Behind me I hear police whistles. Up the road, an Esso gas station burns. Firemen spray water on the blaze, but they get bombarded from windows and rooftops and have to crawl for cover under their truck. I scoot away in the other direction, the direction of city hall. That’s where I have to get.
But Freeman? Where’s Freeman? Did I just do him like I did Moose and Mobylette and Sidi, leaving them when I should have done something, something that would have prevented what happened?
I stop and squat down beside a car. I try his cell again.
Straight to voice mail.
“Freeman, man. Come on, pick up. Let me know where you are.”
Do I go after him?
But where?
Where I am is deserted and creepy quiet, but there are cops all around, and it’s chaos out there. How can I find him with toasters and Molotov cocktails raining from windows, and cops everywhere?
I push on, onto another street, then stop and squat again. There’s no one around. I walk on. I come to an intersection, stop again. Deserted in every direction. I pass the post office—a two-story gray block, every window splintered or busted out. The yellow-and-blue La Poste sign dangles above the main entrance by a thread of electrical cord. On the street in front are the scorched carcasses of three cars, one still smoldering.
Then I hear gunfire up ahead. An explosion—boom! Orange-black smoke streams up above the buildings. I hear police whistles headed my way.
Not again.
A couple rounds the corner, the woman tucked beneath the man’s trench coat, his arm draped over her. They run toward me but duck into a doorway two doors up. I sprint there too before the door shuts.
It’s a storefront mosque, and the guy at the door—he looks like a grand frère, though I don’t recognize him—lets me in, then closes the door behind me. The place is dark but packed. Silhouettes, huddled together. There’s murmuring. In the corner, someone sobbing. I hear the ritual humming of prayer.
I stay near the door, by the plate-glass window—the only place where there’s room still—beside two veiled women who tchut-tchut, tchut-tchut their whimpering children. I squat. Then stand. Then squat again, my face in my hands. I kind of want to cry. Or laugh. I want to feel something other than this.
The cop I tagged who dropped in the courtyard beside Moose’s building didn’t have a face. He was nobody, just a helmet and visor in a squad of helmets and visors. But real all the same. He could have been Lieutenant Petit. Maybe it was him. Just like maybe he was one of the cops who kicked and kicked and kicked that boy who got too close.
Real and not real. Like a music video, Rage Against the Machine, and all you can hear is a bass line thumping. Bandit-faced kids chucking stones and helmeted cops kicking and kicking. And him, the cop I tagged who dropped in a heap.
What have I done?
My phone’s display glows fluorescent green in the dark of the room. F-r-e-e-m-a-n flashes as my ringtone, this silly jingle, starts up.
“Matt?” I hear across the dark, and I see a silhouette stand up.
I push my way to him. We meet halfway. Hug.
“You okay?” he asks just as I ask him the same thing.
Such a stupid question.
We look around, find a place to squat back by the door. Outside the plate-glass window, shadows sprint by, sometimes helmeted cops, other times hoodie boys. There are sirens, gunshots and, over everything, an eerie red glow: fires raging, just beyond where we can see.
We’ll wait it out. We don’t say so; we don’t have to agree out loud. We both just know.