LOST IN THE NIGHT

The sound of his own cell phone ringing alarmed him. Somebody was having sex upstairs. Flesh on flesh smacking. Grunts. He couldn’t remember where he was. The phone rang again, and he felt himself trying to focus. The glow of the moonlight shone through the window. He was down on the carpeted floor. Upstairs, the sound of flesh smacking went on. Hard. Violent, almost.

Finally, he picked up the phone, feeling as if he had taken too long to answer.

“Hello?” he said. He tried to shake the confusion away from his voice and asked the word again.

“Kevin?” It was a girl’s voice. Familiar. Scared. Crying.

“Grace?” he finally said. The wait felt like trying to breathe under water.

She was in tears and incomprehensible from the other end, trying to talk but coming through with only bawls. The sound of her cries shook him awake. It brought his senses to alarm. It was like rising above the surface of water and taking that first real breath in hours. Air. Upstairs the sex continued. Kevin was over Mark’s apartment, he remembered now, and he’d fallen asleep on the floor.

“Grace, what’s the matter baby?”

“They…” the word came out in tumbles, as if tripping down a flight of stairs, still mixed up with her own crying. After a while, in broken-up vowels and consonants, she managed to say, “They ripped my shirt.”

Kevin felt angry now. Protective.

“Who?” He demanded. “Who ripped your shirt?”

“I don’t know,” she seemed to be gaining some composure now, slowly.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know, okay? Some guys. Two guys.”

“Are you hurt?”

She seemed to think for a second. “I’m okay.”

“Where are you? Where did this happen?”

She was in Oakland, down on Craig Street. It was just a few blocks away from his friend Mark’s apartment. She managed to tell him how two guys had tried to grab her as she was walking back to her car. Kevin now wished he hadn’t drunk half the bottle of Vladimir. His mind felt like it was pushing through fumes.

“Can you meet me at Mark’s?” he asked, he didn’t feel stable enough to move on his own.

“The car broke down.”

“What? Why?” He realized the tone of blame in his own voice and tried again,

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything.” She was on the verge of tears again. He could hear it in her voice.

“Shh… it’s okay. Grace. Everything’s okay. I’m right here.”
Kevin was looking around for his shoes. He tried to think of everything he had brought when coming over tonight. He always emptied his pockets and took off his dog-tags before going to sleep because their jingling bothered him. Now he was fumbling through the darkness to find everything. Wallet. Keys. Cell phone… Where was his cell phone? Where’d the hell had he put it? His hand. He was talking on it. Damnit Kevin, wake up!

“Can’t you come here?” Grace said, pleading… Scared. “I’m in my car.”

“Just meet me at Mark’s. I’m calling the police.”

“No. Don’t.”

“Why not?” Again, his voice.

Grunts from upstairs. Hungry grunts. Despairing and wanting.

“Please. Just don’t. I’ll meet you there, okay?” Her voice was childlike, that of a little girl who was afraid of making her father angry.

“All right. I’ll wait for you outside.”

As he hung up, the rush and pain of guilt knocked against his chest. He shouldn’t let her walk at night after what just happened to her. She’d been attacked, she said. He didn’t know anything else, and now he was afraid that something worse might happen to her while walking across Oakland’s campus. He ran down the stairs of the apartment building. The outside air touched his face with a night breeze. Summer air. This helped him to think a little. The moon wasn’t out after all. He realized he’d been fooled. What he thought had been moon-glow shining through the window was just a pile of city lights.

In the distance he could see the Cathedral of Learning poking into the sky from above the surrounding buildings. It glowed in a hazy, orange light, jutted against the blackness. From high above somewhere he could hear drunken speech. College kids partying on rooftops. The sound of a glass bottle shattering and people yelling. The smell of liquor rose like blooming petals and thorns. His own smell.

The apartment buildings stood skewed around him. The street was lined with them. Abandoned couches and mattresses and trash bags half-ripped open dotted the street. Things that could easily be set on fire. Drunken shouting and noises scattered through the street. His veins felt warm with blood, but he found it hard to breathe and slow his pulse.

The minutes passed. He crossed his arms in his chest, even though it wasn’t cold outside. Where was she? Why was she taking so long to get here? He tried to calm his own rambling. She was attacked, he told himself. The phrase softened him.

My baby. My Grace. How could somebody try to hurt her?

That made him angry again, this time at whoever could do such a thing. He felt a vigilante kind of violence inside his bones. He wished he had a bat or a gun right now. Something. Anything that could inflict a lot of pain. Insurmountable pain. Immense amounts of pain. Disastrous pain. In his head, Kevin tried to grab hold of the biggest words he could think of. The bigger the word, the more pain it would mean for whoever had hurt Grace. To him, the bigger the word, the better he was able to think.

He pictured himself bashing the head of two faceless strangers. Blank faces. Anybody’s faces. As soon as Grace got there, they would go hunting the streets together, he thought. They would inflict punishment. They would return their hate with interest.

His hand was flipping his phone open and shut. Flipped open with a flick of his wrist, and closed again like a switchblade. The minutes passed like a dull blade carving into gravel. Kevin checked the time to see how much had passed, but then realized he had no clue when Grace had first called him.

An hour ago? he asked himself. To him, that sounded reasonable. Too long ago.
He flipped the phone open again and dialed 911. It was all a reflex.

Before the operator could finish her sentence, Kevin blurted out, “My girlfriend’s been attacked.”

“Please remain calm, sir. Is your girlfriend all right?”

“No,” he shouted, “I mean, I don’t know. She’s on her way over here. She’s walking in Oakland. I don’t want something bad happening to her. She told me two guys tried to grab her. I don’t know anything, but if I find out who they are…”

The words boiled on his lips. He forced himself not to finish the sentence. He let the words hang. It was clear what he would do.

“Okay, I’ll have a dispatch come right over. Please remain calm.”

“I’m calm.”

“Can you tell me where you are?”

Kevin thought hard before remembering the street name. He looked to the face of the building and gave her the apartment number as well. He heard himself speak the words as if he were repeating somebody else’s voice telling him what to say.

“We’ll send somebody out—”

“Just hurry,” Kevin said, and shut the phone. He’d been pacing the whole time and just now realized it. He was aware of his actions only after the matter. Two or three steps removed from himself. Reacting instead of acting. He didn’t like this.

He waited.

Voices argued in the distance. Shouts peaked and dove in volumes. Laughter. Whooping and taunting. Somebody was picking a fight.

None of it made the time go faster.

He sat there on the steps, hunched over his own body. Flipping open and shut his phone because he could do nothing else. Helpless. He repeated the word in his head. Helpless. Who? Who was helpless? Was it Grace or himself? It didn’t matter.

Helpless.

Then, her figure appeared from the far end of the street. She walked the stretch of the sidewalk holding herself—arms wrapped tightly around her own body. She didn’t run to him. Kevin stood and watched her walk slowly to him. With one hand he gripped onto the steps’ railing. His other hand held a fist. Grace walked all the way up to him, never taking a quick step until reaching him, when she flopped against his chest, hugging him and crying. A moment passed before Kevin returned the hug.

“Hug me,” she said.

“I am.”

“Hold me.”

His arms closed tighter on her shivering body.

“Let’s go inside. Let’s get you out of the cold,” he said. The words felt right even though it wasn’t cold out.

Inside the building, they walked through the tight hallway. The walls squeezed over their silence. He led the way through the corridors because they were too narrow for them to walk side-by-side.

Upstairs, inside his friend’s apartment, Kevin held Grace’s hands into his own. The one side of her wavy hair was twisted and knotted, as if tugged by a fist. Mascara ran down to her chin like black scratches. Her jaw quivered and her eyes were brilliant with tears. Her baby-tee with Grumpy the Dwarf on the front was ripped from the collar down to her chest. She wore a second shirt underneath, which calmed Kevin’s rage a little. To have seen her exposed would have made him snap.

“You’re shaking.”

She nodded in awkward head bobs, pressing her lips tightly.

“Who did this to you?”

Her lips pressed tighter still, her eyes looking into his. She didn’t know. He lifted the flap of her ripped shirt to her neck, as if trying to patch it up, but when he let go with his hand it just flopped loose again.

“Did you see their faces?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well did you, or didn’t you?”

“I don’t know, okay?”

“Fine, can you tell me what happened at least?”

She composed herself. Breathing. She told him, slowly, how she had dropped off her brother with some friends in a parking lot downtown. Her car broke down as she was driving through Oakland, leaving her stranded. When she walked to the nearest gas station looking for help, there was no one there.

“Then two guys were asking me for directions, and before—”

“What were you doing driving your brother downtown? He’s got his own car.”

“He asked me as a favor. He’s my brother.” She could hear the defensive tone in her voice.

“What the hell did he have to do downtown?”

“He was meeting some friends. Said they were going out.”

“Oh, Tubby’s got friends now…”

“Listen this isn’t about Simon,” she said, keeping an even yet defiant tone. “It’s about me, okay? Simon’s got nothing to do with what happened.”

“Then what did happen?”

She hesitated. She took a few steps back and leaned against the wall. The room sounded hollow for a while. Kevin took a step closer to her, but she crossed her arms, holding herself, and brought her face low, resting her chin on her shoulder. For a short sober moment, Kevin saw how beautiful she was. Even in her hurt. Maybe because of her hurt. He traced the lines of her face with his eyes.

“I was trying to tell you…” she said. Her voice was soft now.

“Go on. Tell me.”

“Two guys… I didn’t see their faces. They asked me how to get to Bouquet Street, and before I could tell them, one of them grabbed me.”

“How’d you get away?”

“I pushed him off me. He got angry. The other one was just sorta standing there. He didn’t seem to know what was going on, but I slammed the door into his knee. I locked myself in, and the one guy kept shouting, ‘You’re no fun. You’re no fun’ and I just—” she began crying again.

Kevin tried to hush her into his arms. He hushed like a soft, calming wind into her ear, telling her it was okay, she was okay.

The grunting from upstairs resumed. The smacking followed.

“What is that?”

Kevin gave her a look as if to say, Take a guess. They both fell quiet for a moment longer.

“I want to kill them,” he said, only half-aware that he’d spoken.

“It’s okay. They’re gone.”

“I’ll be okay once I kill them.”

“Don’t talk like that, Kevin.”

He fantasized the idea for a moment. Running the streets with his girlfriend in search of two guys who hurt her. Like a vigilante mission. They would search the streets. They would find the blamed together. The idea felt almost exotic in his head. But he dropped the thought. It was fantasy.

“You have to talk to the police, babe.”

“No I can’t. I can’t.”

“Yes.”

“Kevin, I just can’t do it.”

“What if they attack someone else tonight? Some other girl?”

“I know, I just…” her voice sounded breathless.

“Babe. Yes. You’re going to talk to the police.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, pleading with him. “You don’t know how—”

“Quit being so fucking selfish, for a moment. If we don’t do anything, think of who else they might hurt. Some other innocent girl.”

The anger returned in his voice. He thought he had handled it so well. He thought he had managed it into a tight ball, keeping it enclosed and away from his words. But it had exploded back in his throat, tainting every word he shouted at Grace. The grunting upstairs sounded animalistic. His voice matched their tone.

“What about me?” Grace asked, half-angry, half-crying, all-tears. “I’m the innocent girl. They attacked me.”

“I know, Honey. That’s why you need to talk to the police.” Calm again. He wondered how it was possible for his mood to switch so quickly, from composed to shouting, from yelling to hushing, all of it in leaps and jumps of emotions without much transition in between.

“No. You don’t know. You have no idea what it feels like to be judged by their eyes when you’re the victim. Okay? I won’t talk to them.”

“Has it…” Kevin caught himself. Has it happened before? he wanted to ask. But he didn’t want an answer to that. He dreaded the thought—the possibility—that this may have happened to Grace before. The idea of her body violated in the past without him being there to protect her. In his mind, he tried not to picture a huddle of cops blaming her for someone else’s lust.

She stood there, staring in his eyes, nodding a tiny nod.

“Well, I already called them. We might as well talk to them.” He fought the tears.

“You what?” she said, words falling off her lips like stones crumbling into dirt.

“I asked you not to.”

Kevin caught hold of her arm, gripping his fingers around her clammy flesh. The touch of her skin made him draw back, flinching his hands away from her. Her skin was cold and untouchable. She stepped backwards, away from him, stumbling over her own feet. The fear on her face... It overwhelmed everything else.

Kevin made a move towards her, slowly, hoping to appear trustworthy. But instead of stepping closer to him, Grace rushed out of the apartment and stormed down the hallway steps. He ran after her, shouting for her to stop, calling for her name, feet pounding down on the stairway steps. The hallway walls shrunk around him, his brain felt woozy and full of blood—lightheaded and drunk once more.

He finally caught her as they both burst through the building’s front door, grabbing her with one arm, and clutching onto the railing to snag himself in place. She tried to push him off but he held her there, feeling all right and sorry for the both of them. Grace tried to fight him, but he wrapped her tighter, apologizing and crying alongside her tears. Apologizing, mostly, for the disgusting nature of the men around him. Apologizing for—

Red and blue lights flashed like flames burning up oxygen in the air. Kevin gasped, feeling robbed of his breath. Grace pushed him off as a last effort to get away. He let go of her, half-numb, and she tripped over her feet, tumbling and screaming down the short stretch of steps, hitting the concrete walkway below. Kevin ran down to her, but stopped mid-way the stretch of steps at the shouting of police telling him not to move.

A police officer stood by his driver’s side door. His scalp was bald, reflecting back the dim street lights.

“Stay where you are. Don’t you move!”

A second officer, from the passenger seat, called something into his radio.

“We have a possible two-forty here. A ten-sixty-six just pushed a young female down their apartment steps.” A crackle of radio. Someone answered back, streamlining words back at the officer.

“I didn’t do anything,” Kevin was saying, holding his palms open, fixed in the air.

“I didn’t do anything.”

He said it over and over, unable to stop himself from repeating the phrase. Grace was crying, curled and bruised on the ground. Kevin’s eyes jumped back and forth from her to the bald officer, who came closer to him. Kevin breathed in quivers, and before he could finish his next breath, the officer was upon him, slamming him back against the door.

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t push her. She fell, I swear.”

The cop twisted Kevin’s body, pushed his chest against the door, and grabbed hold of his hair.

“Stay still,” the officer said. He pulled and slammed Kevin’s head against the hard wood. “That’ll teach you to hurt girls.”

“Grace, please tell them! Tell them I wasn’t the one who hurt you. Tell them I didn’t do anything.”

She kept on crying, sitting up now, planting her face into her own hands. The other officer approached her, trying to soothe and calm her tears.

“You don’t understand,” Kevin tried to object, but the bald officer pulled Kevin’s hands behind his back and handcuffed them.

“We’ll get this sorted out,” the officer told him. “You better pray that girl’s not hurt bad.”

Kevin kept shouting and roaring and screaming for Grace to fix everything. To set the details straight. He tried to yank himself from the officer’s grasp but couldn’t. The rage mounted inside him like a flame catching fire to straw drenched in liquor, setting aflame the connecting nerve-endings in his temples. He screamed and screamed, feeling cheated and blamed, ashamed and righteous, vengeful and violent. The officer forced him into the back of the police car, but that didn’t stop him from screaming. He hit the window with his shoulder. He hit the glass for being accused. He hit the glass for feeling cheated. He hit it for want of vengeance. Tears ran from his eyes, begging to be recognized for his innocence. Spit flew from his lips as he screamed, speckling the glass. He hit the window for that, too.

The officers ignored him.

For a while longer, he kept hitting the door. If not with his shoulders, then with his feet and knees. It wasn’t until Kevin lost his voice from screaming that Grace found the courage to talk. It would be another hour before they sorted through the details. By then, Kevin no longer had any urge to talk. He had stopped hitting the window a while ago. His body had drained itself. The bald-headed officer opened the cruiser’s door, letting Kevin out, making no eye contact.

“Turn,” the officer told him.

Kevin did, and the man un-cuffed his wrists, which felt jagged with pain.

“Go on upstairs,” the officer said. “We’ll give Ms. Shuster a ride home.”
Kevin searched inside himself for some emotion. He glanced at his feet. He glared at the moonless sky. He didn’t care if another girl got hurt tonight. Grace brushed past him and lowered herself into the cruiser’s back seat.

“Kevin,” she said, eyes watery, fixed on him.

He said nothing. He didn’t turn towards her.

“Kevin.”

He listened for drunken hooting in the distance. He listened for the grunts of sex coming from his friend’s apartment. He heard nothing, yet felt sick imagining the sounds anyway. Something had been lost, and he tried to imagine what. He tried to imagine the loss as if it had a face to fill.

“Kevin?”

“We’ll find it in the morning,” was all he could say, his throat sour and bundled tight. He walked back into the stone-faced building, trying to picture what it was they’d lost. He tried to imagine where they might look to find it.