Roxie dropped the check. Under “Total” at the bottom, she had scribbled, Whatever. “Do y’all mind paying up? I’m thinking about closing early so I can go to prom.”
“Sure. What do you need?” Tahmina asked.
Roxie laughed. “Everything. You could mop the back or fix the faucet or get me more coffee beans.”
“I’ll take a look at that faucet,” Jeff said, and headed back to the kitchen.
Tahmina followed the conga line of prom goers out into the parking lot, and waited by the cruiser. Across the road the stadium lights were on dim, the best they could offer. Inside the diner Roxie hung the closed sign and carried her prom dress into the bathroom. A minute later Jeff came out singing an old R & B song his mom used to like.
“Did you fix the faucet?”
“Totally. Sort of. Okay, not really. I tried, though.” He took the pink plastic carnation from his pocket and handed it to Tahmina.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“Prom. We’re going.”
“Right.” Tahmina laughed. And then, a second later, she said, “You’re serious.”
“Indeed.” Jeff opened the trunk, took out a straw fedora. He rolled up the sleeves of his uniform, exposing the muscular curves of his biceps.
“We can’t go. We’re the cops.”
Jeff gestured to the empty parking lot. “Who is there to police? Everybody’s at the stadium.”
Tahmina looked down at her rumpled too-tight navy blue officer’s uniform and bulky black sneakers. She wore no makeup, and her unwashed hair was tucked into a low ponytail. She smelled of smoke, spilled gasoline, and sweat. It was not the way she’d envisioned prom.
Jeff opened the passenger side door with a flourish. “Just for a while.”
Tahmina got into the car and tucked the plastic flower behind her ear, and Jeff closed the door. For fun he turned on the lights, letting the kaleidoscopic red-andwhite announce their arrival in style.
The football field swarmed with kids of all ages. Tahmina heard a group of senior guys complaining that lowly seventh graders had crashed the prom, but there was no one to stop them from coming, and the guys went back to passing a vodka bottle around the circle, since there was no one to stop that, either. On the fifty-yard line somebody had set up a battery-powered sound dock to play tunes. The speakers were too small, though, and the sound was mostly swallowed by the giant open space. Girls had taken off their shoes to dance, so that their heels wouldn’t sink into the Astroturf. A line of obviously drunk dance team girls threw their arms across each other’s shoulders for a high-kick routine that ended when they fell down on top of each other laughing hysterically. Up in the bleachers brightly clad teens sat in scattered clumps. They looked like one of those tile-strategy games abandoned midway.
Robin Watson had gotten drunker. Her dress was grass-stained and dotted with dirt. She moved unsteadily from person to person, taking their faces in her hands.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she’d say before moving on and repeating the gesture and apology. Most people laughed at her. A few girls hugged her. One of the guys copped a feel and high-fived his friends. Robin continued to thread her way through the crowd like an overzealous funeral director.
“Yo, partner!” Jeff shouted. He had found a cluster of dancers and was bouncing inside the circle of them. “Get your ass over here and dance.”
“Sorry, partner!” Tahmina shouted back. “I can’t compete with your promalicious moves. I’m gonna make the rounds.”
“You want me to come with?”
“Nah. It’s okay. You dance.”
“You’re all right, partner. This would be awesome cop-bonding shit for our TV show,” Jeff yelled.
“You guys have a show?” a girl asked him.
“Not yet, but when things get back to normal …”
Tahmina walked away from the dancing, the music, the romance and small pockets of drama unfolding on the field, the sad ministrations of Robin Watson.
Under the bleachers she passed the two drug dealers they’d busted earlier. They were back in business. The smaller one caught her eye and smirked. Tahmina let it go. She walked to the fence and stared out at the desert. The wind had changed direction, and the smoke was not as strong. The night air was clean and a little cool. She wondered if she should go back and bust up the drug trading. After all, she was the law. The law was a lie, she knew now, but it was a necessary lie, a construction that was needed so that everyone felt safe. Like having parents.
Believing they would protect you no matter what, that they would bridge the unknowable distance between you and death for as long as possible. But there were no parents anymore, and everyone dancing on that football field had seen death up close. They had seen that it was not always the end, and that there were far worse things to fear than death, things that would not stop just because you said the prayers and fed the fire and kept the laws.
Tahmina took the night-vision goggles out of her pocket and slipped them on.
She put her face to the metal cage and looked out toward the Tower of Silence, where the tunnels were. She had first noticed them three weeks ago, faint scars branching off from the burial site in different directions, all of them snaking toward the town. On subsequent visits she’d seen that they were moving, getting closer. In another two weeks, maybe less, the tunnels would reach them. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, not even Jeff. What was the point? The law was an illusion.
Tahmina would keep that illusion alive for as long as she could.
A loud bang startled Tahmina. She heard a girl’s scream followed by a succession of hard pops like a hail of bullets. Gun in hand, Tahmina raced out onto the football field. Her breath caught as she looked up. The night sky was on fire with strange weeping flowers of colored light. The firecrackers zigzagged up into the dark with an audible hiss before exploding into tiny pinpricks of red, blue, green, and white that burst out yet again into rippling sparks. The crowd roared its approval.
“Hold on. We’re just getting this party started!” Javier shouted over the din.
Grinning, he caught Tahmina’s eye. “Sorry. I had an extra box under the bed. You gonna bust me, Officer Hassani?”
They all turned to look at her. Tahmina shook her head. “It’s prom.”
And then everyone was cheering, shouting “Fuck yeah!” Some of the football players nearby hugged her and offered her a beer, which she declined. Tansey Jacobsen threw her arms around Javier’s neck and kissed him hard on the mouth, leaving a bright red smear of lipstick across his cheek when she pulled away.
“Get ready! This is the best one yet.” Javier stood back and lit the tail on another firecracker. It shot straight up. For a split-second nothing happened. Tahmina craned her neck to the sky, anxious for the heat-quickening bang, for the moment of wonder. She couldn’t stand the waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Robin Watson said into the unbearable silence. “I’m sorry.”
And the sky exploded with new light.