of his head punctured the shatterproof glass. When I tried to push him the rest of the way he kicked free, and we all sprawled.

It was the sure-handed humor of the police that really shook me. I was used to the vice principal’s iron expressions, security guards breaking up fights, shouting. The police were almost amused, sure of themselves and calm, and that made it all the worse to be locked into a police unit. It was a cage car, with a grill between the backseat and the driver, the backseat made out of hard plastic, not cushioned at all, so if I was bleeding or puking I wouldn’t leave any permanent stains.

My own trouble with the law was on my mind as my mom and I went to the arraignment of Steven Ray McNorr in room 211 of the San Francisco Superior Court.

To enter the courthouse we had to pass through metal detectors, like at an airport, except that the guards standing around are armed and look more like officers of the law. One of the tall uniformed men asked me to step over to one side for a moment while he passed a magnetic wand over me and up and down between my legs.

We had both put on our best clothes, like when we went to hear my mother’s friend play Bach in an Episcopal church, and I imagined that the brass buttons on my navy blue jacket might have made an alarm go off.

“There you go,” said the man with the wand, and I had that feeling of being free to pass that I get from displaying tickets to a concert after worrying, for a moment, that I had left them at home.

Detective Unruh was in the hall, holding the door for a woman in a dark suit making her way on a pair of crutches. He turned, and when he saw us he smiled.

“My partner,” he said, referring to the woman who had just vanished through the heavy swinging door. “She has to testify in a case involving a family who all started stabbing each other last Thanksgiving. Carving knife into the aunt, fork into the uncle.” He pronounced aunt ahnt; in my family we say the word so it sounds like the name of the little insect. “She should be at home watching soaps. Instead she has to go sit outside a courtroom waiting for her name to be called while her codeine wears off.”

I let the detective catch the look in my eye. “Of course you’re here,” he said. “I would do the same thing. Watch the law at work and let the law see you watching.”

“I thought you warned me not to come,” I said.

“If I ever warn you, you’ll know it,” he said.

Something passed between the detective and my mother, some adult understanding that both of them shared. Her manner toward him was muted, either by fatigue or by this mutual comprehension, when she said, “I’ve heard mixed reports on the assistant DA, Mr. Dingle—”

“Mr. Dingman. He’s a good man to have on your side. We can hope that Steven Ray McNorr will not see the light of day for a long, long time.”

I took a seat in the back row, but my mother marched right up to the front, and I joined her there, comfortable seats, padded arms. The room was smaller than I had expected, and there were fewer people. A man in a sheriff’s uniform wandered around like the room was his, a gun at his hip. The judge leaned over his bench like a man at work in an office, looking over to one side to consult with a woman holding a pile of folders, joking, words I could not hear, shaking his head in disbelief the way people do, Can you believe that? He wore a black robe.

I expected the courtroom to be very unlike courtrooms on television. I had expected real life to be more vivid, much more impressive. Instead it was like the courtrooms of movies, except that when something took place it happened quietly, off-the-record voices, paperwork, pauses while a computer hunted up a name, a date. I watched the judge, eager to learn from his expression what was going to happen. The judge was gray haired, and he wore half-lens glasses.

When a prisoner arrived I had no idea that he was a man about to be charged with a crime, just another person in the room, casually dressed in a pair of orange overalls. Only when he stood with his back to us and waited for the judge to stop talking did I see SF JAIL across his back, his hands cuffed.

But it was another name, not one I recognized. The words were spoken carefully by the clerk, first, middle, and last names. The man was charged with the crime of—but I was already not listening closely, people stopping by to murmur greetings to my mother and me.

Each time a prisoner was allowed into the room I felt wonderment—is it him? It was more than wonder—it was fear. I was afraid that when I saw the man I would not be able to control myself. But I could sense Detective Unruh’s lack of interest, a matter-of-fact boredom that radiated from him like body heat. No one needed to tell me that this was some other human being in trouble, another criminal, another crime.

We sat there most of the morning. The flags on either side of the judge, California’s Bear Flag and the Stars and Stripes, were both wrapped tightly around their poles, never stirring.

At twenty-five minutes past eleven the door opened again and another man was in the room, a uniformed guard on each side. He had dark eyes and dark hair, a square head, a square body. He sidled into the room like someone making his way through a crowd. There was no crowd. He was shackled, hand and foot.

No one had to tell me. Detective Unruh leaned forward behind me and whispered, his breath on my ear, “Here’s our man.”