John Ridley - Those Who Walk in Darkness

Be like Nubian Princess? I want nothing to do with her except to throw flowers on her grave.

La Brea and Sunset. The busiest intersection in a city full of nothing but cars and traffic.

Head to her steering wheel. Had to be this intersection?

A deep, deep breath. Relaxing for just a second. Getting calm, because this Soledad did not need. On a Saturday? On a day off and away from the department and the desk that had become a prison she commuted to daily? At least, she thought, the air bag hadn't deployed. It was, what? Three hundred dollars to replace those? That's if it didn't kill you first. But she was moving too slowly when she rear-ended the other car to set it off, the car she now sat tangled with at the intersection of La Brea and Sunset. Maybe, God willing, too slowly to have done any real damage.

Horns honked: other drivers trying to make their way around the two bumper-smacked vehicles that were slowing up traffic. They didn't care there was an accident. They didn't care somebody might've been hurt. This was Los Angeles. Slow up traffic in LA you better hope the crash kills you before some pissed, late-to-be-somewhere-that's-nowhere-important nut job with a gun does.

Soledad got out of her car. The other driver got out of his, met her halfway and hot.

"Look at this. Would you look at this?"

Soledad looked. The other car, the one she'd hit, was a Jaguar. Not a new one, an old one. She didn't know how old; what year, what model. Soledad wasn't into cars like that. But it was beautiful. British racing green with a mirror polish. Mint condition. Mint right up until Soledad took out the Jag's rear fender with the front one of her few-years-old Prelude.

"Look at this," the driver ordered again."Do you believe this?" he asked.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm stopped, I'm sitting here. You didn't see me sitting here?"

"I didn't."

"I'm sitting here at the light, at a red light, and you didn't see me? Didn't you see the light? You didn't see that? How are you not going to see a red light with a green Jaguar sitting in front of it?"

Her nonreg gun. Her desk assignment. Reese.

Soledad said: "Had things on my mind."

"Didn't see me? How the hell are you not—"

She'd caught that part before."I said I was sorry."

"Insured is what you better be."

Yeah. Fine.

Back to her car, a bit of a limp still, but she didn't use the cane anymore. No crutches for Soledad. She leaned to her glove box. Her fingers ran over Kleenex, a coupon for In 'n Out… that watch she thought she'd lost six weeks ago…

Something caught her attention. A lack of something. The other driver wasn't complaining anymore. He wasn't telling Soledad what to look at, or how she'd better be covered. What he was doing was throwing a slack-jawed stare at Soledad, at her hip, at the gun that was holstered there and revealed beneath her coat as she leaned into her car.

Simple explanation: I'm a cop. It's my off-duty piece. Soledad didn't bother. Let the guy sweat a little. Let him worry about opening his mouth and wise-talking one more time and getting a bullet for his trouble.

Insurance card.

Soledad came up out of the glove box, went back to the guy, his rant now fully replaced with awkward gawk.

"You know," he started,"if… if you're not insured, we can work something out."

Literally Soledad bit back a smile.

"It's just, you know, a classic… I got a little upset, but we can work somethi—"

"Here." The guy got Soledad's insurance card shoved his way.

With a pen he quivered down her information.

"I'll just… I'll h-have my insurance company call and—"

"Yeah."

Card back, Soledad slid into her car. She started up. She pulled around the Jaguar and took off. In her rearview mirror the guy bent over and sucked air.

Sunday. Sunday afternoon ritual. Soledad dialed the phone. It rang a couple of times, picked up.

On the other end a woman said: "Hello?"

Soledad forced a little lightness into her voice: "Hey, Mom."

Soledad loved her parents.

"Soledad! How are you, baby?"

"Good. Good."

"Soooo, what's going on?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing new. Just, you know, same old."

The conversation was no different this Sunday than it'd been last Sunday. Maybe a little more vague on Soledad's end, a little less information on every single thing in her life than she usually conveyed to her mother. But not as vague as the conversation would be next Sunday. The level of communication she had with her parents, the world, was in a slow state of decay. Later Soledad's father would jump on the phone after coming in from doing yard work. Same as last Sunday, the Sunday previous. Same as next Sunday. For now it was just her and her mother. Soledad asked how her father was doing, her mother answered, then asked Soledad how work was, which Soledad dodged with more vagary, then went into:

"The weather's been kind of nice. A little hot, but nothing too much. Just… nice."

Soledad loved her parents.

But the weather, talk about a movie she'd seen, something good that she was reading: Any of that was all the infiltration Soledad allowed her parents to her life. Allowed anyone, really. Soledad was not a people person as much as somebody could not be one. She didn't like sitting around chitchatting about herself, listening to other people like she cared about them. Cold is what people would call her. Would if they ever got to know her. Few did. That was fine. If she didn't bother with most people, she didn't have to break down a week's worth of her life for most people. She did for her parents. But she avoided specifics. Soledad rationalized it was for their own good: not getting details on a cop's life. Wasn't really. Largely it was good for Soledad's sanity.

She remembered the time she was out running in West Hollywood and got clipped by a car. Nothing serious. Her thigh was deep purple and tender for a week. Her wrist badly sprained. A day after the accident Soledad's mother had made the flight from Milwaukee to Los Angeles with her dad in tow. She cared, that's all. She just cared a little too much for Soledad's taste.

And she worried. Soledad's mother worried constantly about her daughter. Bad enough when she was just a regular cop, her fretting kicked into overdrive when Soledad made MTac. Every time there was a report of an MTac element serving a warrant on a freak, Soledad's mother was on the phone wanting to know if Soledad was all right, still alive.

No big deal.

It's what moms do.

Except Soledad's mom would make the call even if the warrant had been served in Dallas or Miami or some other city miles from where Soledad lived, and even though Soledad had yet to go on a first call herself.

It was by the grace of God or just good fortune that when Soledad got battered around by the pyro her parents happened to be on a cruise in the Caribbean and didn't hear about it until a week after the fact. By then Soledad was recovered enough to tell them, to lie to them as she lay in a hospital bed, that the incident was nowhere near as bad as the news reported. Soledad's new voice was passed off as a bad cold. Her mom didn't fly out. One day Soledad would have some explaining to do about why her voice never changed back, why her throat was laureled with scars.

Her father came in from outside, picked up on an extension. Soledad again recounted the weather, gave an update on the book she was halfway through. While she droned on she thought maybe today was the day to end the dodging; quit lying and start including her parents in on her life. Tell them about her first call and the pyro, her short stay in the hospital and Reese's continued one. And then, Soledad thought, she should cap all that off by telling her parents she was facing an uncertain future regarding a gun she'd put together hoping to balance the normal vs. metanormal struggle in favor of the normals.