"Tawny?"
Tawny opened her eyes to find Louis sitting at her bedside, a look of affectionate concern on his face. She turned instinctively to read the clock on the counter next to the bed. It was 6:58.
"Louis," she said softly, raising herself to a sitting position. "What's the matter?"
Louis took his tablet from his lap and placed it in front of her to look at. "I think you should see this."
Tawny took the device in her hands and saw the boldfaced headline that jumped out of the screen and into their bedroom like an unwelcome guest. President declares nationwide state of emergency, deploys troops across the country to "restore order".
"It's in effect as of six o'clock this morning," he added.
"So he's gone all-out nuclear," she just said, trying to process what it all meant.
"So... What do you think is going to happen?" he asked, hesitantly.
"Due process has been suspended," Tawny half-read off the screen, her interpretation filling in the rest. "All bets are off. The police and military can detain anyone on suspicion of threatening national security."
She scrolled down a bit further. "Ordinary people have nothing to worry about," she read out the president's quote in a distanced, almost ironic tone. "For agitators, on the other hand, their day of reckoning has come." She looked back up at Louis, a blank look of stoicism on her face, knowing full well the intended destination of that message. She could see him trying to muster the best stoic look of his own, but clearly struggling to do so. His eyes fidgeted for a few moments and then locked themselves onto hers, his lips flickering slightly as if trying to come up with something to say but not exactly knowing what.
Just then, Tawny's phone vibrated on the counter. She reached to pick it up and stared at the caller ID for a few seconds, slightly surprised, before raising it up to her ear. "Dad?"
"Good morning, sweetie." Dr. Dean's voice came ever so delicately across the line. "We thought we'd give you a call after hearing the news this morning, your mom and I."
Tawny waited for him to continue, not quite knowing what to say. Even though her parents were just a few hours' drive away in Sacramento, they somehow seemed to emanate from an entirely different world, tucked safely away in a distant corner of the universe.
"We saw your article last night, Tawny." He paused for a moment. "Your mom and I want you to know that we're very proud of you. We know you're going to keep on doing what's right. Just make sure to take good care of yourself. And don't forget where you come from."
Tawny bit her lip, trying to think of what to say. There were so many things she wanted to say to them, but she managed to convince herself every time that now wasn't the time. Not now, when they were worlds apart and connected only by phone.
"Thanks, dad." Tawny's voice came out with measured affection. "I love you both very much. Louis and I will be fine, so please don't worry."
The line remained silent for a few seconds. "We love you, Tawny. Goodbye."
"Goodbye." She kept the phone by her ear, waiting motionlessly until he hung up.
Louis looked up from the phone he had been staring down at. "My mom just sent me a text," he said. "She says to take care and sends out hugs and kisses to both of us." Tawny smiled slightly as Louis now gave her a reassuring look. It was surreal now to think that her mother-in-law, the retired state senator Eileen Stevens, had once been in frontline politics, back in much simpler times. To think that it was that special election to Congress back in 2003, decided by a mere 17 votes after a recount, that had brought Louis and Tawny together for good. Eileen had ruled out running for federal office again after that, after realizing how much being in Sacramento meant to her family. Tawny always tried to think how fortunate it was for Eileen to have stayed out of the quagmire of Capitol Hill politics there and then, though she knew that at the end of the day, she was only looking for ways to justify to herself her own happiness that had been made possible as a side effect of Eileen's heartbreaking loss.
"She didn't sound terribly worried," Louis went on. "She knows I'm in good hands with you." He reached out and grasped her hand with his, gently but firmly.
Tawny said nothing, just looking back at him in acknowledgment. "Have you heard anything from Twitty?" she then asked, changing the subject.
Louis shook his head. Tawny's thoughts wandered as she tried to picture their childhood friend in a faraway reality from theirs. Twitty had spent several years as a relief pitcher in the minor leagues after getting drafted out of college, then moved to New York to start a band with a group of college friends. He had already fulfilled two of his childhood dreams, but just didn't get very far with either. It seemed so long ago when she and Louis flew all the way to Pennsylvania to watch Twitty pitch, Louis giving him the cream pie in the face treatment after his first save. It had felt like the old days all over again, the inseparable trio just having fun and, for a moment, not having a care in the world. But reality soon overtook them all, as Twitty didn't make it further up the minors ladder after that and decided to take up a nomadic lifestyle, living from one gig to the next with his new band. But even as their lives and their worries had grown apart, he was an ever-present reminder of different times, the first non-family member who came to mind at a time like this.
"You alright, doc?" Louis made a slight movement with his face, bringing himself into view as she stared into space. He looked at her with a reassuring, if slightly concerned, smile. She smiled slightly back.
"I'll get breakfast ready while you get dressed." He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and made his way out of the room.
Tawny put on her backpack and walked toward the doorway. She took another glance at her phone to find a few more text messages from people she had hardly kept in touch with, mostly classmates from college and grad school. Faraway acquaintances who had woken up to the same news that morning, knowing her and remembering her well enough to think of her.
She put the phone on standby and stared for a moment at her reflection on the black screen. The expression on her face was as blank as the screen itself, showing someone who was now being looked upon from all sides as a marked woman, whether with passive sympathy or active enmity, and yet had somehow come to terms with it a long time ago.
She looked up to find Louis now standing in front of her with his briefcase in hand. "Ready to roll?" he said softly, but with determination. She looked at him for a moment and then took hold of his hands with hers, not willing to let him go just yet.
"Call me anytime if there's anything, okay?" she said, the quiet firmness in her voice mirroring his. "I'll see you tonight at the GA." He nodded ever so slightly, but without any kind of hesitation. She then turned to open the door, as if not wanting her words to leave this apartment, however unnecessary they were because Louis already knew.
She took her bicycle from the doorway and carried it down the stairs, taking each step gingerly, with Louis following behind her. She reached the main door and opened it without hesitation, even though she felt a tinge of uncertainty inside. As the two of them stepped out onto the street, they were greeted by sunlight, the same sunlight that was there practically every morning. They looked each other momentarily in the eye and then headed off in their separate directions.
Tawny put on her helmet and climbed onto the seat of her bike, riding off cautiously onto the street. She looked around, looking for the slightest sign that something had changed. People were going about their normal business, to the extent that things in this country could ever be normal again. Shops were opening for the day, the American flags fluttering in unison next to each other on the lampposts. A policeman stood by one of the street corners, looking on passively but attentively as she rode by. So far, so ordinary. Such was the state of permanent emergency that was becoming the rule, in plain view for all to see. Of all the distances they might go, actively disrupting the spectacle of ordinary everyday life surely wasn't it. Even the statewide curfew was spun as a measure directed against "hipsters" and "troublemakers," while truckers and business owners were exempt. If anything truly shocking was going to happen, it was going to be once the lights on stage went out and the curtains lowered. Everything else they needed had long been normalized, little by little, under the light of day.
"Next time, we'll be discussing Adorno's Minima Moralia," Tawny announced to the class, looking up from her notes.
The students started filing out in silence, their heads mostly lowered. Tawny discreetly scanned the faces as she gathered the stack of papers in front of her. She had been scanning the whole time during the seminar, as if looking for the slightest sign that something had changed. But the faces in the seminar room told the same story, the one playing itself over and over ever since two of her students had been suspended a month ago for organizing an unauthorized demonstration on campus. It was the same timidity and reticence mixed with an eagerness to just put their heads down and study, like good students had always been taught to do. Somehow, raising the issue in seminar and writing an open letter to the administration in protest, as she had done, only seemed to make matters worse.
"Take care," she said softly as the last of the students, a curly-haired freshman, walked past. Their eyes met momentarily as he looked back toward her from the doorway, as if thinking about saying something, but he was already gone.
"Professor Dean?" A bald man in a suit appeared at the doorway, just as Tawny had gotten up to put her things in her backpack. She looked up and let out an inner sigh, sensing what this was going to be about.
"The Dean of the College would like to have a word with you," the man said in the blandest possible tone.
"Please take a seat," Dean Stockton said, gesturing casually toward the chair in front of his desk.
Tawny sat down, trying to think how many times she had been here. It was always the same familiar confines, the same impeccably well-organized desk with the bookshelves surrounding it, as if nothing had changed. It was the same Dean of the College, the only one she had known since coming to this university, who had been one of the first to shake her hand after her tenure review not too long ago. And now, he was going about his job with the same conviction, as the situation evidently required it.
"I assume you know why you're here," he began, with an air of forced patience. "As you well know, it's been several months now since I've been monitoring your public affairs commentary. So you can rest assured that I read your latest article this morning."
"I'm grateful for every reader we can get, Dean Stockton," Tawny replied, with a matter-of-factness that betrayed a certain ironic distance.
The official looked sternly at her. "I wish you would take this seriously," he said in his schoolmaster-like tone. "Do you realize every article like that from one of our faculty puts all of us, and the entire university, at risk?"
He kept his eyes locked onto hers for a bit longer and then shifted them, as if trying to switch gears. "Look, you know I'm not a fan of this administration myself," he went on. "We're all in the same boat right now. Things haven't been the same ever since the statewide emergency put the state university system under executive control. And things just got a lot more serious as of this morning. If they can find the right excuse to step in and replace us, the current university administration, with their own stooges, they're going to do it in a heartbeat. Just think about that."
Tawny let out an inner sigh, knowing there was nothing she could say. It was always the same line, the same logically coherent argument, but based on the same faulty premises that would come out once the monologue went on long enough, without her even having to say a thing.
"If you're not going to do it for anyone else, at least do it for your colleagues," the dean went on. "I'm asking you to hold back with your op-eds for just a few months, until things turn for the better, until they eventually run out of excuses for maintaining this whole state of emergency in the first place. That's all I'm asking. And this is the last time I'm going to ask you, Professor Dean. Don't make me have to choose between you and the good of the entire university."
Just then, Tawny's phone vibrated inside her pocket, the distinct pattern of the vibration alerting her to the identity of the caller. "Excuse me, I have to take this call," she said, walking hurriedly out of the office.
"Louis?" she spoke firmly but discreetly into the phone as she reached the hallway. She heard nothing on the other end except for faint shuffling noises. "Louis," she said again, more forcefully this time.
Her heart seemed to skip a beat as the shuffling noise finally gave way to a voice. "Tawny?" Louis replied across the line. His voice came out somewhat quizzically, but loud and clear.
"Sorry, did I just call you? I didn't mean to, I think the speed dial got pressed by accident."
Tawny remained silent for a few seconds. "It's okay, Louis," she finally said. "My phone's always on for you, okay?"
"Thanks, Tawny," Louis said. "The same goes for you too, of course."
"Bye," Tawny replied and hung up. She turned around to find the dean closing his office door across the hallway, shaking his head, with an impatient frown on his face. She took a deep breath and started walking back.
"Good evening," Tawny announced to the people seated around the table who had come to attend the hastily convened general assembly of the alliance of community organizations, informally known as The Coalition. "As you all know, a nationwide state of emergency is in effect as of this morning. This leaves us with a number of decisions to make. The main item on the agenda we agreed on for tonight is the question of how to proceed with our weekly demonstrations in front of city hall."
She paused and scanned the faces, as if waiting for any interjections, but nothing came. Louis was seated near one of the edges of the table, discreetly avoiding eye contact.
"I will be the point person for tonight's meeting," she went on. "Please give me a hand signal if you would like to speak and I'll add you to the list."
She looked around the table and gave each person with a hand up a slight nod in acknowledgment, jotting down the names.
"The way I see it, carrying on with the weekly protests right now would be madness," Steve, a bald man with a neatly trimmed white beard, began. "All bets are off. The police can do whatever they want with us. We could all lie down on the ground and put our hands up and it wouldn't matter. They could arrest us and beat us up just for being there under the new rules. End of story."
"What, so we're just going to sit on our hands and do nothing?" Mark, another older man with a bony face and tattoos on his neck, spoke up. "We're just going to stay home every night and play bridge, like the governor ordered? There isn't anybody else left, Steve. It's either us or total surrender. This whole country is sleepwalking into oblivion. Are the history books in 50 years going to have anything to say about people who resisted or not? That's all I'm going to say."
"If you want to get in the history books for starting a massacre, then count me out," Steve retorted.
"Steve, please," Tawny gently interjected. "It's Chantelle's turn."
Chantelle, a gray-haired woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and hoop earrings, nodded slightly in acknowledgment. "We have to think about the safety of our young people," she began in a slow, even tone. "We're sitting here talking about how future generations are going to judge us, but we can't forget that at least half the people who come to our protests are high school and college kids. They have their entire future ahead of them. And that's one thing we can't sacrifice, Mark. Things are looking bleak right now, but there are going to be future battles to fight, and young people are our only hope. We can't ask them to put everything on the line now, when things are most bleak. The time will come, but it's not now."
"Can I just make a short reply directly to that, please?" Mark asked with two fingers raised, turning toward Tawny. She looked up from her notes and gave him a slight nod.
"Let me tell you one thing," he began. "I spent the late 60s taking part in civil rights marches as a teenager. I can tell you those protests would have never gotten anywhere without the thousands of us young men and women there, facing the police dogs and water cannons. This whole present vs. future thing is a false dichotomy. If we don't fight for the present, there's no future."
"Let the young people speak for themselves, Mark," Steve interjected. "All the great things our generation has done are clearly no good now. We've gotten into this mess under our watch, at the end of the day."
"Steve, there are people on the list waiting to speak," Tawny reminded him.
"Tawny, you're a lot younger, aren't you," Steve replied. "Tell us what you think."
Tawny looked at him for a moment, the other faces around the table now turning toward her. She then looked down at the list of names. "Chris is the next person on the list," she finally said. "He's the youngest person here. Let's all listen to what he has to say."
Chris, a lanky teenager with disheveled hair, looked around at the faces now turned in his direction.
"I obviously can't speak for all the 'young people' out there," he began, somewhat hesitantly. "I can speak for myself and Jared, Derek, and Marley, who couldn't come tonight because of evening detention. Things are really difficult right now because we never thought of school as a place where they discipline you for political reasons, but things have changed ever since the statewide emergency, and they've gotten worse the last few weeks. We would like to keep coming out to the protests, we really would. But it's hard when the entire system is working against you, when they're threatening to not let you graduate and colleges are threatening to withdraw acceptances. And that's what we're up against, not just the police. If all we had to do was put our bodies on the line, we would do it. But things just aren't as simple as we might like them to be."
An uneasy silence fell over the room, with nobody quite willing to step back in. Tawny looked down at the next name on the list, then scanned the faces again, but couldn't bring herself to break the silence.
"I think one thing's clear," Chantelle finally said. "We have to stick together. Either all of us commit to the weekly protests or we call them off."
Tawny remained silent, just scanning the faces again. Steve was looking toward Mark, who was looking blankly down at the table in front of him, biting his lip. Most of the others were hunched over, not looking at anything in particular. Louis was looking expectantly toward Tawny, as if waiting for something to come out, but nothing came.
"Why didn't you say anything at the meeting?" Louis finally asked.
Tawny looked blankly out the windshield. "What was I supposed to say?" she asked back. "We reached a consensus decision in the end. My job there isn't to talk, it's to listen."
Louis nodded slightly. He didn't say anything else, as if just trying to focus on the road ahead. She looked toward him as he drove, the same look of intensity in his eyes. She knew something was on his mind, but she didn't mind waiting for him to bring it up on his own. She looked down at her watch. They had reached their destination, just in time for curfew, with all the time in the world to talk inside their four walls.
They got out of the car and walked in silence toward the apartment building. There was an eerie silence all around them, as if it was well past midnight instead of just a quarter to ten. Louis opened their mailbox on their way in and gave her a look of slight relief as he found nothing there. She smiled slightly back, clutching his hand more tightly as they walked up the stairway toward their apartment.
"Tawny, there's something I have to tell you," Louis announced, almost as soon as the door clicked behind them. He put down his briefcase and waited a moment for her to finish taking off her backpack, the two of them still standing with their shoes on halfway between the living room and the doorway.
"All the things we said last night," he began. "It's all true. You know it and I know it. They can't do anything to come between us. But even if they try, I'm not going to let it happen, okay? If they come for you..." He stopped and bit his lip, looking searchingly into her eyes. "If they come for you, I'm going with you. Whatever they do with you, they're going to have to do with me, too."
He walked up to her and took her hands in his. "I'm asking you to just trust me. The only place I want to be is where you are, wherever that is. That's how it's always been and always will be. No matter what happens now, I'm staying with you until the very end."
An ever so thin stream of tears escaped his eye and flowed halfway down his cheeks. The look in his eyes and the intonation in his voice remained as steady as ever, but there was a burning impatience in them that belied the calm evenness in his words. Something wasn't right. It was the sense of foreboding, almost as if he was daring somebody to show up at that door any minute now that he had said what he had to say.
Tawny closed her eyes and fell to her knees, holding his hands with her palms raised upwards. She took a deep breath and bit her lip. It was somehow all too much, and yet it was the same familiar gestures, the same determination, the same way they always felt for each other. They had been here so many times before, and yet she found herself fighting the same battles, the same demons trying to creep into her head.
Suddenly, a loud knock sounded. Tawny opened her eyes and looked ever so calmly at Louis, now facing her on his knees, a flash of disquiet running through his eyes. She gently wiped the half-dry stream of tears from his cheek and then rose to her feet, heading toward the door.
Tawny opened the door to find three uniformed police officers standing there, almost casually, as if announcing themselves as expected guests.
"Tawny Dean?" The officer in the front half-asked in an indifferent tone.
"That'll be me," Tawny replied without hesitation.
"You'll have to come with us," the officer said.
Tawny calmly took a few steps out the doorway and just stood in front of the officer, waiting for him to do whatever he needed with her.
"I'm going with her," Louis's voice came out forcefully from behind. The officers seemed to ignore him, as one of them took hold of Tawny's arm and began leading her away.
"For goodness sake, just take me with you," Louis insisted, storming out of the house and trying to put himself in the way of the officer holding Tawny's arm. As if on cue, the other two policemen grabbed him roughly by the arms and pinned him onto the adjacent wall, taking out a pair of handcuffs.
"Louis," Tawny turned and began to snap, but her voice held back so that it only came out as a loud whisper. She took a deep breath. "You put the cuffs on him, you put them on me. Or on neither of us." She demonstratively put her hands and arms behind her back into a handcuffed position and then turned to face Louis, the blank expression in her eyes trying to tell him a thousand things at once as one of the officers turned him around and another began applying the handcuffs onto her wrists. She could see in his eyes the same burning intensity, that all so familiar, indelible look that gave her the strangest kind of reassurance even as it looked like it could tip over into blind despair at any moment.
The policemen led them away and down the stairs in a double file, with Tawny at the front and one of the officers holding her by the arm next to her. The officer opened the main door and led them out toward the two police cars parked in front of the apartment building. Tawny glanced behind her to find another officer leading Louis to the other car while her own escort directed her toward a police van with two other officers standing in front of it. Her eyes momentarily met Louis's before the men in uniform nudged them rather impatiently into their separate vehicles.
Tawny climbed onto the middle compartment of the van, her hands fastened behind her back, joined by two officers who took their seats next to and across from her. So she gets the van and the VIP treatment, she thought to herself. Very Important Prisoner, with whatever implications that had. One of the policemen was seated directly facing her, with a pair of dark aviators covering his eyes from view. She looked blankly at him in return. So this ride was going to be one long staring contest. There wasn't really anywhere else to look, with the side window areas paneled over.
She let her thoughts wander as she kept staring into the dark abyss of those shades, trying to picture the deserted streets outside. How far away everything suddenly seemed, the outside world, the rest of the country, Mark, Chantelle, the people she had been with just an hour ago, everything separated by the abyss materialized right in front of her. And the deeper the abyss gazed back at her, the more she was somehow drawn into it, not even thinking of looking away.
She collected her thoughts, little by little, trying to think of what awaited her, even though she knew there was no point in doing so. There was no need to overthink this. She had to be ready for the worst, while keeping things as simple as possible. If they were going to break her physically, they were going to break her physically. Everything else followed from accepting that simple fact. And if that was what it was going to take, she was ready to do it. The only question was getting there as seamlessly as possible before any other harm could be done.
The van started slowing down. There were certain things she was ready to do for Louis, certain things she had always been ready to do, even if she didn't know it. And yet, there was nothing romantic, nothing heroic about it. There weren't going to be any good choices she would be allowed to make, if it really came that far. Whatever choice she made under duress would be a selfish one in the end, even if she would convince herself that it was what had to be done.
The van finally screeched to a halt as they reached their destination.
Tawny was led into a dimly lit office, the same policeman keeping hold of her arm the whole time. A plainclothes officer rose to his feet behind his desk, a middle-aged, clean-shaven man with short dark hair and thin eyebrows. He was dressed in a dress shirt with suspenders, the sleeves rolled up.
"Professor Dean," the officer called out expectantly as the accompanying guard proceeded to remove her handcuffs. "You have no idea how much I've looked forward to this great honor."
"Spare me, officer," Tawny said icily, extricating her hands from behind her back. "I believe you've summoned me with a rather different purpose in mind tonight."
The officer stared at her for a moment, with a slightly admonishing look of what almost looked like hurt on his face. "You shouldn't jump to conclusions like that," he said, his voice ever so soft-spoken yet laced with an enigmatic touch. "I'm Officer Modesto," he then announced in a straightforward tone and gestured to the chair in front of his desk before taking his own seat.
Tawny sat down with her back upright, her hands discreetly holding each other on her lap. The guard went out, leaving the two of them alone in the office.
Modesto clasped his hands together on his desk and looked across at Tawny. "So you think you know why you're here?"
"I'm waiting to be enlightened," Tawny replied, more coolly than coldly this time.
The officer smirked at her slightly, then put on a pair of browline glasses and picked up a file from his desk. He leaned back on his chair and looked at it casually. "I see you're quite the accomplished scholar, especially for your age," he began. "Just look at all the stuff on your résumé. Two books already and too many articles to count. Expertise in critical and postcolonial theory, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis..."
He let his voice trail off, then lowered the file and met her eyes squarely with his. "So tell me, professor, how can Lacanian psychoanalysis explain the mess this country is in today?"
Tawny said nothing, keeping her eyes locked on her counterpart's. She sensed where this was going and knew that it was a game she couldn't win. It was a rigged game where every move she made would be trumped by a counter-move on this giant chessboard they were sitting on, as if she was facing not a person but a machine programmed to outplay every opponent.
The officer let out a slight chuckle and slowly removed his spectacles with one hand. "I've been working on your case for some time now, Professor Dean," he began, in an an oddly professorial tone. "And I must say you're truly an extraordinary person. Believe it or not, I know a thing or two about the kind of stuff you write about. I know you and your kind extremely well, actually." He ran the tip of his glasses suggestively across his cheek and onto the edge of his lips.
"You see," he went on. "I'm old enough to know better than your generation of yippie millennials, but I'm also young enough to know exactly where you're coming from. I majored in English in college and graduated in 2002, just about ten years before you did. I was into a lot of postmodern philosophy as a student myself back in the day. I even started a PhD but dropped out after two years. That's about half the time it took for you to finish yours, I believe."
The look on his face kept signaling to her, with every sentence, that he knew more than what he was telling her. Tawny kept silent, the blank look on her face unchanged. The trick is to keep this rigged game going for long enough, she thought to herself. The question was how to maneuver herself into checkmate as seamlessly as possible, before any other harm could be done.
"I've gotten to know a lot of these critical theory types over the years," Modesto went on. "Most of them go on to law or finance and live their nice little accommodated lives. The second group remain in academia and content themselves with writing obscure books in their ivory tower. They're the type that take to the streets occasionally when the weather's nice. And the third group? The third group is you."
He kept playing with his glasses, looking at her attentively as if observing a rare breed of human with an odd mixture of secure distance and genuine sympathy.
"You're just not like the rest of them. I would say you're the last man standing, but you're something else. You're the last woman, but not just that. You're the last and the first. You've been a left-wing activist since the age of 12 at least, haven't you. You were out protesting when everybody else your age was busy playing Pokemon. And now you're still out there protesting, when everybody else is busy playing bridge."
Modesto suddenly broke into a chuckle, with the air of someone finding his own cleverness to be irresistible. He looked at her intently, his face now turning serious as suddenly as it had gone from a straight one.
"And to think this is the generation that was supposed to bring socialism to America," he mused. "I remember when we had your generation on our side, right after 9/11. I can imagine you at that age with your little peace marches, the only kid in the class with anything bad to say about the War on Terror."
A patronizing smirk came to his face. "It's too bad, really," he went on. "Fast forward all these years, and look where we are again. The left would have needed several thousand Tawny Deans to even stand a chance. And even then." He paused for a moment, suggestively. "Just look at you, and look at me. I'm a gay Latino from an inner-city working-class background. You, on the other hand, are a product of white middle-class suburbia."
"I guess that makes both of us traitors to our class," Tawny responded, the words coming out ever so naturally.
The officer let out a slight chuckle, then just stared at her for a moment. "Very clever," he said in a low tone. "But the point is, the left in this country has utterly failed to offer anything to people like myself, hasn't it? Think of all the things you people have been demanding all these years. It's this administration that's bringing back our troops from the Middle East, providing students with debt relief and doing something about the environment. Think about your childhood dreams, professor. They've never been so close to being reality, ever."
Tawny said nothing. The officer looked at her questioningly, as if daring her to come up with something to say in response.
"Our biggest weapon is that none of you people saw it coming," he went on. "We're not what you always thought we are, you see. We were never the fascists or the plutocrats you made us out to be. We couldn't care less about ideology. All we care about is One Nation, Under God. We give a little bit to everyone, just as it should be. We don't need total control over society. There are a lot more efficient ways of doing it than that. Humanity has come a long way since the days of Nineteen Eighty-Four, wouldn't you say?"
The cynical smirk returned to his face. He kept playing the good cop, bad cop routine by himself, as if enacting a thinly veiled self-parody and feeling totally at ease with it.
"Think of all the things this country has given you," he continued. "You've already made it in academia. You have a long life ahead of you, and you can choose to live it in peace and security, doing the things you love, without all the dangers of being an unpatriotic dissident. It's not too late for you to have kids and start a family, remember. You know we're all about family values. You don't possibly think we would let any harm be done to a mother raising little children, do you?"
The officer smiled suggestively. Tawny just looked on and listened. She was being offered the classic pact with the devil. Even if she wanted to accept it, the sheer unpredictability involved was no less than what the alternative had in store.
"Think about it, professor. You're an extremely smart person. It's an easy choice, really. You step away from all your activist work and we let you live your life in peace. In a country where so many of your dreams have already come true. Or you live a life of permanent uncertainty, not knowing what could happen to you the next day."
Modesto stopped and looked at her expectantly. "What do you say to that?"
Tawny kept looking back at him with the same blank expression on her face. The answer was so obvious, and yet there were so many ways, so many words that could be put into saying it.
"I'm not going to give up my activist work, officer." Her words came out unassumingly but firmly, with an ominous sense of finality in them.
Modesto stared at her for a moment and then wagged his head slightly. "That's it?" he asked. "That's all you have to say for yourself? We dragged you all the way here a day after your latest anti-American ramblings just for that?"
Tawny remained silent. He was none too subtly trying to provoke her, but she wasn't having any of it.
"You know," the officer continued, with an extra touch of gravity in his voice. "We can keep bringing you here every now and then and just go through the same routine over and over. And see how you like that."
He refocused his eyes on her. "Or maybe you could use a little more time in solitude," he suggested. "I'll give you until 7 o'clock tomorrow morning to think it over one more time. By then I expect a final answer, with all the consequences that come with it. And until then, you stay right here with us."
Tawny just kept looking blankly at him, as if signaling with her silence the minimal bit of passive consent he needed from her. Modesto nodded slightly. So this is how you want to play it, he seemed to be telling her. He pressed a button under his desk and it took just two seconds for the guard to come in through the door. Tawny rose calmly from her chair as the guard approached and took hold of her arm, signaling the same familiar routine.
"I hope you realize we can keep you locked up for as long as we like. Both you and your husband," Modesto was quick to add as she was led out.
"Good night, officer," Tawny replied, with an almost taunting serenity. She glanced over as she walked out to catch a glimpse of Modesto giving her an icy glare that followed her out the door.
Tawny was led into a small prison cell, no more than ten feet long or wide. It was equipped with a bunk bed and a sink, the barest essentials. The cell was fitted with metal bars on one side and walled over on the other three.
As the guard locked the door behind her, the lights went out, the ensuing darkness mitigated only by the faint light creeping in from outside the hallway.
Tawny walked gingerly through the dark, finding her way toward the wall on the far end of the cell. She slowly raised her hand and placed it on the cold, hard wall. Somewhere, somehow, the walls of this building led to where Louis was. And beyond the walls the outside world, the rest of the country, the people she knew and loved, the infinitude of the night sky. She just stood there, her face turned upward and toward the past, her body caught between the darkness of the present and the redemptive promise of simpler times.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The same familiar feels returned to her, little by little, the darkness in front of her merging into the infinitude of the night and eventually giving way to light. A stream of half-images rushed through her mind, one after another. She was still here, inside the walls of this prison, not thinking of being anywhere else, letting herself just drift and wander about as she had always done.
She kept her eyes shut, thinking of earlier times.