Victor’s partner, Patrick, doesn’t care much about the law, but he’s a sucker for a donut, so when Victor asks him if he wants one, he doesn’t wait to hear the answer. He too is hungry and has been, perhaps unconsciously, driving toward the little donut shop owned by this guy Hussein. As usual, Victor has put off the daily trip to the bakery for as long as he can stand it, not because he hates donuts, quite the opposite, but because he hates the stereotype. Cops and donuts. Plus, there’s a growing sense of dread every time he glances down and sees his gut, which seems to grow larger every day. With every day or every donut? Victor’s conscience tortures him.
So he puts it off as long as he can, as if that will solve the matter, but eventually the place, it gets to him, it starts to wear him down. Precinct 17, the unluckiest assignment, right in the middle of the ghetto. It isn’t the people he dislikes. No, if he could hate them or even feign indifference, the whole thing might be much better. But he knows the people here, and most of them are decent in some fundamental sense. The trouble is not the people. The trouble is this place.
If you live in a place surrounded by too much trash, a place where everyone throws it out right on the streets, the lawns, the sidewalks, well, eventually you realize you’d be a fool not to do it too. Your single action of not throwing a paper cup into the gutter, of walking over and depositing it safely into the proper receptacle for recycling or trash, isn’t going to save the neighborhood. For most of the people, it’s not a conscious decision though. Most of them grew up here, in a place where people are crammed in like the trash in an overflowing dumpster, in a place that already has too much flaking paint and trash, where the only fresh paint is the graffiti with its bubble letters so smashed together that Victor still struggles to read it, despite his years of practice.
So when they get themselves in trouble, as some of them inevitably do, whether for vandalism or petty theft, Victor puts on his tough-guy act, but his insides go to mush. After every bad encounter, he finds his willpower receding. His daughter Sarah—she’s into wacky liberal things, she must have picked it up in college—she told him once that according to some dietician, you needed to visualize your willpower as though it were a person or a thing. Victor, much against his will, immediately envisioned his own as a man in handcuffs riding hostage in the backseat of the cruiser. No matter how much he tries, he is unable to shake the image. When he gets irritated by it, by the ridiculousness of such a thing, the image gets clearer, and the hostage smiles at him, sometimes even starts to laugh. And then, like today, the hostage waves at him and floats right out the window. That’s when he knows the battle’s lost, and it’s time to pay a visit to Hussein.
When Victor pulls into a space a block away from the donut shop, he looks up with some surprise to see that the line is spilling out the door. The place is always busy, but this must be some sort of record. Victor wonders what might have caused it.
Patrick seems to read his thoughts. “You think he introduced a marijuana donut?”
“Nah, if he had, there’d be no line, there’d be a fucking mob.”
Patrick laughs. “I’d better not suggest it then. You know Hussein, he’s just the man to do it.”
Victor can’t argue with this assertion. Hussein wasn’t born here, but he’s been here, in this same location, for almost thirty years. He told Victor once that he came here from Iran, something Victor never would have guessed, Hussein is so in touch with all the people. He seems to have picked up a smattering of slang from all the different people who come into his shop, mostly blacks, but some Hispanics too, and a handful of Filipinos. Hussein won them over by not closing up too early. He keeps the bakery open until 9 p.m., unlike other places which close up at noon or so, whenever the donuts all sell out. But not Hussein. He makes fresh donuts throughout the day.
Patrick and Victor join the line. Those around, if they notice them, act the way they always do around a cop. Some of them stand up a little straighter, as if trying to impress a teacher, to look more innocent, while others put their hands in their jacket pockets, as though they had something to conceal. Victor is used to it by now, ascribing no particular significance to either action.
When they finally make it to the counter, Victor asks him what’s with all the people.
“Plasma truck came yesterday,” Hussein explains, “so everyone, they flush with cash.” He nods to the counter, which has a paltry selection for this time of day. “May sell out the first round by ten today.”
Victor points at a bear claw, the last one in the case, and hears the guy behind him mutter “damn.”
Their favorite table is taken, and in fact, all the tables are full today. But Maven, another regular, offers to give them hers. She was leaving anyway, she explains. Victor thanks her and she says something about the plasma truck that he doesn’t quite make out.
But Patrick interrupts her. “What’s this plasma truck about?”
Maven explains it to them, how the truck comes by every couple weeks now, how if you can prove to them you’re healthy, you can sell your blood to them, and they give you eighty dollars. “Eighty dollars, can you imagine? I’d go myself, but I don’t think they’d take some old woman the likes of me.” She laughs. “Still, all the young ones do it and some of the not-so-young ones too. As long as they ain’t sick or too drugged out.”
Maven leaves, and Patrick sits down without another glance around, but Victor notices the people clearing out. There’s still a line outside, but fewer people seem to feel the need to consume their chocolate-covered, fruit-filled, or sugar-glazed concoctions within the crowded confines of the shop. He watches as one person after another spies an open table, then, glancing over at them, suddenly does an about-face and makes a hasty retreat.
The rest of the day is uneventful, so much so that Patrick resorts to giving out tickets for jaywalking. “Really?” he asks Patrick. This is where Victor draws the line. He has never given a ticket for jaywalking. It offends his sense of decency, like kicking below the belt. On their last shift, two days before, they had had an assault and battery, a report of gunshots fired, two robberies, six reports of petty theft, only one of which was caught, and a call for breaking and entering. If you wanted to get technical, there was also a report of a stolen cat, but Victor didn’t count that as a crime. It was far more likely the cat had just run off. Still, the old lady was very sure it had been kidnapped and was awaiting a ransom note. Victor took notes as though he was going to write the whole thing up and assured her they would come back if she received one. He wonders now, with so little going on, whether they should follow up with the woman about the cat. It would keep them occupied in case something worse comes up later, as no doubt it will. And it would stop Patrick from writing up more jaywalkers.
#
“What’s that smell?”
His granddaughter Myra comes waltzing in, followed by Clifford, who is neither big nor red, but a rather smallish brown and white Bassett hound.
“It’s a pot roast,” Victor tells her. “Do you like that?”
“It’s really made of pot?”
Victor looks askance at his daughter Sarah, Myra’s mother. The girl is only six. Does she really know about pot? He doesn’t think his daughter smokes, but then again, you never know. He lets the matter drop without a comment and simply tells Myra, “no, it’s made of beef.”
“Mommy won’t eat it then,” is all she says in reply. Sarah is a vegetarian, and normally she would turn up her nose at vegetables cooked along with meat, but she usually makes allowances for her father. And Victor is chopping up a large salad to go with it. Usually on the nights he has them over, he doesn’t bother to cook at all, just orders in a pizza, but the day has been so quiet—no robberies or thefts, not even at the Seven-Eleven—he felt up to cooking for them all.
He gets Myra and Clifford settled in, in front of the TV. “Want a movie?” he offers. “No Disney,” Sarah reminds him. She vehemently opposes fairy tales and fairy princesses, not so much, Victor suspects, because he and her mother are divorced, but because of the circumstances surrounding the conception of her daughter Myra. Sarah wasn’t raped exactly, as least that’s how she put it, but she had been the victim of sexual harassment while she was at college. She was of age, she consented, but the pressure to do so had been great. He was one of her former professors, a professor she expected she would have to take again. And so she had given in and slept with him. When Sarah discovered she was pregnant, she told one of her other professors, a woman, who helped her to report it. The man had been placed on leave, and he quickly found another position elsewhere, but no formal charges were ever made. He had suffered nothing. When it all had happened, Victor had been furious. If it had been here, where he could have done something, he suspected that he would have. Cops can get away with a lot, a fact he knew, but tried not to think too much about. For some reason Victor never could comprehend, Sarah had chosen to keep the baby, though she was only nineteen years old back then. She had had a hard time at it, not just a single mother, but a young woman who was still in school. And so she didn’t go in for Disney with its happily-ever-afters.
Sarah never seemed to regret her decision. She loved her daughter, and she had changed her major from sociology from social work. She was always concerned with helping others. And so as the girl sits and watches her non-Disney animated movie, something Victor had never heard of with a main character that to him was nothing but an unidentifiable blob of color with a name, Sarah asks him about his job. He tells her about it, about the woman with the cat, who is still waiting for the ransom note, which she expects any day now, and which she claims she’s going to pay. He tells her too about Maven and the plasma truck and Hussein’s comment about the sudden influx of cash.
“That’s terrible!” his daughter interrupts him. “They really sent a plasma truck out there?”
Victor explains that it’s a way for them to make some easy money. He doesn’t see how that is anything but good.
“But don’t you see,” she points out, “that they’re taking advantage of the poor? If you or I want to donate, that’s all well and good. We can get a little extra money, and that’s an encouragement for people to do it. But what if you were broke and hungry? Then the money’s not just an incentive. It becomes something you feel you have to do to live—to sell your body, just like a prostitute. It’s loathsome. They’re feeding off the poor.”
Sarah goes on about the selling of human organs and the way it preys upon the poor, the desperate, the homeless. She talks of Les Miserables, how in college she read the book, and how it’s different, not like the musical at all where Fantine sells a locket and her hair. In the book, it’s grittier. She sells her front incisors—at which point Victor stops her.
He agrees about the trafficking of organs, but he isn’t sure about the plasma. He’s sorry he ever brought it up. He hates talking politics, perhaps because no one ever seems to share his point of view and so he’s always playing defense. At work, he’s too liberal for the other officers, yet he’s still too conservative for his daughter. He’d rather talk to his granddaughter about the talking shapeless blob. When he tells her it’s funny-looking, she laughs and replies that the pot roast is funny-looking too. Then he asks her how school’s going, and she looks off into the distance and doesn’t offer a reply.
#
A week later, he reverts back to pizza, ordering a large pepperoni for himself and Myra and a small veggie one for Sarah. He could order an extra large one that was half-and-half, but he knows Sarah prefers the meat not to touch her slices. And so he orders separate pizzas. When the deliveryman arrives—delivery person, Sarah corrects him—Clifford throws back his head and lets out an ear-splitting howl so long and deep-toned, it could raise the dead. The delivery person looks surprised to see a beast as harmless as Clifford, expecting perhaps a pit bull.
“Thanks for the peace offering,” Sarah tells Victor, referring to the separate pies.
Over dinner, she tells him that there’s a campaign being organized to stop the plasma truck. She discovered that the company that owns the truck is planning to put in a donation center right on Washington Boulevard at State Street, which, Victor tells her, is nearly in the middle of Precinct 17. “What does that matter?” she asks. “The point is it’s in the middle of the ghetto.” She continues with her story. The company has already applied for a building permit, and there are plans to protest it. Victor is unable to ascertain how much his daughter has to do with it. Is she joining it, or did she instigate it? He isn’t going to ask, and he doubts he’ll ever know for sure.
#
The next few months are the quietest Victor has ever known. Sure, there are a couple of shootings and a stabbing, but he finds these easier to handle. They can be gruesome, but at least the ethics of violent crime, the black-and-white of it, are clear: someone has crossed the line, and that someone must pay the price. But on the whole, crime in Precinct 17 has been down. There’s still the usual vandalism, the broken windows, the gang signs re-spray-painted on walls whitewashed by irritated small business owners, though of course they aren’t all gang signs. It’s impossible to catalog them all. Some of the graffiti comes from anarchists, ANTIFA, even COVID deniers, but the most common, if not the most artistic, are still the FUCK YOU and the Johnny-loves-Sally type.
One day, when he’s driving down the street, a little before dark, he spots some fresh blue letters outlined in white. He can’t make out the entire phrase, but he thinks that one of the words is “plasma,” which, if it is, could only mean one thing. The next day, he drives by the place again, a boarded-up building with broken windows and strips of Pepto-Bismol pink asbestos insulation hanging down inside, but no matter how long he looks, he can’t find the same graffiti. There are blue letters lined in red and other colors lined in white, but he can find no crayon-blue letters outlined with white on the building where he thought he saw them, and no word that resembles “plasma.” Did he only imagine it? Confronted with the evidence, Victor is none too sure. He couldn’t swear to it in court.
On the side of the building, he finds Buck, one of the many homeless whom Victor happens to know by name, or, if not their true names, by whatever handle they have adopted and taken up, a way to re-invent themselves so that their truest self isn’t the homeless one. Buck is one of those that Victor likes. It’s one of those unfortunate facts that there are those you like and those you don’t, and the ones you like get better treatment. Buck is friendly, never violent, often talkative, and to Victor’s knowledge, he is honest. He is white. Though the neighborhood is mostly black, there are a surprising number of whites among the homeless population, perhaps because the homeless get shuttled out of the whiter neighborhoods, even the poorer ones.
“How’s it going, Buck?” Victor asks.
Buck is smoking a cigarette, so it seems alright to ask. He nods and is about to say something when there’s a loud crash from inside the building. Patrick puts his hand on his gun and goes over to investigate.
“It’s jus’ Esmeralda lettin’ off some steam. I saw ‘er go in there. She’s good and angry.” Buck says this as though anyone would understand.
“How come she’s angry?”
“Same reason they all are, plasma truck dried up.”
“Dried up?”
“Not comin’ back, so they say.” Buck takes another draw on his cigarette before putting it out and placing it gently back into his pocket, saving it for later, as Victor understands. “But I figured you would know more about that than I do.”
“Did you donate?”
“Tried to, but they wouldn’t take me.” Buck grins, revealing several missing teeth. “Took one look inside my mouth and declared I wasn’t fit. Gotta’ be healthy to donate. Esmeralda was. She got perfect teeth.”
Patrick returns. “Yeah, he’s right, it’s Esmeralda.”
And she walks out too, not far behind him. She gives Victor a nod and starts to wave her handbag, launching into an explosive explanation about how dare they close the plasma truck, that they shut the new center down, and it ain’t even built yet, where they could have donated twice a week, and how some of them had tried to figure out how to go to the main center out in the suburbs, but the bus don’t go that far, and how it isn’t fair, is it, that they won’t build the center here, with all the people so desperate for a little cash, about how they want to keep it all for the white folks in the suburbs, how they get everything, and the people who need it get nothing, the way they always do. Then she turns and seems to notice for the first time that Buck is there, and she says how Buck don’t understand, he never got no money, he drinks too much and his teeth were bad, they said, but she has perfect teeth, and then she opens her mouth wide to show them off. And she’s right. She does. Clean and white and straight.
Victor isn’t sure what to say, especially with Buck there looking on, and so he only nods, and Patrick says, “well, if there’s nothing else here, we better be off.”
#
The next time Victor encounters Esmeralda is at Hussein’s. He’s waiting in line and doesn’t see her there. Straining his neck to see inside the counter, trying to figure out what his choices are, he sees no one in particular. He finds the apple fritters—two left—and next to it, an empty tray in the space where Hussein usually puts the bear claws. He’ll have to go with an apple fritter. They’re good enough, but somehow they aren’t the same.
Suddenly out of nowhere, a familiar form darts out and grabs the bag that’s on the counter a couple of feet away from a young guy who’s handing Hussein a ten as the other holds out a cup of coffee, an iced one with a dollop of whipped cream, a little chintzy, Victor can’t help but think, though at least Hussein doesn’t charge extra for it like the other places do. When Victor comes to his senses, he realizes that it is Esmeralda who has swiped the bag and is headed out the door. The customer she stole it from turns just as Victor does, but he reaches her first and grabs her by the shoulder, letting out a string of accusations punctuated by every variant of “fuck” Victor has ever heard as Esmeralda takes out the bear claw and shoves it into her mouth. She holds up the rest of it with the bite mark, as though somehow victorious, and waves it at him and everyone. Patrick intervenes, commandeers the donut, and places it back inside the bag, which he sets down on the counter as he wrestles Esmeralda’s hands behind her back.
Esmeralda resists him, whimpering and crying. “If you’re gonna arrest me for it, you can at least have the decency to let me finish it. I haven’t eaten nothin’ for two whole days.” And she looks over at Victor as though he might take her side.
Hussein is offering the customer another donut, anything he wants. The guy starts mumbling something about a motherfucking bitch and how it was the last bear claw and he doesn’t want some fucking apple fritter.
Victor picks up the bag and looks inside. He sighs before holding it out to her. “Well, everyone seems to want it, so I guess someone should get to eat it.”
Esmeralda moans, whether in gratitude or hunger or anticipation, Victor isn’t sure. Patrick relents and shifts her cuffs to the front, so she can take the bag.
#
That evening, Victor messages his daughter Sarah, asking her how her day has been, and when she asks him how his was, he starts telling her about Esmeralda. After a few lines, she interrupts his story and invites him over. He doesn’t want to intrude, he tells her, but of course that’s exactly what he wants, to go over and tell the story to someone who will listen and maybe understand. The bad part is that it will surely involve dinner. He offers to pick up a pizza on his way, but she says no, she already has a casserole in the oven, a casserole sure to have not any meat, only vegetables, and if he’s lucky, something made of soy that pretends to be beef or pork or chicken, but which to Victor will always be a variant of tofu. Victor wishes he had managed to get a donut even if it was an apple fritter. But the customer had become increasingly angry about the incident, so they had taken Esmeralda out of the donut shop before things got out of hand.
At Sarah’s place, little Myra opens up the door before he even rings the bell and the dog Clifford is at her heels. “Don’t let him out!” she says, in a voice not of a six-year-old, but an imitation of her mother’s.
Inside, Myra goes back to whatever she is watching, and Victor wanders into the kitchen to help Sarah, who is slicing some bread that looks surprisingly normal. “French bread?” he asks hopefully.
“Yes, would you mind slicing it for me? I was going to make a salad.”
He tells her the story about the plasma truck, about how it closed and about Esmeralda’s tirade that day when he had found her busting up the abandoned building. It turns out that Sarah knew about the decision not to go ahead with the plasma center, though she didn’t know they had also stopped the truck.
“It’s better this way,” she says, “even if the people there don’t see it now. One day, they would wake up and resent us all for it, for letting it happen.”
The three of them sit down for dinner, where he and Sarah talk of other things, trying to involve Myra, asking her about her soccer team and what she plans to be for Halloween.
“I’m not allowed to be a princess, so I’m going to be a Rugrat,” she informs him.
Victor looks at Sarah, who seems to take this announcement in stride. When Myra finishes before them, she asks politely to be excused, and Sarah grants it to her, but asks her to keep the volume down.
Victor then proceeds with the rest of his story about Esmeralda, about the donut, about how she hadn’t eaten, how she wasn’t even upset about being taken off to jail where she was sure to get some food. Sarah listens to his story, then finally asks, “so what will happen to her?” Victor isn’t sure. He doesn’t know about her priors, but she’ll probably get at least three months in jail.
“All for just a donut?” Sarah’s question seems to echo throughout the apartment, which has suddenly grown quiet and as they look around, they notice at once that the television is off. Myra and Clifford both are gone, but soon they hear footsteps and Myra walks back in, looking especially solemn. She walks up to Victor and takes out a coin purse in the shape of a teddy bear. She empties it on the table and counts it out to him.
“I only have eight dollars and fifty-two cents.” She pushes it toward him. “How much is a donut?”
Victor smiles. “You want me to buy you a donut next time I come?”
“No, I want to pay for it. The bear claw. So that woman can go free.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Victor gently pushes the money back to her. “But it won’t help her now.”
“But you said she’s going to go to prison!”
Victor looks at Sarah and mouths the words “a little help?” But Sarah doesn’t answer, her eyes glazed over like those of a dead deer.
Myra looks from one of them to the other, then bursts into a sort of frenzied cry: “Why can’t I just pay for it and fix it?”
A tear rolls down her cheek, as Victor takes the coin purse from her hands and pushes the coins back into it. When he tries to hug her, to pull her onto his lap, she squirms violently away, scratching his arm, which hurts and even starts to bleed.
She runs a few paces, then spins around and faces him. “I hate you,” she screams at him, screams at the top of her voice. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
And when she runs off to her room, even the dog knows better than to follow, waiting until the door slams, then going up to Victor and standing on his hind legs, begging for some food, for a piece of not-quite-meat.