No Place Read Free Page A

shrugged it off as just another of life’s many injustices, but a lot of things had changed since then. I didn’t budge.
    “Listen, buddy, for the last time,” the cop snarled. “You don’t want to be a hero and you don’t want to get arrested. So move !”
    Even Oscar agreed. “He’s right, man. Stay out of this.”
    I could feel my pulse with every breath I took. I’d never been in trouble with the police before, and this was a bad time to start. I peered hopefully down the street, but there was no sign of Noah or anyone else from the studio.
    “Listen to him, Dan,” urged Olivia, who’d been watching my sidewalk improv.
    “Hey, you remembered my name,” I said, grinning.
    It almost seemed like she blushed. “Of course.”
    “Aw, for Christ’s sake,” the other cop growled, reaching for his handcuffs and starting toward me.
    “Okay, okay.” Raising my hands, I backed away. “I’m going. It’s just hard to believe that you’d arrest a guy just because he forgot his wallet. Like that never happened to you?”
    “You’re really asking for it, kid,” snapped the cop holding Oscar. He walked the big man to the police car, put his hand on Oscar’s head, and began to ease him down into the backseat.
    There was still no sign of Noah or anyone from the studio. In a few moments they’d take Osacar downtown and book him, or whatever it was that cops did when they arrested you. It just seemed so stupid and wrong, but I couldn’t think of a way to stop it.
    Oscar was in the back of the police car now, bent uncomfortably forward in the seat because his hands were cuffed behind him.
    The cop started to close the door.
    A horn honked. Everyone turned as Noah’s car raced up and screeched to a stop. Out jumped a little guy wearing a white suit, sunglasses, and a black fedora.
    *  *  *
    Fortunately, Buzzuka Joe had a copy of the car registration, and a little while later the cops let Oscar go with a ticketfor driving without a license. He thanked me emotionally. “I don’t know why you did that, man, but God bless you.” Shaking his large hand was like shaking a baseball mitt.
    Olivia gave me a grateful hug, then added in a scolding tone, “Do you have any idea how close you came to getting popped?”
    I shrugged and gave her a wink. She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “See you at the studio.”
    They got into the Range Rover, leaving Noah and me on the sidewalk. Now that the danger had passed, my best friend put his hands on his hips and affected the amused patois he sometimes used in private when issues of race came up. “What de hell was dat , white boy? Trying to impress Olivia?”
    I shook my head. “No, it just bothered me.”
    “Since when?”
    Since everything started going against me and my family too , I thought. But what I said was, “Don’t you think the guy’s had enough crap in his life? His football career ends with a concussion, and now they want to arrest him because he forgot his wallet?”
    “So you have to be the hero?”
    “A man got to do what he got to do.” The line from The Grapes of Wrath , which we’d read in school the year before, had become a little joke between Noah and me, a sort of catchall explanation anytime one of us did something that we couldn’t, or didn’t want to, entirely explain.

 3 
    After watching Buzzuka Joe lay down a couple of tracks in the studio, we headed back to Median. It was dark by the time we got there. “You guys coming to Tory’s later?” Noah asked as he drove. Tory Sanchez was his girlfriend.
    “We have to go to this stupid party first,” I answered glumly. “Some friend of Tal’s from dressage.”
    “Why can’t she go without you?”
    I gave him a weary look. “Because we’re a couple, remember?”
    “Bet Olivia wouldn’t make you go to boring horse parties.”
    Back at the studio I’d been Olivia’s knight in shining armor. Now that I’d “saved” Oscar, she couldn’t stop touching and flirting with me.