Should Have Known Better

“That’s none of my business,” the woman said flatly. “What is my business is why you thought you were just going to sneak past my officers and go into a dressing room to attack one of my clients. That was stupid. What if she’d pressed charges? If you went to jail? Ms. Bellamy said you have children. Did you think about them when you broke that mirror?”

“I didn’t break the mirror,” I said, but this little fact was a small defense for how I was feeling. Something had been broken. I’d been dragged by my collar down a hallway and held in a little square room like a criminal. And to all those who watched—the little Asian woman with her papers, A. J. and his confused stare, others with open mouths and pointed fingers, Sasha and her smile as she brushed her shoulders off—I was a criminal.

“She said you did—”

“She said? She said?” I snatched my driver’s license off of the desk and looked at the woman’s bare finger, where a slight tan of once-hidden skin revealed a missing ring. “Have you ever been married?”

“That’s none of your concern, ma’am.”

“None of my concern? Really?” I said. “Let me guess, he cheated on you?”

She looked off and said, “Yes, he did, but that’s still none of your—”

“And what about the woman he cheated with?” I asked. “What would you do if you knew exactly who she was and where you could find her?”

She looked back at me and I saw in her face the image of myself I’d seen in Sasha’s mirror.

“I would and did kick that whore’s ass,” she said coldly.

“Exactly—”

“But couldn’t you have gone to her house or some other place? Please, coming up in here ain’t doing nothing but bringing me more trouble. I have to suspend two officers. And explain to my boss how in the hell they let you upstairs.”

“Well, I’m sorry about that.”

“Look.” She looked into my eyes. “You just needed a better plan. One that didn’t include my job.”

“I don’t know where she lives.”

“Ahhh . . . phewww. . .” She sat back in her seat and looked at me crossly. “It’s almost time for my break.” She looked at the clock. “I have to go call my ex-husband to make sure he doesn’t have my kids around that slut he had the nerve to marry.” Her voice changed and she looked at the computer. “I still need you to fill out this statement though—saying you didn’t break the mirror, and you didn’t come here to fight Sasha Bellamy. Right?” She winked at me.

“No, I didn’t come here for that.”

“OK. So, I’m going to step out of the room and make my phone call. You can sit here and finish your statement.” She pushed away from the desk and I noticed that her voice had shifted from discipline to polite deception. “Now, don’t you come around here and try to sneak a peek at my computer. There’s lots of private and sensitive information on here.” She eyeballed me closely. “Addresses and information about employees. You just look up the last name and there they are.”

“Yeah, that sounds like sensitive information,” I agreed.

“But don’t you come over here looking for stuff. Could cost me my job. Especially if you ever tell someone how you got that kind of information.”

“I wouldn’t do that, because I wouldn’t look at the computer.”

“Well, I’m glad you wouldn’t do that. Because then I’d have to hurt you myself.” She stood up and the plump woman became tall and plump. She grabbed her keys and walked toward the door. “The call I need to make usually takes about five minutes. You can leave your statement on the desk.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“And don’t you dare look at that computer.”

7

My mother’s house was dark and quiet. While no one inside knew what had happened at CNN and they were all probably asleep and dreaming, my embarrassment made me creep into the house like a teenager who’d snuck out and was trying to avoid her parents. My cell phone had died, so I plugged it into the wall in the living room and went to the dining room table to just sit and think. I’d written Sasha’s address down in the palm of my hand. Just the numbers, in big, looping, red ink. 593. That’s where she was. That’s where Reginald was.

I looked at the dusty chandelier over the dining room table. It was a pear-shaped bulb covered with chipped, leaf-shaped pieces of glass falling down all around it. When I was little, maybe five, my mother had gathered all of the leaves off of the chandelier and put them into a pot with water and vinegar to soak. I saw the pot on the table and looked into it to see the little glass pieces sunken into the water, sitting in the bottom, sparkling and shining like diamonds. My mother was in the kitchen, so I put my hand inside to touch the diamonds. I fingered them in the water, turned them around, and then took one out to hold it to my finger like a diamond ring. I held it up and smiled. One day I’d have a ring like that. When I was big and a woman. I held it up farther, so it could catch the light shining in from outside of the living room window and I must’ve lost my balance in the chair because I fell over and both me and the pot of diamonds fell to the floor.

I screamed, but the sound of all of that glass and the pot crashing into the wood was what made my mother come rushing in from the kitchen, my father from upstairs.

I wasn’t hurt, so I jumped back up and tried to pretend nothing had happened, but the evidence, those chipped glass leaves, were scattered everywhere.

“What is this?” my father asked.