T. Boyle - Talk Talk

Bridger looked to the judge. She was frowning, glancing from the attorney to the interpreter to Dana, her brow creased under a descending wave of professionally dyed and blow-dried hair. “All right, Counselor,” she said, letting out a long exasperated breath, “see what you can do and when you've got something to show me we'll proceed.”

It was then that he finally caught Dana's eye-she saw him, locked on him; it was unmistakable; she saw him right there in the courtroom doing everything he could do-but the look she gave him wasn't a look of love, gratitude or even relief. She looked into his eyes, burned into him, and then she looked away.

THEY LEFT THE COUNTY JAIL at four a. m., a breakfast of white bread and processed cheese with a dried-out tangerine and the fruit drink distributed to them in the brown paper sack as they boarded the bus, and she ate every morsel, though she had to chew gingerly around the bad tooth, and licked her fingers afterward. She even felt the smallest pulse of optimism-they were moving, the wheels of justice grinding forward as the bus lurched and bounced and the safety glass rattled like a machine gun against the steel mesh, and she didn't care where they were going as long as it put distance between her and the hellhole she'd just vacated. People let their heads loll against the backs of the seats, their eyes closed and legs splayed. There was a taint of exhaust leaching in from under the floorboards and it was a small mercy because it cut through the human smell. The only light came from the green glow of the dash and the pale wash of the headlights beyond and Dana focused on it. The others might have been asleep, but she sat rigid with anticipation, staring out over the driver's silhouette to where the dark slick of the roadway unraveled before them and the hills and trees opened up on amber streetlights and the shadowy roofs of condos and tract homes where people lay dreaming.

The bus deposited them at the courthouse, a policeman with a shotgun standing guard while they shuffled through a corridor and into a holding cell located somewhere in proximity to the courtroom itself. Once they were safely inside the cell, a guard released the handcuffs and they were allowed to mingle and gather as they saw fit. Dana kept to herself, or tried to. She made her way to the far corner of the cell, eased herself down on the floor and was careful to avoid eye contact with anyone, but the fat girl was there like a picked scab, dodging into her frame of reference every two minutes, and Angela careened from one group of women to the next, her fingers locked in the nicotine gesture, until finally she collapsed beside Dana and began a long spittle-flecked monologue on a subject-or subjects-that remained mysterious. Nothing happened through the long morning and into the early afternoon, when everyone began to bristle and stir as if an electric current had been switched on, and a man from the Public Defender's office swept into the cell and gave a speech Dana didn't catch at all. Shortly thereafter Iverson appeared, weaving his way through the clutch of prisoners, a woman with a briefcase at his side.

And what did she feel when she spotted him there amidst the crowd swiveling his head from side to side, looking for her? Elation. Pure elation. She might not have liked him, might have assigned him a good measure of the blame for what had happened to her-he should have intervened, should have explained to them that they'd got the wrong person, should have persisted and used his influence and got her out-but she gazed on him now as if he were her savior. Finally, finally something was happening. He introduced the woman, who handed her her card-“Marie Eustace, Public Defender”-and leaned in close to quiz her sufficiently enough to understand that this was all a mistake, Iverson simultaneously translating in his rigid mechanical Sign. It took no more than five minutes. They would establish the identity of the true criminal and have her out of here ASAP, that was the promise, and Marie Eustace put on a look of high dudgeon and told her how outraged she was that the court had fallen asleep on this one. “Don't you worry,” she told her, “we'll have you out in no time,” and then she moved on to huddle with Angela.

Dana had never been in court before and the flags and the arras and the great seal and all the rest might have impressed her under other circumstances, but all she felt as she sat there in the dock (that was the term, wasn't it? — yes, from the Flemish for “hutch, pen, cage)” was the same shame and anger she'd felt on the morning of her arrest, though it was multiplied now. By the power of ten, ten at least. She couldn't lift her head, couldn't scan the cluster of spectators for Bridger's face, couldn't do anything but go deep and close herself down. All through the weekend she'd distracted herself by mentally conjuring the poems she made a practice of beating out in class for her students so they could feel the music of them, the dactyls, iambs and trochees singing in their heads even as her hands thumped the rhythm on one desktop after another. She did it now, head bowed, vanished from the scene: “Just as my fingers on these keys / Make music, so the self-same sounds / On my spirit make a music too.”

When they finally got to her, after Angela, after the big girl with the shaven head (with the unlikely name of Beatrice Flowers), after half a dozen men who tightened their jaws and flexed their shoulders as they stood before the judge, she came out of her trance long enough to startle the whole courtroom with the unleashed power of her voice: “Yes,” she said, standing as Iverson signed that they'd called her name, “I'm present.” That was when she looked up and saw Bridger, his face crying out to her, and he was the only one in the courtroom who didn't flinch at the sound of her voice. She gave him nothing, not hope or joy or love. Then she sat down again and dropped her head.

More waiting. Eternal waiting. Cases came and went, charges were read aloud, pleas made and recorded, bail set and fines levied. At four-fifteen Marie Eustace reappeared to confer with the judge and present into evidence faxes from each of the jurisdictions in question, and the judge put on her reading glasses while the court went lax and people studied the ceiling or ducked in and out of the door on urgent business. Then the judge removed her glasses and called Dana's name again, Iverson signing, and Dana found herself edging past people to approach the bench, and at least they'd released her shackles, at least there was that.

The judge's eyes were a milky blue, faded and blanched as if all the vitality had gone out of them, yet she had a smile in reserve, a rueful smile, which she somehow managed to summon for the occasion of this, Dana Halter's exoneration. Dana could see it all before it happened-yes, it was a case of mistaken identity, or worse, identity theft-and the lethargy she'd felt was replaced suddenly by anger, by a rage that built in her till she couldn't contain it. “The court must offer you our deepest apologies,” the judge was saying, as Iverson's hands worked and twisted before her, “because this was an ordeal you've been through, I know that, but until the evidence came in”-and here she held up a handful of faxes, the first of which, from Tulare County, showed the shadowy likeness of a stranger, a white male nonetheless, under the tag Dana Halter-“there was nothing we could do. But we do apologize-I apologize-and we will give you every consideration we can in straightening this out. Our victims' assistance people are as good as they come and will be available to you immediately on release.”

But she had to speak, had to push it. “Is that it?” she said, and she had no idea whether she was shouting or whispering. “Is that all you're going to do?”