The Collective

16

Joshua solicited the ACLU, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and various Asian American advocacy groups. All of them initially seemed interested in the case, but then, without explanation, dropped out. Finally he found an organization that was eager to become involved: the Cambridge Coalition for Freedom of Expression. Its core mission was to assist artists and organizations facing attacks on their artistic freedom. I had never heard of them.

The CCFE representative who came to our house, Stan Margolies, was around fifty, heavyset, with salt-and-pepper hair tied in a ponytail. He wore a hunter-green corduroy sports jacket and sneakers, and he had the right leg of his jeans rolled up, exposing a hairy calf and a vivid red sock. He had ridden his bike over, and he smelled rank. He was, supposedly, both a lawyer and a painter. “I’ve been in this house before,” he told Joshua. “Your parents were my professors, years ago. They were terrific teachers and people. I loved them.”

In the dining room over a cup of chai, Margolies said, “There’s no doubt this is a First Amendment issue. The city of Cambridge is under no obligation to support the arts, but having chosen to do so, they can’t retroactively impose content or viewing restrictions on exhibits. They are, in fact, prohibited from so doing by the Constitution. The First Amendment also precludes public officials from acting as freelance art vigilantes. Having said that, however, I’m not confident we could pull off a First Amendment case against Barboza and the City Council.”

“Why not?” Jessica asked.

“It might take years to litigate, and it’d entail an enormous amount of resources and money, and still we might not win, especially in the current climate.”

“But this is Cambridge,” Joshua said. “I can’t believe this is happening in fucking Cambridge.”

“There are powerful constituencies at work, well-funded ones on the extreme right, and they’re driven by a general hysterical fear of the unknown, which of course is, at its root, about intolerance.”

“Barboza’s got to be a closet queen,” Jessica said. We turned to her, faltering over the non sequitur. “So there’s nothing we can do?” she asked.

“There’s one tactic I can suggest,” Margolies said. “File a criminal complaint of malicious destruction.” He cited Chapter 266, Section 127, of the Massachusetts General Laws, which set the penalty for wanton destruction of personal property at a maximum of ten years in prison or a fine based on the value of the property. “It’s unlikely he’d get any jail time, but it’d be an expeditious way for us to make our point.”

“What are the chances he’d be convicted?” Joshua asked.

“Fifty-fifty,” Margolies admitted.

“How long would it take to litigate?” I asked.

“We could submit the complaint as early as Monday, the arraignment would be in a week or two, the trial five or six months after that.”

“What about the costs?” Jessica asked.

“We’re willing to do this pro bono,” Margolies said. “There is a monetary threshold, however, for filing the charge as a felony. We need to be able to claim that Barboza caused damage in excess of $250. Is that something we can claim?”

I could see Jessica mentally tallying the expenditures for the repair material, which could not have been much.

“You should also factor in the reduction in the mannequins’ market value, since they’re no longer in their original condition,” Margolies said. “That loss would be irrevocable, I imagine.”

Jessica had arbitrarily priced the mannequins at $3,000 apiece, never believing anyone would buy them. “In that case,” she said, “yes, definitely more than $250 in damage.”

“All right, then, we can do this,” Margolies said. “But I have to warn you, if we go forward, you’ll have to be prepared for the resultant shitstorm. It won’t be just Barboza. The Christian Coalition and other factions will probably marshal their forces to support him under all sorts of guises. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were protests and dirty tricks to try to discredit you and the 3AC.”

“Are you shitting me?” Joshua asked.

“No, I’m deadly serious.”

“That’s beautiful, man,” Joshua said. “This will be war.”

Margolies gave us the weekend to think it over.

As Sunday evening approached, one 3AC member after another phoned to say he or she could not make the potluck that week. All good reasons — a deadline, a relative or a friend visiting, a gig out of town, tickets to a show. Jimmy was the only one available. When he heard no one else was coming, he said he’d give this one a miss. Grace didn’t bother to call at all.

I made pajeon — scallion pancakes — from the batter I had already prepared, and Joshua, Jessica, and I ate them with rice and kimchi in the kitchen.

“I checked these guys out,” I told them. “The CCFE. They’re a bunch of kooks. They want to ban prayer in the schools and eliminate the word God from all government entities, including money.”

“So they’re atheists. More power to them,” Jessica said.

“Yeah? You know they also support NAMBLA?” The North American Man/Boy Love Association. “They’ve gone to court for convicted sex offenders. They’re trying to get the sale and distribution of child pornography legalized.”

“That’s nothing new,” Joshua said. “The ACLU’s been doing that for years. When you’re trying to protect civil liberties in absolute terms, you end up having to defend the indefensible.”

“I think we should let everyone have a say in this,” I said. “It affects the rest of the 3AC. We should tell them what’s going on and put it up for a group vote.”

“Screw that,” Joshua said. “Do you see anyone else here? Fucking cowards. The first sign of trouble, they bail.”

“They all had legitimate excuses this weekend.”

“Every single one of them? By coincidence?”

“Let’s wait until next Sunday,” I said. “They’ll all be back then.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. They deserted us. It’s just us now. We’re the only group that matters. What’s your problem? This is just like at Mac. Why are you so afraid?”

This was not just like Macalester. I had always regretted my initial reluctance to act then, chagrined by my passivity, and I had been committed to proceeding now. I wanted apologies. I wanted retractions. I wanted denunciations. Yet that was before Margolies had promised a circus. I did not want that kind of strife or notoriety. Not over this.

“This just doesn’t feel right,” I said. “It might escalate and get out of hand, and that’s exactly what Margolies wants. That’s why they’re pursuing this. They’re not looking out for us at all. They want to use us.”

“I’m being publicly humiliated, and now you are, too,” Jessica said. “You’re going to let that pass? This is about our dignity.”

“Once Barboza made the egg roll comment, he crossed the line,” Joshua said. “He made it racial. There’s no way we can back down now. The crazies and detractors will come out, but so will supporters and admirers. This will make us famous. It’ll help our careers, I’m not too disingenuous to say. And the timing couldn’t be better for you and me, bro, with the Fiction Discoveries issue coming out next month.”

“That shouldn’t be our motivation,” I said.

“No? Let’s not be naive. We can’t sit around waiting for things to happen. We’ve got to make them happen. Nothing’s going to fall in our laps. That only happens to beautiful white people. I’m telling you, that photo of us in the Record, someday it’ll be reprinted in magazines and biographies as a watershed moment for the three of us.”

I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with Joshua, but I tried to sway Jessica privately when we were in the basement later, doing laundry.

“This is a mistake,” I said.

“I’ve become a joke,” she said, putting her clothes in the washer after I had moved my load to the dryer. “I’ve got to salvage my reputation.”

“You can do that with another exhibition.”

“No one’s going to give me another show now — not if I let this go. Joshua’s right. Even if the shit comes down, at least my name as an artist will get out there.”

“Are you sure it’s worth it?” I asked. “Are you sure that’s how you want to make your mark?”

“Are you implying the show’s not worth defending?” she asked. “That it’s something I should be ashamed of?”

“I wish you had exhibited your paintings,” I said, looking at the stacks of canvases against the wall. “I think these are wonderful. I really think that’s the direction you should’ve followed.”

“Don’t obfuscate. Answer my question. Say what you really mean.”

“Why do you think all those other organizations wouldn’t take the case? Purely out of legal considerations?”

“Answer me.”

“Maybe,” I told her, “the Globe review had some validity. Maybe there could have been more substance, fewer gimmicks.”

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve,” Jessica said. “I can’t believe this, coming from you. You’ve written one good story in your life, and you took what could have been Esther’s slot in the Discoveries issue, no compunction whatsoever, even though you’re on the staff. For what?”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I did have compunctions. A lot of them. I wanted to pull my story. Joshua convinced me not to.”

“And he’s the god of propriety,” Jessica said. “I hate the bitch right now, but Esther’s the real deal. You know that. She works hard, she deserves to be recognized. Whereas you’re always complaining you don’t have time to write. Let me ask you: When will you? Will you ever do anything instead of just talking about it? Maybe you should just quit, Eric. Give up trying. The world doesn’t need another dilettante, and that’s all you’ve ever been.”

Barboza filed a counter-complaint against Jessica, Chapter 272, Section 29, for public dissemination of obscene and pornographic materials, which was punishable by a maximum of five years or a fine of $10,000. Both the malicious destruction and obscenity complaints would be heard in ten days by the clerk magistrate of the Third District Court of Middlesex County, who would determine if criminal charges should go forward against either party.

“This is scandalous,” Barboza told the Globe. “I can’t believe she and her misfit cronies want to waste taxpayer money on this. But if they want a fight, I’ll give them one.”

This time, in addition to newspaper reporters, local TV crews showed up at the house, and Margolies and Joshua were all too happy to grant interviews.

“Freedom is about tolerating what you might despise,” Margolies said. “If you can’t do that, you’re un-American.”

“It’s clear with the councilman’s recent remarks,” Joshua said, “that he’s a bigot. We’re demanding his resignation. We will not condone this kind of racist conduct. Asian Americans will not be anyone’s patsies.”

Some City Council members began to backpedal from their initial decision not to cancel the show. “It’s possible that the exhibit constitutes a form of artistic recklessness,” the vice mayor said. One of the Arts Council members alleged that she did not know the exhibit would contain sexually explicit material when they had approved the project — a barefaced lie, since Jessica’s application had described exactly what she planned to do, her only alteration using casts of real genitalia instead of sex toys.

With increased ardor, the story was rehashed on talk radio stations, and the head columnist for the Boston Herald, Joe Quinney, addressed the subject with particular zeal. “Over in the People’s Republic of Cambridge,” he wrote, “where the diversity-university PC police run amok and City Hall is banned from displaying Christmas trees, it’s apparently permissible to display your private parts in public, as long as you call it ‘art.’ ” (“P-p-please. Is it possible to alliterate any more than that?” Joshua said.) “This is yet another example of the sordidness polluting our society, where this cheap, imitation Mapplethorpe with penis envy is being allowed to parade her perversions in a public place.” (“Yes, it’s possible!” Joshua cackled.)

Paviromo, in one of his rare visits to the Palaver office, asked me, very amused, “What in the world is going on in that house of yours? I didn’t think you had it in you, my boy.”

There followed, as Margolies predicted, protests and rallies. Demonstrators gathered in front of the City Hall Annex with signs that read THE FIRST AMENDMENT DOES NOT PROTECT FILTH, STOP PORNOGRAPHY NOW, GOD HATES SINNERS.

Anonymous hate mail was sent to the house, and anonymous hate phone messages were left on the machine: “You gooks are pervs” and “Fucking chink whore, go back to China.”

We unlisted the number and stopped answering the telephone. “Still think this was such a great idea?” I said to Joshua.

“Give me the damn code so I can erase this shit.”

“No. We might need the tape later for evidence.”

The story was picked up by the wires, the AP writing “City Councilor Charged in Stolen Porn Case,” and presumably the article was reprinted in the Saratogian, the local paper in Saratoga Springs, for one evening I came home to find that Jessica’s father had called the house. They had had no communication in seven years, although, surreptitiously, her mother and younger sisters had been in occasional touch with Jessica.

Her father had left a two-sentence message on the answering machine. “You shame me,” he said. “You are not my daughter.”

I knocked on her door. “Jessica?” She was lying on her bed in the dark, turned toward the wall.

“You heard it,” she said.

“I heard it,” I said, squatting down on the futon.

She sat up and leaned her back against the wall to face me. “I should have listened to you,” she said. “I never thought it’d get so crazy.”

I don’t think any of us really had. At Mac, with Kathryn Newey, everything had gone so peaceably, so easily for us, we had been lulled into believing that we would be sheltered from true adversity. “It’ll die down soon,” I said. “It can’t get any worse, right?”

In the last two days, she had been told by Martinique College of Art that her contract as a teacher would not be renewed, and she had been fired from Gaston & Snow.

“I’m finished as an artist,” Jessica said.

“You’d be surprised how quickly people forget things. In a year, maybe even less, I bet no one will remember any of this.”

“I went to Mount Auburn Hospital this morning,” she told me.

“You did?” Reflexively I thought about Mirielle, wondered if she was still a medical secretary there, if she had heard from any MFA programs, if she was still seeing the temp. “Was it another panic attack?” I asked.

Jessica picked up her wrist braces. “My hands have been killing me. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so last week I went in to find out about the surgery, and they did a bunch of tests. I got the results today. After all these years, now they tell me I might not have carpal tunnel at all. They think I might have rheumatoid arthritis.”

I didn’t know anything about the condition. “Is it treatable?”

“It’s chronic and progressive.” She flexed her hand, opening and closing her fingers, the tattoo of the green peacock quill on her forearm pulsing. “They don’t know, it might be a different kind of arthritis altogether. I’m supposed to see a rheumatologist next month. But I went over to Longwood”—where she proofread part-time for the New England Journal of Medicine—“and did some research. It all fits, all the symptoms. My bones could start fusing. My fingers could twist up and become permanently deformed. It might get so I can’t grip a paintbrush or craft knife anymore.”

The image of Jessica crippled, no longer being able to do what she loved most, was heartbreaking. “Try not to dwell on it right now,” I said. “Wait till you hear from the rheumatologist.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jessica said. “I don’t think I was ever cracked up to be an artist in the first place.”

“How can you say that?”

“The mannequins,” she said, “they were just a device. The Globe critic saw right through me. You did, too. All the stuff with the 3AC, everything we’ve been spouting off about since Mac, they’ve been a crutch. It’s been a way of adding agency to my work when there hasn’t been any. I’m just a technician with nothing to say, really. Maybe I should have just gone to med school.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong, Jessica.”

“Am I? What’s it mean, then? What’s the point? Why can’t I do something of substance, like you said, something real, something from here”—she jabbed her fist against her gut—“and not from here?”—she knocked her fist against the side of her head. “From here”—she hit her stomach again, harder—“not from here”—she punched her head. “From here—”

I grabbed her wrists. “Stop it, Jessica.”

She was crying now. “All the hoopla, even before it all turned to shit, I ask myself, Did I really want this? Any of it? Because the truth is, if I could take it all back, I would.”

“It’s not too late,” I said.

“It’s too late.”

“We could drop the complaint.”

“Even if we did, Barboza would never let it go. It’s an election year. He wants a trial. This is the most fun he’s ever had.”

“Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

“I wish it could all go away,” Jessica said. “I wish it could all just end.”

I knew from news reports that Vivaldo Barboza was forty-seven, and that he still lived with his mother. They had emigrated from the Azores when he was nine. His father had already been in the U.S. for two years, working at a glassworks factory near Lechmere, and once reunited, the three of them had settled in the Portuguese community of East Cambridge.

Vivaldo had arrived knowing no English, but eventually managed to earn a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Suffolk University. Nevertheless, other than getting licensed as a justice of the peace, he never pursued a career outside of the family business. From the time he was seventeen, he and his mother — a widow since the late sixties, when Vivaldo’s father had died of a heart attack — had been running a small corner market near Inman Square.

I took Joshua’s Peugeot and drove down Broadway. I didn’t know the name of the Barbozas’ store, and I couldn’t remember whether it was on Columbia or Windsor Street. I crisscrossed the vicinity known as Area 4, which was largely an African American neighborhood. I stopped at several bodegas and markets, but the merchants were Brazilian, Indian, Syrian. I searched closer to Cambridge Street, and finally spotted Azores Variety on Columbia.

“Hello,” a woman said when I walked in. Friendly, energetic. She was in her early seventies, perhaps — almost certainly Barboza’s mother. The family resemblance was uncanny. A thick body, a wide face with a prominent brow and heavy-lidded eyes, downturned at the corners like the mouth, only Vivaldo’s wavy hair was dark while hers was white, and she was quite short, the counter she stood behind too high for her.

I browsed the aisles, temporizing. The place was dimly lit, rather dismal. I had been expecting Portuguese staples like salted cod, fava beans, and linguica, but there was none of that here, just sundries that could be found in any store, odds and ends, everything dusty, overpriced, the stamps on many of the products past expiration. There wasn’t much of a stock, either, one or two of each item on the sparse shelves, like the one bar of soap or the one package of thumbtacks or the one can of shaving cream. I pulled a gallon of milk from the cooler and set it on the counter.

“Anything else?” the woman asked.

I picked out some gum from the rack of candy bars.

“Bag?”

“Yes, please.” There was a sign on the cash register, written with a Sharpie, that said CASH ONLY. NO CHECK. NO CREDIT CARD.

She slowly counted out my change. She was wearing very thick glasses.

“Is Vivaldo home?” I asked. I had read in the paper that their apartment was above the store.

She brightened. “You friends with Vivaldo?”

“Is he home?”

She pressed a doorbell buzzer screwed to the wall, and I could hear it ringing above us, then the thump of footsteps coming down the stairs a few seconds later.

I was facing the back of the store, assuming he would enter from there, but the stairwell apparently led out to the street. He came in through the front door. “Yes, Mãe?” he said.

“A friend has come to visit you!” his mother told him, as if it were a very rare occurrence.

Hesitantly, he shook my hand, confused. “I’m sorry, could you tell me where we know each other from? I can’t place you.”

“I’m Eric Cho,” I said. When my name didn’t register, I added, “Jessica Tsai’s friend. The 3AC.”

He recoiled. “Let’s go outside.” We stepped out onto the sidewalk. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I was hoping we could talk,” I said. “Maybe calm things down a bit. Everything’s gotten a little out of control, don’t you think?”

“You guys started it. I didn’t do a thing.”

“I think we’ve all said a few things — without really meaning to — to stoke the fire.”

“I’m not going to apologize,” Barboza said. “I’m standing by my principles. I’m just doing what I believe and what’s in the best interests of my constituents.”

“Don’t you think it’d be mutually beneficial,” I asked, “if we could take a step back and, you know, discuss this rationally?”

“I am being rational,” he said. “I ask again: What do you want?”

“We’ll drop our complaint if you’ll drop yours.”

He smirked. “Pressure gotten too much for you and your friends?” he said.

“I admit, we didn’t anticipate this level of hysteria,” I said, willing to bend a little.

“Well, you asked for it,” Barboza said. “I’m not going to drop the complaint.”

“The show will be over in a week. You’ve already made your point.”

“Not going to happen.”

“We listened to bad advice, okay?” I said. “We shouldn’t have brought the courts into it. We see that now. So wouldn’t it be better for the taxpayers if we both pulled back?”

“If I dropped it, it’d look like I caved in to you.”

“What about this, then?” I said, encouraged by the small opening. “Let’s agree to both withdraw the complaints at the end of the month, when the exhibit’s over. That way, it won’t look like anyone compromised. In the meantime, how about we impose a gag order on ourselves and not talk to the media anymore?”

Barboza was wearing a short-sleeved white dress shirt. He tugged on the knot of his tie — it was a clip-on — and removed it. He rolled the tie into a compact spool, stuffed it into his front pocket, and loosened the top button of his shirt. “You see this street?” he said. “Look how brightly lit it is, every streetlight working, the reflectors in the road in front of the crosswalks. Before I took office, this was a pedestrian hazard. Two kids got hit in one summer. One of them died. You think I’m uncultured and stupid. What makes you think you’re so much better than everyone else, just because you’re an artist? What do you contribute to society? At least I’ve made the streets safer, at least I’ve gotten foot patrols increased and put bike paths in and reduced the rodent population. Maybe these are small things to you, things that don’t matter, but they’re not to the people who live here. I’ve worked hard to make their lives a little better. What have you done?”

The street was, in fact, impressively well lit. I could see the crease marks on his neck from his shirt collar, a mole in the notch of his jugular. “We’re trying to improve the lives of Asian Americans,” I said.

“I’m an immigrant just like you. You think I wasn’t made fun of, being Portuguese? You think I didn’t get teased as a kid?”

Briefly, I wondered if Barboza ever experienced saudade. What did he yearn for? I knew he had never been married, did not have children. I doubted very much he had a girlfriend. A part of me wanted to feel sorry for him.

“Why’d you say that thing on TV?” he asked. “Why’d you have to bring race into it?”

He thought I was Joshua. “We didn’t. You did. Remember? ‘Little egg rolls’? ‘Bonsai bush’?”

“One of the hosts on the talk show, Louie, he fed me that line. I regret it. But I ask you, should it have been such a big deal? Now people think I’m a bigot. Yeah, it was colorful language, but that’s talk radio. You get caught up in the hyped-up energy of the show. There wasn’t any harm intended. It was just creative license.”

The milk was getting heavy, the handles of the plastic bag cutting into my fingers. “What’s that mean, ‘creative license’?”

“They’re just words,” he told me. “What’s it matter? Race has nothing to do with this. It’s about decency. It’s about whether government agencies should be sanctioning perversion. So to say what you did, using the race card, that was a cheap shot. I would have reacted the same way if the artist was white.”

“Don’t you see?” I said. “It makes all the difference that the artist isn’t white. The context is what separates her exhibit from pornography.”

“Just because you’re Asian American, you get a free pass?”

“You don’t understand the cultural references.”

“Explain them to me, then.”

“The whole exhibit is about caricatures, the stereotypes that Asian Americans are saddled with.”

“Uh-huh,” Barboza said.

“It’s a satirical treatise on—”

“Listen,” he said, “you guys always say how you don’t want to be treated any different.”

“We don’t.”

“But anything happens, you automatically say it’s racist.”

“A lot of times, it is. You think your comment was innocent, but these things are never innocent, it’s never just a joke, they’re never just words. If you really think about it, you’ll realize what you said was racist.”

“Oh, yeah?” Barboza said. “Tell me, who made you Martin Luther Kim?”

A car drove by, going much too fast, the windows tinted black, hip-hop thumping from inside, the bass concussive enough so we could feel it out on the sidewalk. “Hey, hey, slow down!” Barboza yelled. He stared after the car until it had sped out of sight. “Fucking…,” he began to mutter, then caught himself. He turned to me with a sheen of embarrassment.

“I know what you were about to say,” I told him.

“You don’t know shit.”

“By the way, I’m not an immigrant, and it wasn’t me on TV. That was my friend Joshua. I realize we all look alike to you.”

“We’re done here,” Barboza said.

“Forget the offer,” I said. “We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to drop the complaint.”

“Neither am I.”

“Go give your mother a break, Vivaldo. You shouldn’t make her work so much.”

“Fuck you.”

“Here, dump this. It’s expired — a public safety hazard,” I said, and left the milk on the sidewalk.

We received another anonymous letter, this one written in crayon on a page torn from a spiral notebook. “Its because of sodamight motherfuckers like you this country is going to Hell. Enoughs enough. Im coming after you. Prepare to meet the reeper and be delivered to pain. Prepare to die you crepes.”

The misspellings, punctuation errors, and childlike handwriting aside, we were chilled by the threat, more so because it did not include any racial epithets. Rather, the envelope contained hundreds of tiny pieces of sheet metal, methodically snipped into razor-sharp triangles.

“I don’t know why,” Joshua said, “but it’s the green crayon that puts it over the top. It makes it feel truly deranged.”

“Keep the front door locked,” I told him. “You’re always forgetting.”

Glumly, Jessica nudged pieces of sheet metal across the dining table with her finger. “You said it couldn’t get any worse.”

I gave the envelope to the police, along with the rest of the hate mail and the microcassette of hate messages from the answering machine, but they didn’t seem overly concerned. Instead, they chose to investigate the 3AC.

I was dealing with a crisis at work. Our list broker had screwed up, and I realized we would be woefully short of addresses for our direct-mail campaign. Then I stumbled upon another snafu. The lettershop had neglected to apply for an additional mailing office in Vermont, and the process usually took thirty days. I phoned the General Mail Facility in Boston to plead for an exception, but was told that they had just canceled our bulk-mailing permit, claiming we had not used it in over fifteen months.

In the midst of all of this, Joshua called me. “Dude,” he said, “Jimmy and Noklek are in jail.”

The police had set up a sting operation on Pink Whistle, sending two undercover detectives to the salon the day before, both requesting massages. The first cop told Jimmy that he was in a hurry. “You want the fifteen-minute, then, for fifty,” Jimmy told him. According to the police report, the cop gave Jimmy a twenty and three tens (marked bills) and was led into the back office, which was furnished with a massage table, towels, assorted body oils, a low-lit lamp with a red shade, and mirrors framed by tassels and black lace. Noklek entered the room, wearing a tube top and hot pants, and she offered him a menu of “Extras”: Topless, Nude, Doctor, Foot Fetish, Domination, Russian Ending, and Pop the Cork, priced between $25 and $150. The detective chose Topless, and Noklek, after taking a twenty and a five from him (also marked), removed her tube top, massaged his chest and stomach, fondled his testicles, and gave him a hand job until the timer rang. Three hours later, a second detective stepped into Pink Whistle for the same services, whereupon they arrested Jimmy and Noklek. They had been held overnight and were being arraigned this morning.

Joshua picked me up at the office and drove us to the courthouse. “Why’d they have to spend the night in jail?” I asked. “Couldn’t they get bail?”

“I don’t know. Jimmy called me less than an hour ago.”

“Why didn’t they let him call earlier?”

“I don’t know, okay? I’ve been scrambling around, trying to find Margolies and Grace. I’m still fucking half asleep. I was up all night writing. I finally got on a roll, man.”

In court, Jimmy was charged with keeping a house of ill fame, Chapter 272, Section 24, and deriving support from prostitution, Chapter 272, Section 7. The penalty for the first charge was no more than two years, but for the second charge it was no less than two years in state prison, with no chance of early release, probation, or a reduced sentence. Noklek was charged with engaging in sexual conduct for a fee, Chapter 272, Section 53A, punishable by up to one year or a fine of $500. I discovered that Chapter 272 of the Massachusetts General Laws — the same classification under which the counter-complaint against Jessica, dissemination of obscene materials, had been filed — was entitled “Crimes Against Chastity, Morality, Decency, and Good Order.”

Both Jimmy and Noklek pled not guilty, and Margolies and Grace, representing them in court, arranged for their release, Jimmy on $500 cash bail, Noklek on personal recognizance, pending a hearing in one month. After the arraignment, however, Grace told us that the INS had been alerted to Noklek’s immigration status, and she might be deported before her case ever reached trial, green-card marriage or not.

“That’s fascist crap,” Joshua said. “Cambridge is a sanctuary city. The police aren’t supposed to cooperate with the INS.”

“She gave them a fake name. She had a fake ID,” Grace said. “That’s what set everything in motion. The line gets fuzzy if they learn someone’s illegal while in custody. Even then, they normally wouldn’t bother doing anything, especially for a minor offense. But this isn’t normal. Not with so much about you guys in the press. You know, you could have given the rest of us a little warning you were going to file the complaint against Barboza. Or maybe even have let us weigh in on it. But what did I really expect from you three prima donnas?”

Joshua and I waited for Noklek and Jimmy to be released from holding. “This is total bullshit,” Joshua said. “Since when is it acceptable for cops to get their pugs yanked, not once but twice, on the city’s dime for an investigation? This is all retaliatory, you know. It’s because we’re Asian.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said. “You did this, Joshua. This is all your fault. The massages were your idea. You knew how this would turn out. It was entirely predictable. The whole green-card scam, did you and Jimmy cook it up to get Noklek to prostitute herself?”

“No, man. That was sincere.”

I thought of all the trouble he had caused over the years, all the preening and disquisitions and rebukes, all the bad decisions that he had suckered me into, all those moments of anxiety and queasy discomfort I had had to endure as he harassed and manipulated and bullied me into servitude. How much better, I wondered, would my life have been if I’d never met Joshua?

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “Nothing you do is sincere. It was just a whim. You were never serious about it. You get these impulses and you go on these crusades, but you never stop to think how people will be affected. You keep fucking up everyone’s lives, Joshua. You realize that? I think you do, but you keep doing it anyway. Why is that? Is it entertaining to you? Amusing? Are you getting writing material out of it? Let me tell you something. The world doesn’t owe you anything because you’re Asian, because you were abandoned. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take this shit. I’m done. I’m done with you.”

Noklek came out first, hugging her arms around her chest. She was still wearing her tube top and hot pants and a pair of strappy shoes with ludicrously high stilettos. I touched her on the shoulder, and she yelled, “Yaa ma jap chan!” and ran away from us, clacking down the hall.

“I need a drink,” Jimmy said when he emerged. “Is it too early for a drink?”

I took the T from Kendall to Harvard Square and then rode the bus to the Palaver office. I spent the rest of the day calling the General Mail Facility about our permit and searching for documentation in our files to prove that we had, in fact, sent out three mailings in the past year. After hours of faxing and being put on hold, I was able to get the permit reinstated.

Drained, I went home early, splurging on a cab. I walked into the kitchen, and through the sliding glass door I saw Jessica in her white silk robe, kneeling on the deck outside.

But it wasn’t Jessica. It was Noklek in Jessica’s robe, and she was soaking wet, from water, I assumed, reenacting the Songkran festival rituals. She had the shrine before her, the three small Buddhas, the flowers, candles, incense, and framed photographs of her mother, father, and sister. Rice grains were scattered on the redwood boards of the deck, and white string was wrapped around her ankles. Somehow she had tied her wrists together with the string, too, and between her palms she held two flowers, two lit candles, and a twenty-dollar bill.

I stood at the glass door, looking down at her, and, sensing my presence, she slowly turned to me. Instead of white chalk, it looked as if candle wax was smeared over her lips and eyelids. She stared at me, emotionless, for a moment, then faced the shrine again, the photos of her family.

I noticed the red plastic can beside her, the depressions of an X on its side, and I realized then that it was the spare canister for the lawn mower. She had drenched herself in gasoline, not water. That was when she closed her eyes, tipped the candles against the left breast of the robe, and set herself aflame.