A work of fiction where a seasoned provocateur attempts a connection amid the fallout of a contentious trial…
by: Joshua C. Gaines
Charlotte dropped her purse on the table between us as if she might leave if I said one more dumb thing.
“You’re swearing off the cause? I mean, I guess do what you want, but maybe change your dating profile,” she said.
“The public turned on us,” I said. “My family turned on me. It’s not worth it. No one listens anyway.”
Charlotte adjusted her blue framed glasses. Sipping her beer through a straw,. “I get it,” she said. “I guess I’m just really looking for the rebellious type. I thought that’s the kinda date this was.”
“I’m still rebellious,” I replied, a little louder than I meant to.
Charlotte reached for the strap of her rhinestone bedazzled blue Covid mask and adjusted it behind her ear freeing her jaw-length black hair.
We shared the dining room with two other couples. The occupied tables were spaced for appropriate social distancing, with an extra empty table at the center of the room. Our table sat beside a mostly boarded up ceiling to floor window. The waiter had removed a board in the middle to allow natural light into the restaurant, despite the overcast day. Outside, maskless people gathered, packed tight around iron bistro tables. Charlotte looked at the crowd and shifted her feet.
“There’s other ways to rebel besides owning the streets.” I leaned closer and whispered, “Like slashing fascist cop tires.” That caught her attention. “And setting their cars on fire.”
“You did not!” she whisper yelled. The smile I hoped for behind her mask reached her eyes.
I leaned back and put my arms behind my head. “I sure as hell did. I can even tell you the car number. You should have seen that pig’s face.” She asked what the car number was and giggled. I told her and she clapped her hands. I lifted the bottom of my mask to down my glass of beer.
Our bored waiter was on it. “Another IPA?”
Charlotte’s eyes said yes, so I said yes. Our waiter put a beer on the table.
“Sounds so exciting, being in the middle of it all,” Charlotte said, ignoring the waiter.
Under our table, Charlotte ran her foot along mine.
“You sure you can quit, especially with the verdict about to come down? What if it all goes wrong?”
“I gotta let it. Seriously, the people who should love us, don’t. We put in the work, and they call us shit, and then they wonder why we bust up their shops. Would you sit in jail for people who hate you? And cops tried to pin it all on me, brought me in like I invaded Congress. Now, any little thing they get me on I’m fucked. It’s a good thing they train us. I can pick a cop out of a crowd and disappear before he even knows I’ve seen him.”
She straw-sipped her beer. At the tables outside, people waved their hands and pointed at their phones, and people beside them looked over their shoulders, and people across from them pulled out their own phones.
“Don’t you wanna know?” she asked me.
I stared out at the crowd. “News just tells you what already happened,” I said. “That’s why people feel like they can’t change the world. Everything they hand us is so over it might as well be in a history book.”
Outside, people with shocked faces gathered on the sidewalks angry and gesturing.
I put my face in my hands. “I wish they’d have just kept this window boarded up,” I said.
The waiter walked over.
“Everything okay so far?” he asked.
I nodded in my hands.
“Insane about the verdict,” he said.
“Sure,” I agreed, hoping to shut him up. I imagined smashing my beer glass through his thick black Buddy Holly glasses frames, the sound that crunch would make. “What about you?” I asked Charlotte. “You ever get involved, and does that purse have to stay right there?” The waiter shifted his weight and lingered, like he was waiting for one of us to dismiss him.
Charlotte waved him off and moved the purse barely to the side and smiled. “Don’t want to forget it if we have to run out of here,” she said. She twirled her hair and looked off like she was searching for the name of something important. “I did get involved once,” she said. “At the Women’s March. The first one. I stayed downtown that night and the morning after too, like just being there was somehow helping. Just after sunrise, I saw a cop harassing some sleeping homeless guy. He started yelling at the guy, and eventually the guy woke up and started yelling back. Like the cop was about to hit him or cuff him, but then a plastic bottle smashed open on the cop’s back. Two people dressed all in black with black masks turned and ran, yelling all cops are bastards. The cop stood there with his arms held out like he was afraid to touch himself, covered in human shit. He didn’t even bother chasing, just stripped down to his underwear and radioed it in while the homeless guy wandered off.”
“It’s crazy the cop thought he could get away with that harassment,” I said.
“It’s crazy you think you can just walk away,” she said. The sky cleared and the rhinestones on her mask caught some stray sunlight that cast small rainbows across our table and her purse.
“Maybe you could introduce me to some of your black bloc friends,” she said.
“Is that the only reason you agreed to go out with me?” I asked.
Charlotte considers this question longer than she thinks she should. It is one reason she agreed to go out with him. She wants to know the entire organization, to go up the chain and find the organizers, the ones who get things done. Charlotte also knows loneliness and hasn’t made a close friend, the kind you can sit in a room in pajamas with and say nothing without it being awkward, since she left the Midwest. She has dated men like the one facing her before, and she craves the excitement that comes with simply doing without thinking it through first, a behavior she finds herself incapable of when alone. St. Charlotte of Rational Responsibility.
She said no in a yes kind of way. Outside, more people drifted from surrounding buildings carrying signs that said what we we’d all been thinking. They piled onto sidewalks and crowded the streets. Displaced patio customers left their tables, yelling at the protestors. One gas-masked protestor dressed like he just stepped out of Pink Floyd’s The Wall flipped one of the bistro tables and rolled it on its side against our window. The glass flexed.
Our waiter rushed through the door with a pitcher of ice water. He yelled at Gas Mask who stood there quietly, his middle fingers raised. The waiter hurled the water from the pitcher, dousing the mask, and walked back inside. He pulled the door closed behind him and locked it, leaving Gas Mask unmoved. Water slid off his mask and clothes. Camp-Dry and Rain-X, I thought. Well done.
“Man, fuck those people, right?” the waiter said when his eyes met mine. He apologized to the other couples.
“Yeah,” I said. “Fuck ‘em.” Charlotte stared at me, waiting. Outside people started chanting.
“You picked a rough afternoon to call it quits,” she said.
“It’s like this every day,” I said. I felt hot and wondered if the AC had died. I pulled my mask down and gulped more beer. “Maybe this wasn’t the best place to meet,” I said.
Outside, the masked, chanting crowd began to march toward us. Gas Mask ran to join them. As they passed, I could see their black backpacks, the anarchy patches, ACAB spray painted in white and red. Even masked, I recognized some of them. People I’d fought with. People who valued our cause over their reputation, and some beautiful bastards who just really loved to fuck shit up. I could guess what they had in their backpacks. I imagined their yells before the clash, the teargas mixing with my sweat, that capsaicin burn. I lied and said I wanted to talk about something else.
She leaned back, rainbows danced across the table, and she raised her eyebrows and looked up. “Went to school in Nebraska,” she said. “Worked a hotel front desk in Lincoln. Eventually moved here. Now I’m looking for some momentum.”
I tried to listen and ignore the increased pace of the passing crowd. Just shy of jogging, a few had dropped their protest signs to free their hands.
“What were you going to school for?” I asked, not looking at her.
“Eventually Criminal Justice. Even rebels need fair representation, right?”
I nodded, sizing up the chair, and the heft of the pint glass in my hand, assessing what I had nearby that I could use in a street brawl.
Two protestors wearing ski masks and fucking Keds pounded on the glass window as they ran by. I jerked back. She didn’t flinch.
“Scared?” she asked, laughing.
“Only of their useless fashion choices. I mean, canvas shoes in gas?”
She laughed harder.
“I gotta ditch this town,” I said. “Maybe Boise. My best friend moved to Boise.”
“Boise‽” she said. “My aunt’s from there. She paints scripture quotes on fence boards and sells them to ninety-year-olds to hang on their walkers like license plates.”
“Artists say it’s the next place to be. I” Two loud pops from outside cut me off. The tide of people slowed, then stopped. A few took some tentative steps backward. “It’s about to go down.” I said.
Charlotte kept her eyes on me. “Should we check out?” she asked. “We can probably move before it makes its way here.”
The crowd turned, a sea of backs running away, a tide escaping CS gas that muted the sunlight, ended the rainbows. Loudspeakers squawked, This is an unlawful assembly. The tourists retreated. The ones left, the ones who meant it, spread out to fill the street.
Then the world paused and no one moved, just frozen people and a growing smoke haze in the air. The trenches, where everything real happened. The things you do when you can’t breathe defines you, defines your conviction.
“Ugh,” Charlotte said, rubbing her eyes. Gas seeped through vents, wafted around doors.
“You get used to it,” I said. The other couples in the room called for their checks. They paid, and the waiter opened the door a crack and they ran out, bitching about law and order and covering their dumb faces.
Charlotte coughed. “For real, let’s go. I know a place on the hill. If we leave now, it will be okay. I don’t really want to be here for this.” She signaled the waiter.
Outside I saw the next wave, my people, walking backwards, facing their enemies, not running, gas masks on, shields or umbrellas in one hand, elbows bent for impact, clubs or bottles in the other hand. A couple near the end of the line held their clubs too low. Makes sense, I thought. They’re scared. Sometimes we made mistakes when scared.
Charlotte looked at them too. “Damn, they’re brave,” she said like I wasn’t even there, her eyes watering from the majesty of them, or maybe just the gas. The waiter, covering his face, also looked out the window. He put the check on the table. People yelled and more pops, and gas filled the street.
“Not yet,” I said to the waiter. The resistance continued their slow backward march as minutes slipped by and the police line closed in.
I don’t think I blinked. When I glanced at Charlotte she said, “By the time you decide to change your life, it’ll be too late.”
Outside, a teen boy ran down the sidewalk. Just some long haired kid, not dressed for a fight, in jeans, a white shirt, and chelsea boots. Unmasked, half blinded by gas, he toppled over a bistro table, flipped with it and smashed his cheek against the concrete. Before he could stand, two gas masked cops ran up and stopped above him. The first hit the side of the kid’s knee twice with a baton, while the second shoved his face back to the ground by his hair. He held the kid down, a transparent riot shield pressing across the back of the kid’s head while the first cop cracked his baton across the kid’s lower back and hips. I could see his teeth through the shield glass. His muffled screams paused with each blow of the baton.
I ran for the door.
“Wait,” yelled the waiter, “you’ll let gas in!”
I paused, my heart racing. The cops lifted the kid from the ground. A ragged tear exposed his cheekbone, and blood ran down his face and neck. It settled into the spaces between his teeth. He’d closed his eyes and hung there in the cop’s arms. The way the blood followed the channel of his t-shirt collar, it looked like they’d slit his throat. They zip tied his wrists, though he didn’t struggle, and they dragged him from under his arms back towards the police line. I felt for my phone in my pocket.
“Why didn’t I record him?” I said and glared at the waiter who’d yelled at me, as if my fear had nothing to do with my inaction.
Charlotte looked at me. Her expression asked if I was coming back, but then she turned away as if she knew. In the street, the line of fascist cops appeared in full riot gear, closing in slow-march unison on the black-clad family. A firework exploded against a riot shield near the middle of the line. Even inside I flinched at the volume. It reminded me of blowing up stumps with my insane uncle. He’d cover my ears with his sledgehammer hands and howl with the Tannerite thunder.
The line of cops stopped. I could see the scorch mark on a shield, right on the printed L of POLICE. One cop put a shaking hand on his gun. The one next to him noticed and put his hand on the other cop’s shoulder. The nervous cop moved his hand away from his gun. Another firework, and the cops renewed their march. The two on the outside edges of the line fired gas pellets into the crowd, while those in the middle held their batons ready. They passed me, moving faster. Some black bloc turned and ran, but others stood their ground as the two groups closed in.
Then, I was leaning against the opened door, yelling, “Fuck you pigs!” The waiter kept yelling to shut the door. I took a few steps toward the curb, noticed the pint glass in my hand, turned around and hurled it at the exposed part of the restaurant window. I saw Charlotte’s face behind the window just before my glass shattered, and the window spider-webbed around the impact obscuring her as she instinctively ducked.
“Fuck you too!” I yelled at the waiter, like I’m paying that bill, that protestor dousing fuck, though I doubt he heard me.
My eyes began to water hard, needles of fire where my tears touched my cheek. I ignored my lungs and grabbed two pint glasses the outside diners had left. One had specks of blood on it from the kid. I threw that one first, right at the backs of those attacking fascists, their batons swinging high over and between their shields. I hit one hard in the back of the neck. He went down, and two others looked around and turned towards me.
In the confusion, their vision impaired by their masks, I had time to throw two more glasses. I could barely see either. One glass shattered, wasted at their feet, the other hit the already downed fucker right in his crotch. He curled around himself. One cop crouched beside the downed asshole. The other ran at me. I told myself the one I’d hit was the one who’d beat the kid with the baton. I was coughing lung-snot pretty bad, the gas eating me from the inside. Every exposed thing screaming hot. While I still could, I turned from the battleline and ran from my resisting brothers and from the slow riot gear pig ordering me to stop. My skin burned worse with each bead of sweat, my eyes and nose a steady stream of fire. I ran and turned down a side street and ran some more. I ran blocks, caught my breath, and puked beer behind an alley dumpster. I faced into the spring wind blowing through the alley, heaving dumpster air.
When my eyes stopped watering, I took my phone from my pocket and ordered a ride. Ride shares wouldn’t go near the protests so I had a few more blocks to walk, to compose myself, to become who I would be from then on. Charlotte was wrong about me. I wasn’t too late. I was done with the war. Out for good. New life. New dating profile. A clean break.
Back at the restaurant, the waiter stood trembling with adrenaline. Charlotte apologizes to the waiter, says, “you did good,” and drops two fifties on the table.
“Don’t worry. I’ll show myself out once this clears a little.” She gestures to the world beyond the shattered window. “Keep the change,” she adds.
When the waiter excuses himself, coughing relentlessly, Charlotte removes her black wig and her blue glasses and bedazzled blue mask. Her eyes water some, but her expression could be stained glass, set, emotionless, immune to torture, St. Charlotte of the Tear Gas. She reaches into her purse, removes a palm sized device, states the date and time, and briefly describes the scene before hitting stop on the small digital recorder. She trades the stand-out mask for a plain black one and wipes her nose on a napkin. It leaves a light streak of pinkish blood which she folds out of sight. She places the recorder back into her purse beside her badge. Later, the expensive purse will hang on a door in a lonely apartment filled with still unused furniture. She allows the paperwork, and the long night ahead for everyone on the force, to consume her mind, grateful for something besides her mostly empty bed to obsess over.
Charlotte stands and wets the black mask with her waterglass and tightens the straps until they hurt behind her ears. She opens the door into the explosions, into the screaming air and wonders what it’s all for. Through the haze, she can still make out the police line, formed straight, moving steadily, driving their enemy towards the next city block, away from the courthouse, away from justice. She can’t help it. She thinks of the kid and his ruined cheek, and imagines herself taking a pint glass and hurling it towards her co-workers in blue, the ones who did it, the ones who are known monsters.
A penance of teargas hits her eyes, and she turns her head away even though she knows it won’t help. Charlotte blinks. In those last moments, before gas leaves her vision a world hidden behind frosted glass, she looks down to where the kid fell and to a reflective, congealing pool of blood on the sidewalk, looks at it like a mirror.
