Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“Okay, who owns the joint?” one of the cops said loudly.

One of the men who had been playing chess in the corner stood up. Thin and slight in his gray sweater, at least a foot shorter than any of the policemen, he looked like a member of another species. Apparently in response to some command, he began to take things out of his pockets and place them on the table.

“What’s going on?” Paul whispered to Ceci.

“They’re looking for drugs.”

Paul took a breath. Safe. But anyhow he had not done anything. He began looking round the room, wondering which of the other customers would turn out to be addicts. Some of them did look pretty odd. Two of the cops were going along the tables, searching the crowd, while the others stood guard at the front and back exits. They looked through the handbags of the women and made the men turn out their pockets. Not a very thorough search, compared to those in detective movies; they probably wouldn’t find anything (and he felt a twinge of disappointment). Maybe they don’t expect to, just trying to make things hard for the beats again.

At the table next to theirs a cop sniffed suspiciously at a pack of Camels, then emptied them out on to the table, and broke one apart to smell the tobacco. “Hey!” the owner protested. “Those are my last cigarettes.” The cop said nothing, but he began to tear up the rest of the pack, smelling the cigarettes only perfunctorily. Leaving the table covered with shredded paper and tobacco, he passed on to Paul and Ceci.

“Lessee your bag,” he ordered. Ceci set the bag in front of her, and Paul watched with some indignation as the cop pawed through it: comb, wallet, keys, an orange, a paperback book (a play by Genet with a lurid cover, at which he squinted suspiciously).

“Okay.” He passed on to Paul, who began to empty his pockets, first the right side: keys, wallet, change—he took his time, beginning to appreciate if not to enjoy the experience, and thinking that this deliberate delay was the least he could do to show how he felt. Then the left: handkerchief, nail file, comb—“That there! What’s that you got?”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Paul said, “just some pills for upset stomach.” He reached out, but the cop was ahead of him slamming his paw on to the table.

“Oh, yeah.” Heavy irony; he held up the plain white envelope and peered into it.

“Listen, that’s just medicine. They’re called Alkogel or something; you can get them anywhere, without a prescription.” The cop paid no attention to Paul, although everyone else in the room was listening to him; he spoke out of the side of his mouth to his partner.

“Okay. You come with us,” he added in a tough voice. “Stand up,” he said, as Paul, astonished, did not move.

Paul stood up. “Listen, officer. You’re making a mistake,” he said, and was aware that he had uttered a stock line from TV drama. “I mean this isn’t dope or anything.”

“Move.” But before Paul had a chance to move, the policeman pushed him heavily, so that he staggered and nearly fell on to the next table, where Steve and John were sitting.

“Hey, why doncha leave him alone?” Steve said.

The cop turned and glared at Steve. Then he glared at Paul. “This a friend of yours?”

“Uh-uh,” Paul answered automatically, shaking his head. Why had he said that? Because Steve was not his friend. And besides he was in enough trouble already; he wasn’t going to admit knowing somebody who probably had a record around here for shoplifting or God knows what. C’mon.

While the entire roomful of people watched, the four policemen escorted, or rather shoved Paul out of the coffee house.

Twenty minutes later, Paul sat alone in a small room which, although it had no bars, he presumed to be a cell. It contained two chairs, a table, and a battered standing ashtray bolted to the floor. The walls were painted a disagreeable shade of green and there was no window, only a ceiling ventilator grille. High up on the door was a small glass panel, presumably so that the cop on duty could look at Paul if he felt like it.

Paul had never seen the inside of a police station before. He felt angry, worried, nervous; even claustrophobic. His feet hurt, because these sandals (whose sandals? Probably Walter Wong’s, he realized) were too small. His stomach was still unsettled, very unsettled, but they had taken away his envelope of digestive tablets. Of course they would let him out as soon as they discovered that it wasn’t heroin or cocaine, or whatever they thought it was. He hoped. Everybody knew that the cops in Venice hated the beats. They wanted them to move out, and were following a policy of deliberate harassment and bullying to effect this purpose; and he had fallen into the jaws of that policy. He remembered tales and rumors now that he had heard from Ceci and her friends, about things the cops (or as they called them, “the fuzz”) had done. Scenes from TV plays, stories of police brutality. But of course they wouldn’t dare (why not?).

It was stupidly ironic that he should be arrested for taking dope, something he had never done, but always wanted to try—at least he would have liked to try smoking marijuana. He knew that Ceci’s friends had often done so, but they, and she, always grew silent whenever he mentioned it.

He wanted to be out of this windowless room, badly. But what could he do? The head cop, or sergeant (desk sergeant maybe: he was sitting at a desk out there) had said he could make one telephone call. But he couldn’t think whom to call: Ceci knew already, and God forbid that Katherine should ever hear of this. (They wouldn’t call her anyway, would they? They had the address.) In movies people always called their lawyer, but he didn’t know any lawyer in Los Angeles. He might call Fred Skinner, but that would involve telling him what had happened and showing him Paul in the Venice jail dressed up in beatnik clothes, goddamn these clothes. At the very best he would laugh to himself, and anyhow it would be better if nobody from Nutting ever heard of this; and they needn’t, because as soon as the cops discovered, etc. This was a false arrest; he was completely innocent, but the security people at Nutting didn’t like it if you even got near to anything irregular. Even adultery made you a security risk, because you might be blackmailed. Unless you were screwing a girl with clearance, Fred said once, referring to a rumor about the secretaries in Personnel and Security. Booked on suspicion of possessing drugs, how would that look? He could even be fired.

An eye appeared in the window of the door; then the door was opened.

“Your wife’s here,” the policeman informed Paul.

“Here?”

“Out front.” He gave a jerk of his head to indicate the direction.

“Oh, God.”

An expression of sympathy came over the section of large red face which was visible through the door. “You don’t have to see her if you don’t wanna,” the cop said.

“In a little while. I’ll see her in a little while,” Paul promised. The cop nodded, and shut the door. Paul slumped back in his chair. What in Christ’s name would he tell Katherine, who believed that he had gone to a late movie in the opposite direction, over in Hollywood. If he didn’t appear soon she would probably conclude that he was drunk, he realized. She must be in a complete state anyhow, got out of bed after midnight by a telephone call from the police. Well, he would have to say that he went to the movie, and that he met some people there, and they suggested, etc. All right, let’s get it over with. He stood up.

But the policeman had gone, and Paul was locked in; he looked out through the square of glass at an empty corridor. He knocked on the inside of the door. No one came. He knocked again, louder. Waiting, he walked back and forth, pacing the room; as prisoners are supposed to do, he thought. He sat down again, in the other chair this time. Goddamn the cops, and the coffee house, and Venice, and everyone in it! Had he really been thinking of coming to live here just a couple of hours ago? Goddamn it all.