When she pulls herself out of it, her fingers, new nails and all, are drumming against her blanket, still struggling to play the étude. She has to turn on the light and leave it on for the rest of the night. When she closes her eyes, she can still see those faces like afterimages on her retina. Is it possible to have the afterimage of a dream? She can’t help but feel she’s seen these faces before, and not just in a dream. It’s something real, something tangible that she can’t place. Whatever it is, she hopes she never sees it—never sees them again.
• • •
First thing in the morning—just five minutes after opening, two Juvey-cops come into the salon, and Risa’s heart nearly stops. Audrey’s already there, but none of her stylists are. Risa, knowing that turning and running will not go over well, hangs her hair in her face and turns her back to them, pretending to stock one of the stylist’s stations.
“You open for business?” one of them asks.
“That depends,” says Audrey. “What can I do for you, Officer?”
“It’s my partner’s birthday. I’m giving her a makeover.”
Now Risa dares to look. One of the Juvies is a woman. Neither of them takes much notice of her.
“Perhaps you could come back when my stylists arrive.”
He shakes his head. “Shift starts in an hour. Gotta do it now.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to work with that, then.” Audrey comes over to Risa, speaking sotto voce. “Here’s some money; go get us doughnuts. Go out the back way and don’t come back until they’re gone.”
“No,” Risa says, not realizing she would say it until she does. “I want to do her shampoo.”
The Juvie doesn’t have a dog on her lap, but she does have a chip on her shoulder. “I don’t go for nothing foo-foo,” she says. “Just keep it simple.”
“I intend to.” Risa drapes her with a smock and leans her back toward the sink. She turns on the water, making sure it’s nice and hot.
“I’d like to personally thank you,” Risa says. “For keeping the streets safe from all those bad boys and girls.”
“Safe and clean,” says the Juvey-cop. “Safe and clean.”
Risa glances out to the waiting area, where her partner obliviously reads a magazine. Audrey peers in at Risa nervously, wondering what she’s up to. With this woman leaning her head back, totally at Risa’s mercy, Risa feels like the Demon Barber of Omaha, ready to slit her throat and bake her into pies. But instead she just dribbles shampoo into the corners of her closed eyes.
“Ah! That stings.”
“Sorry. Just keep your eyes closed. You’ll be fine.”
Risa then proceeds to wash her hair with water so hot she can barely stand it herself, but the woman doesn’t complain.
“Catch any AWOLs yesterday?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Usually we just patrol the detention facility, but a kid slated for unwinding went AWOL on our watch. We brought him down, though. Tranq’d him from fifty feet.”
“My, that must have been . . . thrilling.” It’s all Risa can do not to strangle her. Instead she opts for concentrated bleaching solution, rubbing it unevenly into her dark hair after rinsing out the shampoo. That’s when Audrey intercedes, a moment too late to stop her.
“Darlene! What are you doing?” Darlene is Risa’s salon pseudonym. Not her choice, but it works.
“Nothing,” she says innocently. “I just put in some conditioner.”
“That wasn’t conditioner.”
“Oops.”
The Juvie tries to open her eyes, but they still sting too much. “Oops? What kind of Oops?”
“It’s nothing,” Audrey says. “Why don’t I take over from here?”
Risa snaps off her gloves and drops them in the trash. “Guess I’ll go get those doughnuts now.” And she’s gone just as the woman begins to complain about her scalp burning.
• • •
“What were you thinking?”
Risa doesn’t try to explain herself to Audrey, and she knows Audrey really doesn’t expect her to. It’s a motherly question though, and Risa actually appreciates it.
“I was thinking that it’s time for me to go.”
“You don’t have to,” Audrey tells her. “Forget about this morning. We’ll pretend it never happened.”
“No!” It would be so easy for Risa to do that, but being that close to a Juvey-cop—hearing what she had to say, the blatant disregard for the fate of the AWOL they took down—it’s knocked Risa out of this local eddy and given her a vector again. “I need to find whatever’s left of the ADR and do what I can to save kids from cops like the ones we saw this morning.”
Audrey sighs and nods reluctantly, already knowing Risa well enough to know that she can’t be dissuaded.
Now Risa understands her awful recurring dream of the disembodied faces. It is the faces of the unwound that haunt her, forever separated from everything that they were, looming over her in desperate supplication, begging her, if not to avenge them, then to make sure their numbers do not increase. She’s been complacent for too long. She can’t deny their pleas anymore. The mere fact that she’s alive—that she survived—bonds her to their service. And giving a spiteful hairdo to a Juvey-cop, while satisfying to her, does nothing to save anyone from unwinding. Her place is not in Audrey’s salon.
That afternoon Risa says her good-bye, and Audrey insists on stocking Risa up with supplies and money and a sturdy new backpack that has neither hearts nor pandas.
“I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you,” Audrey says, just before she leaves.
“Tell me what?”
“It was just on the news. They announced that your friend Connor is still alive.”
It’s the best news Risa’s gotten in a long time . . . but then she quickly comes to realize the announcement is not a good thing at all. Now that the Juvenile Authority knows he’s alive, they’ll be beating every bush for him.
“Do they have any idea where he is?” Risa asks.
Audrey shakes her head. “No clue. In fact, they think he’s with you.”
If only that were true. But even when Connor shows up in her dreams, he’s not with her. He’s running. He’s always running.
29 • Cam
Lunch with the general and the senator is in the dark recesses of the Wrangler’s Club—perhaps the most expensive, most exclusive restaurant in Washington, DC. Secluded leather booths, each in its own pool of light, and a complete lack of windows gives the illusion that time has been stopped by the importance of one’s conversation. The outside world doesn’t exist when one dines in the Wrangler’s Club.
As Cam and Roberta are walked in by the hostess, he spots faces he thinks he recognizes. Senators or congressmen, perhaps. People he’s seen at the various high-profile galas he’s attended. Or maybe it’s just his imagination. These self-important folk, wheeling and dealing, all begin to look alike after a while. He suspects that the ones he doesn’t recognize are the real power brokers. That’s the way it always is. Lobbyists for surreptitious special interests he couldn’t begin to guess at. Proactive Citizenry does not have a monopoly on secret influence.
“Best foot forward,” Roberta tells Cam as they are led to their booth.
“And which one is that?” he asks. “You’d know better than me.”
She doesn’t respond to his barb. “Just remember that what happens today could define your future.”
“And yours,” Cam points out.
Roberta sighs. “Yes. And mine.”
General Bodeker and Senator Cobb are already at the table. The general rises to meet them, and the senator also tries to slide out of the booth, but he’s foiled by his copious gut.
“Please, don’t get up,” says Roberta.
He gives up. “The burgers win every time,” he says.
They all settle in, share obligatory handshakes and obsequious niceties. They discuss the unpredictable weather, raining one minute, sunny the next. The senator sings the praises of the pan-seared scallops, which is today’s special.