Chapter 7: Transformation

...Riley returns home and is comforted by Mara...



“Riley!”

Mara grabbed him as soon as he stepped inside the door, squeezing him tighter than ever. She wore pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. He had on the clothes he wore the day before when he went to the police. He squeezed her, too, happy to be with someone on his side. Holding their embrace, they staggered into the living room and fell onto the couch.

“You’re all sweaty.”

“I walked from the Hall of Justice.”

“All the way? Why didn’t you call?”

“I needed to walk it off. I’m so mad.”

“What happened?”

She perched on the edge of her seat as Riley described the interrogation and the accusation about drugs and the murder. She grew wide-eyed when he told her about the drug sensor and Henderson’s reaction to Susan’s card. Tears welled in her eyes when she heard about the holding cell, drunks unconscious on the floor and the stench from the uncovered steel toilet.

“I just knew it was bad. I’m so sorry.”

He took her hand. “Why should you be sorry? You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“We told you to go to the police—“

“I had to go.”

“I just wish I could’ve done more. You should have seen Susan, talking to Chief Kelly like they were old friends. We saw Henderson, too. He chased us out of his office, but she acted like it was routine. Nothing special.”

“I thought maybe you had something to do with my release…”

She shook her head. “Didn’t they say anything?”

“They just let me go. A cop called my name and opened the cell. I really wanted to get out of there. I didn’t ask any questions.

“No one was around. When I got outside it was dark and the streets were empty. So I started walking up Sixth Street—“

“Sixth Street!”

“Yeah, liquor stores and pawn shops. Drunks shouting. I only sensed it from the corner of my eye, though. I focused on a point in my forehead the size of a dime, throbbing, angry. I chased it up the hill, till I got here.”

“Oh, Riley.”

He followed her into the kitchen where they made sandwiches. He felt lucky to have Mara as a friend. He would have come back to an empty apartment otherwise.

They met three years before when they started at State. She represented everything California-exotic a boy from Kansas could expect. Growing up in Hollywood, she was the daughter of a screenwriter. She surfed in the summer and skied in the winter. Her ambition was to be in media, therefore the major in Communications with a minor in Theater Arts.

At first, he thought her a wisecracking cynic. A foot shorter than him, she favored billed caps worn at rakish angles and could spew venom like a Russian dockworker. But beneath the façade, in big blue eyes nesting under bushy black hair, he saw an elfin naïveté. She tried to hide it, thinking it a weakness.

They shared a similar worldview, believing in fairness and justice. When those things were denied, they could feel bruised and hurt.

They ate their sandwiches in silence until Mara piped, “It discovered illicit drugs? That’s some sensor!”

She broke into laughter. Riley, struggling to keep his food in his mouth, joined in. He felt the tension break, like waking from a bad dream. He thought it’d be all right, but something inside had shifted since the day before. He wasn’t content with how things were.

***

As Riley showered, Mara collected the things she needed and arranged them on the kitchen table. When he re-appeared, tired but relaxed, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, she directed him to the chair she turned sideways to the table.

“Here, dry your hair some more.” She draped a towel over his head and rubbed. She removed it and patted his hair. Taking the clippers from the table, she turned them on, its busy hum filling the room.

“You sure?”

“Do it.”

She started at the nape of the neck, plowing forward to the crown. She mowed the adjacent row, and then the next. She changed positions and cut front to back.

Riley sat silent and still, a monument to his own transformation. Mara concentrated on the task, careful not to nick the pale flesh, afraid to see the result. When she was done she stood before him, suppressing a frown. She handed him a mirror.

“Are you mad? You look mad.”

“I told you I am.”

“Are you mad now?”

“Yes.”

“The wrinkles in your brow stand out. Your head’s round like a dog’s.”

He passed his hand over his bald head, thinking it strange to associate something smooth, naked and cool with the top of his head.

Mara turned a bottle of antiseptic alcohol upside down, saturating the cotton ball she held over the opening. She dabbed his ear.

He flinched when she pierced the right lobe but did better with the left. She removed a pair of gold studs from a small jewelry box and inserted them in the holes.

Riley regarded himself in the mirror. “Did you have to pierce them?”

“Whoever heard of a guy with clip-on studs?”

“I’m sure I never cared.”

“One more thing. Give me your arm.”

He rested his arm on the table as Mara arranged the transfers affixed to large shiny white squares. Soon a coiled snake extended from his left bicep, around his arm, to his hand, its head perched on the back of the wrist.

“I’m amazed you had all this stuff.”

“Standard armament for the young urban female. Too bad I didn’t have leftovers from our Frankenstein play. I could have put knobs on your neck.”

Mara looked at her creation with a sense of accomplishment. Then she yawned and looked at the time. “I can still catch some sleep.”

She left Riley in the kitchen, regarding himself in the mirror. He smiled but let it fade, deciding it didn’t fit his new face. It was sleek, grim, and suggested a disregard for order.

He set aside the expectations associated with Riley Turner. He felt freedom in this new guise.

***

The next day he picked a pair of jeans with holes in the knees and a t-shirt he had planned to toss for being too tight. He planted a gray fedora on his head, which Mara had picked from her collection. Too small, it added to the menace his aspect projected. He threw on a denim jacket and headed out the door.

He walked down Pine Street, over to Polk and turned south towards City Hall. The No. 19 bus, diesel engine spouting black exhaust, traveled down the congested two-lane street. Rush hour commuters clustered at the stops, waiting for the bus to arrive.

The day was warm, so he took his jacket off and slung it over his shoulder. The gesture caught the eye of a young woman wearing a thin calico print dress that fell to the knees and defiant combat boots. She smiled as he passed. He felt his body swagger as if independent of his thoughts.

What else lay ahead?




The persons and events in this story are fictitious and do not represent any living person or real event.

The next chapter will be posted May 2.