Super-Star (first few entries) - 1

October 4, 2006, Wednesday.

Okay, so it started out like this.
I’m sitting in one of the stalls in Starbucks coffee, as usual, when a man around his mid-thirties walks in the main entrance with a pair of gloves neatly tucked into his tuxedo pockets. It’s not unusual to see a guy wearing black sunglasses and a tux, carrying a black suitcase. In New York or New Jersey, maybe. But this is Indiana—when you see a guy dressed up like that, you know he’s up to something.
So I just ignore the fact that he’s definitely not a normal guy dropping off for coffee and continue with my magazine, reading the article about Kate Bosworth going on the same diet as Nicole Richey. And that’s when he comes over, props his suitcase on the seat next to him, and leans over. And takes a bite. Of my cookie.
Yes, he ate my cookie.
So that’s when I thought it must’ve been some kind of a joke program on TV where you do random things to strangers and film their reactions. So I laugh and ask him where the camera is. But he doesn’t seem to hear me, because he simply takes another one of my cookies and stands up. And walks out of the door.
And that gets me pissed, of course, because then I realize it couldn’t have been a joke program. And what’s more, he left his fucking suitcase in the coffee shop. As much as I hated to see him again, I could tell by the color that the suitcase he’d left behind wasn’t just one stuffed with magazines to read on the plane.
So I get up, with his incredibly heavy suitcase and my leftover cookies, and dash out of the shop, hoping to get a glimpse of him. Of course this isn’t very hard because, as I’ve said, it is very hard to find another man wearing a tuxedo and black sunglasses in the streets of Evansville, Indiana. So I catch up with this guy and tap him on the shoulders. This is how it goes.

ME: Excuse me; you kind of left your suit—

TUX-MAN: What do you want?

ME: Well, you kind of left your suitcase in the coffee shop so I brought it out for you. I could do with more than a gruff question, thank you.

TUX-MAN: I did all that I was asked. If you have any other concerns, you know who to talk to.

ME: (really starting to get confused) What?

TUX-MAN: (sounding like an actor from an old World War II movie) I am going now.

ME: Hey, wait a minute—

And yes, this is precisely when I realize he isn’t just a weird guy with a fetish on suitcases or tuxedos. I realize that the suitcase I’m holding could be so much more than an un-normal suitcase, if that makes sense. So I’m about to go up to this guy and smack him on the head or something, I still haven’t figured out what I was about to do then, when the distant sound of sirens can be heard.
“Shit!” he says with an accent, making it sound like Zit! “Did you call the police?”
I shake my head. “What? What police?” I know I’m not an actor, but I try my best. His reaction to the police definitely says he’s not a typical businessman.
“You cannot hear zat?”
I hate the way he pronounces ‘t’s. “No, I don’t hear anything.”
“You fool.” And then he tries to run, but my six years of tae kwon do training doesn’t let him. Before I know it, I have his neck under my arm and he struggles to get free as he twists his fat stomach under my chest. “Let me go—I have a gun!”
And this is when I make the biggest mistake of my life—I reach for the small toy rifle I always carry around for some reason, don’t even ask me why. I take it out and wave it menacingly, then point it at his head. Of course it is not at all dangerous, and any professional can tell that it is fake. But I do it anyway, and manage to choke out the words: “If you move, I’ll shoot.”
And for some reason, he stays as still as stone.
The roaring sound of sirens come closer, and soon red and blue light envelopes us completely. Cops rush out of their cars with handcuffs with which they handcuff the man, of course.
And me.
A pretty young one (cop) grabs me by my wrists and handcuffs me, pushing me against his car. It is a rather awkward position for two humans of the different sex to be in, but nevertheless, he makes me bend over and then cuffs me while leaning on my bent back. And then the fact hits me—he’s ARRESTING ME.
For what? I like, totally saved the police a hard job by holding the criminal under my arms just as they came cruising by, totally worry-free of everything and anything that was happening in the world. And for all of this, they cuff me.
And before I can say anything, an old, fat, ugly one (cop) says, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”
Damn the cops and the court of law.

Later that Wednesday

Oh, right, I forgot to mention the fact that at this very moment I am rotting in a jail-like cell, writing in a diary provided to me for entertainment. By the way I call this a jail-like cell because it is a cell that is just a cell with no resemblance to a jail-cell but is meant to be one, anyway.
Or maybe I wouldn’t know because this is the first time I have been arrested and put into jail.
Anyway, the young one (I will call him the young one from now on, and by that mean the young cop) looked at me with this expression of pity as if he didn’t really want to lock me up. But he did, and no matter how much I tried to explain to him that it was a fake, toy gun and that I really had nothing to do with the drug case (as it turned out later on, the suitcase was full of opium), it seemed to go into his right ear and then flow out his left.
I don’t know what happened to Tux-man, but the next time I see him, boy will I be glad to kick his ass. So I figured that the whole cookie-eating thing was meant to be like a secret code. Which meant that he thought I was the messenger who was supposed to deliver the opium to a dealer. And that was why he left the suitcase in the coffee shop when I sheepishly ran after him with it, demanding for him to take it back.
Yeah, I know. It’s more of a screenplay story, but that’s how it goes. And the police still won’t believe me. Even after they confirmed that the gun was a toy gun unable to load anything at all. And this is why they chucked me into jail, where the only sensible person, the young one, had enough pity to throw me a diary to entertain myself. As if writing words in a couple of soggy, yellow pages would give me a great deal of entertainment.

October 5, 2006, Thursday.

They dragged me out of jail just to question me on a few things that I couldn’t answer with more than one word: no.
It went like this.

INQUISITIONOR: Are you a spy?

ME: No.

INQUISITIONOR: I want you to tell me the truth. Are you a spy?

ME: No.

No more words to be said, this is basically the whole thirty minutes that he wasted trying to get me to confess that I was a spy. But I wasn’t. And no matter how many times I said no, he just kept asking and asking, probably hoping that I would get tired and say yes. But I didn’t.
And so they got pretty pissed off at this and chucked me back into that stinky cell, hoping that I would relent.

Later that Thursday

They came back for me after like an hour, and they had obviously thought up another strategy rather the normal question-answer format.

INQUISITIONOR: You do know that we can do whatever we want to get you to say the truth.

ME: You can torture people?

INQUISITIONOR: Well. We can do a lot of things.

ME: Oh. And this is supposed to be fascinating because?

INQUISITIONOR: I will ask one last time—are you a spy?

ME: No.

INQUISITIONOR: Bitch.

ME: Pardon me?

Yup, so that’s as far as it went the second time he tried to get me to confess. I mean, I wasn’t going to tell him some bullshit just because he threatened to torture me. And so they chucked me back into that cell, again, and bit harder this time.
They didn’t come back for me, either.

Thursday night

I have been either writing in this diary, getting questioned, or doodling on the wall the whole day. The only thing I got to eat was some stale bread and milk that I felt had already expired or was left out in the open for too long. It was kind of weird that the only person in jail was me, but I didn’t find the time—or heart—to question anyone about it.
I can’t stop wondering when they’ll let me out.
This was what I had been thinking about when the young one passed by, with a torch in his left hand and his left foot fidgeting behind his right.
“You cold?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Kinda.”
I had never been so close to him before. And whether it was because of the light or the angle, he looked rather cute.
“Yeah, well. The cells get kind of cold at night.”
“Huh.”
“I’m sorry, you know, about this whole thing.”
“Yeah? So am I. I’m sorry I helped the police catch a criminal only to find out they’re a bunch of stuck-up fuckers who just can’t seem to get the meaning of ‘no.’”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he really did seem to mean it. “They can get a bit suspicious. You want this?”
And through the tiny bars of the cell (the only feature that somehow represented a jail-cell) he handed me a piece of bread that wasn’t stale. And I took it. It was actually quite delicious.
“I’m sure they’ll let you go soon.”
“I hope so,” I said, hoping for him to go away. A girl usually isn’t at her most attractive when she’s munching on a peace of bread. “I do have to get back to work.”
“What do you work as?”
I was about to reply to this question when the corridor lights turned on and a cranky voice could be heard echoing around the walls. “What the hell’s going on there?”
And before the guard with the shaggy hair holding a humungous flashlight and giving out a serious of groans came over, I managed to swallow the bread and form a slight lump in my throat. I started to cough, and the guard gave out a grunt as if it was the most resentful sound he had heard in a million years.
“She was coughing and I just came over to check if she was alright,” the young one said. I managed to give out a few more fake coughs.
“Bloody coughing.”
I have no idea why he said that.
The guard lumbered off to his chair soon after, and I was left alone with the young one once again. We stood their for a second, looking at each other in the darkness, me wondering when I’d bee free and him wondering—God knows what. Then, he leaned over in the darkness and whispered into my ear: “My name’s Douglas.”
And I don’t know, because I’d been a bit sleepy then and I tend to forget things when I’m sleepy, but I think I whispered back, “I’m Kira.”