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“Enjolras!” Lamarque says when he picks up the video call. “I’m sorry to call again—I know you’re going out, but—oh, hello Grantaire.”
“How are you, Senator?”
“I’m all right, thanks.” Enjolras has long been accustomed to seeing Lamarque in her non-work clothes, but he can see R’s surprise to notice that the usually elegant and polished senator is wearing an oversized college hoodie and no makeup.
“Enjolras, before you head out, I just had a few more thoughts I’d like you to consider as you work up Monday’s press release and talking points.” She’s already spoken tonight, where the crowds are gathering in the city center, but there’s always more to say—and Lamarque, who gets three new ideas while she’s saying one, is somehow able to avoid blurting those thoughts out, instead cataloguing them for later refinement. “Do you mind?”
“Let me sit down,” Enjolras says, moving the laptop to the dining table, where Grantaire quickly shifts some newspapers aside to make room before he moves into the kitchen. “Okay, ready.” He mutes himself so that the heavy clack of his typing and R’s rummaging in the kitchen for protest supplies won’t throw the senator off, and starts taking notes.
“What I was thinking,” she says, gazing into a space just above her camera, “is we don’t know, as a nation, what we want our police force to be. White America wants a personal protection squad. Rich America wants a personal protection squad. The police have interpreted this, for generations, as an instruction to ride roughshod over poor and brown people, decimate their populations through incarceration and brutal repression, and call it toughness. Call it justice.
“It works, you know. Not as justice. But as PR, it’s highly effective. Most of us struggle to imagine an alternative.”
Enjolras is typing hurriedly, missing some words but getting the gist. Obviously this specific wording is for no one but him; his job is to take the senator’s honest ruminations and shape them into something publicly palatable.
“I am complicit,” she says, screwing her mouth up how she does when she talks about herself. Personal stories make her uncomfortable.
“That I can say it and not mean it, like I did tonight; that I can suggest our police are capable of reforming themselves, when of course at every point in America’s history, the police have existed to protect only one thing: the lie of American justice. That’s what their job is. They’re an essential line in the do-right, get-rich narrative; do-wrong, get-what’s-coming-to-you. And what’s coming needs to come easy for some people so the people who don’t get it get to think that means they’re better.”
In the kitchen behind him, the rustling and banging has slowed. Grantaire’s listening in.
“Black and brown America—and of course this is a generalization, but they’re the ones who are most likely to have known that we live in a police state. There’s that expression: When all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. It’s half true. But there’s another part: When all you’ve got is a hammer, some problems aren’t allowed to be problems. We’re not going to bring the full force of the law—or of extrajudicial law enforcement—down on everyone. That’s obvious. Some people are exempt. Some people, we’ve decided, will always be nails. And some, no matter how heinous their behavior, never can be.”
A long low whistle comes from the kitchen. “That’s my fucking senator.”
“Grantaire!”
“You’re muted, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m sure you don’t need to remind Grantaire of the confidential nature of this conversation.” The first time the senator shared a meal with Grantaire, she told him, “I can tell you’re going to like me even better once you’ve heard a few off-the-record chats between me and your boyfriend. But it’s on you to keep those off the record.” Enjolras and Grantaire might not have sat down to that meal as boyfriends, strictly speaking, but the senator’s words made it so.
The senator’s words transform and solidify so many things. But.
“Enjolras?”
He unmutes himself.
“Of course not, Senator.”
“Love you, Senator!” Grantaire calls.
“I love you too, Grantaire. Be safe out there tonight.”
“You don’t trust us?” R comes into the room and squats to join Enjolras in the frame.
“I don’t trust this damn world.” She shakes her head. “I’ll also admit some apprehension about what you have been getting up to in that kitchen.”
“Just supplies to share around,” R says, opening his coat to reveal inner pockets jammed with spare water bottles. “No incendiaries.”
“I tend to tell myself, these days, that impulsivity is for the young."
"In your dotage," says R, leaning close so she’ll be able to read the joke in the twist of his mouth.
She flaps a hand at the screen, dismissing his impertinence. "But then there are days when I would gladly set the whole damn nation on fire."
"But would it really be what you'd call an impulsive act?" Enjolras asks.
Her eyes twinkle. "I suppose I've had some time to think on it."
"It's not pragmatic."
"Right. Not pragmatic—but reasoned, yes.
“All right, boys. This doddering old crone needs to teeter off to bed—"
“By which you mean five more hours’ work?”
“Who’s to say? Be safe out there. And give ’em hell.”
After hanging up the call, Enjolras stays staring through his computer screen for a minute, deep in thought.
“You good?”
“Sorry!” Enjolras shakes himself out of it, closing the computer and rising. “Almost ready.”
“Really though—you good?”
“Yeah, I’m just, just thinking about what it’s going to be like out there. But I’m trying to think about it to myself for once, not trying to whine at you about the hardships of being a good white protester who’s involved but not too involved and who shows support without co-opting attention. You don’t need me to put that on you.”
“Enjolras?” Grantaire tilts a hand toward him appraisingly. “Is this ... maturity?”
“I always... You carry too much of my shitty self-doubt and dithering, and I’m trying not to have you do it so much, especially when it’s about how to fight racist shit.”
R’s stuffing his pockets with unused face masks. “And that is part of why I love you. You seen my extra phone charger?”
*
The streets tonight are surging with life. Drums and bells and chanting echo down the wide city blocks radiating from City Hall and its plaza, where Lamarque and the mayor spoke earlier, along with the chief of police, all introduced by Councilman and state assembly candidate Kelvin Hernandez.
“The mayor’s seething,” Enjolras tells Grantaire as they navigate through the masses of people. Unlike every other protest he’s been too, here, empty space is a tangible part of the crowd. Not six feet, that’s for sure—but at least an arm’s length separates most protesters from their neighbors. “Hernandez says the chief basically told her ‘You’re not the boss of me.’”
“The police answer to themselves,” R says, nodding. “Interesting it’s taken this long for a lot of the elected officials to notice.” He nods at a sign that says POWER CORRUPTS. “Maybe their objectives tend to align.”
They stop in front of the municipal library to see the First Amendment Info Station that Combeferre’s set up with some other librarians and lawyers. Probably 95% of the interaction with their booth seems to be selfie-based—Grantaire helped them develop some extremely photogenic signage—but lots of people are actually stopping to ask questions, too.
While Combeferre passes some immigrant-rights information across the broad table to one group of protesters, Enjolras eavesdrops on a lawyer’s answers to a young woman’s question.
“I wish I could say ‘The law is the law, and that’s that,’ but what we’re seeing from police departments across the country right now is lawless disregard for life and liberty. So, know your rights, and if your rights are violated, we’ll gladly help you take that to the courts afterward. But for now, you do what you need to do to stay alive.”
Sage and weed smoke fill the air. The protesters talking to ’Ferre thank him and move on, and Enjolras steps forward to beam at his best friend.
Face masks cover smiles, but not eyes. Combeferre blinks in surprised pleasure.
They’ve only been together a few times in quarantine, for distant visits in the park. Enjolras loves to see ’Ferre doing what he loves, helping the public know things. “It’s so fucking good to see you.”
”Ferre clasps his hands around his own wrists, like a reminder not to reach out. Enjolras has been keeping his in his pockets for the same reason. “I miss you too, Enjolras.”
“I don’t know how to feel about being in a crowd,” Enjolras says. When you have known someone like Combeferre for long, you know he’s always ready for the heart of the matter, no lead-in necessary. “I miss crowds so goddamn much. But—”
“But we’ve spent the last two months avoiding them for good reason, and if the moral imperative were less imperative, we’d be avoiding them still.”
“Yeah.”
Combeferre’s eyes crinkle above the mask. “Let’s have coffee here this week, here on the steps.” He nods over his shoulder to the library entrance, where he and Enjolras have had miles-deep coffee talks over the years. “I’ll ask Courf too, if he’s up for it.”
Enjolras nods. A series of migraines have kept Courf in bed for the last week. Despite the chipper tone of Jehan’s updates, the situation sounds miserable.
Beside him, Grantaire hands out face masks to a few people are trying to figure out how to keep their improvised bandana masks from slipping. “Use them both,” he suggests. “Can’t hurt to double up.”
Thanking R for the mask, one of the protesters asks if they’re done talking to Combeferre.
“Go for it,” Enjolras says, stepping aside. “I’ll text you tomorrow, ’Ferre.”
“You’ll text me tonight when you get home,” Combeferre says with a stern look after him.
“We will!” says R, taking Enjolras’s hand, and they join the flood of bodies moving down the street.
Several impromptu leaders march near them, all Black, and Enjolras is glad to see that the diverse crowd around them follows their lead. He’s seen too many allies steal the reins or the spotlight; with some shame, he remembers the attention he garnered at the first Women’s March, which is why he now keeps his protest signs simple. The one pinned to his back today just says “Black Lives Matter”; Grantaire’s wearing one around his neck that says “Another Immigrant Against Fascism.”
They’ve been there over an hour, chanting and talking to people and letting their bodies be part of the huge story that is this outrage, this rejection of an intolerable reality that too many of us have tolerated for too long, when the shift happens.
It’s sudden, cataclysmic.
From their vantage point on the sidewalk at a crossroads, they can see a small army of police approach the front of the crowd, where a few protesters on motorcycles are revving their engines and people are yelling, yelling names of the dead, chanting “Defund the police!”
They’re too far away to feel it, but the sudden clouds of smoke signal that the police have deployed their first teargas canisters, and the righteous cries of anger turn to shrieks of pain. People run toward them, fleeing the oncoming officers, and it feels like only seconds before they’re in the thick of the action, protesters’ hurried footsteps chased by the thumping boots of the officers at their backs.
A loudspeaker announces “This street is now closed. Disperse immediately.”
There are police at two sides of the intersection, and the street down which they’re forcing protesters will dead-end in the plaza at City Hall, which is, god knows, crawling with more police.
Looking at Grantaire, Enjolras sees that he’s come to the same conclusion: there’s only one way out—they need to cross to the far corner of the intersection, where it’s relatively clear. “Let’s go,” he says.
“Wait!” Grantaire grabs at him as he starts to move forward, because the police are upon the crowd in front of them, shields raised and batons at the ready, and staying on the side of the street might be the most safety they can hope for at the moment.
But attracted by the movement, an officer pivots to face them. “This area is closed,” she says, moving in, and Grantaire’s grip on his hand tightens. The badge says she’s not from the city, but from a rich white suburb half an hour away.
Enjolras thinks of Combeferre saying “text me tonight.” He thinks of the senator saying “Be safe.” He thinks of Grantaire, who takes risks. Grantaire, who is not always safe, who says what he means, who is incomparably precious to him—and what this officer sees, looking at him: brown skin, beard, eyes flashing with righteous anger, a literal sign that says “Immigrant.”
Some people, we’ve decided, will always be nails.
Once, Grantaire thrust Enjolras behind his own body to protect him from a violent mob. He's about to do it again.
Enjolras steps in front of Grantaire.
It strikes him as strange that his first thought as the officer looms before him is This is too close. In the last two months, no one but Grantaire has been as close to him as this officer is now.
“This area is closed,” the officer says, her eyes chasing around Enjolras to Grantaire.
“We’re trying to—”
Enjolras lifts his hands as he tries to point out his intended route, but he doesn’t get a chance. Another officer, this one with a clear plastic shield, rushes to the first officer’s side and summarily shoves Enjolras away. There’s yelling, too—the first officer yelling to the second, the second at him, Grantaire outraged—but he can’t make out any words in the overall commotion as he flies, in what feels like comical slow motion, backward.
Crashing to his ass in the gutter, he realizes too late that his unfortunate instincts have apparently caused his arms to try to catch himself, because pain explodes through his left wrist so hot and fast that it has not quite had a chance to become pain so far, just an acute awareness of a system in distress.
He can’t think about this yet.
Two cops stand between him and Grantaire—but Grantaire’s down too, fuck fuck fuck, and oh shit, one of them is swinging a nightstick. Enjolras shoves off from the ground—fuck—to throw himself forward.
He’ll fight the police and he’ll lose and he’ll get beaten and go to jail and Lamarque will be so mad, but also maybe a little proud, but it doesn’t matter what Lamarque thinks, what matters is he can’t see Grantaire, just that club descending again, and Enjolras stumbles doggedly toward them.
Flashbangs burst down the street, their white strobes of light illuminating the phalanx of cops who have walled in dozens of protesters against the plywood-boarded windows of a national insurance company’s flagship office. Then, screams. and billowing toward them with the smoke, the sharp tang of teargas.
“Stop!” Enjolras croaks, reaching for the officer nearest him, not sure what he’ll do, but knowing he cannot let them continue to beat Grantaire. With one gloved hand, she pushes him backward. With a quick check of her face shield, she taps her colleague and both take off jogging toward the trapped crowd.
In the haze, it’s hard to see much, but Grantaire’s curled in on himself, like he was trying not to fight back. “Holy fuck, Grantaire, are you—”
“Help me up,” R says, uncurling, and he rises shakily when Enjolras gives him an arm.
He flings his arms around Enjolras once he’s up, holds him close, and for a moment that’s enough, and then Enjolras remembers they’ve got to get out of there, and then he feels the wetness.
“Shit.” His hands scramble at Grantaire’s jacket. “Shit, R, you’re bleeding. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck do I take you away? can you move? or do we stay here and get help? tell me what you need oh my god—”
“I’m not bleeding.”
“Stop moving. Sit down. Your jacket’s soaked.”
At that, Grantaire laughs unevenly. His breathing sounds strange. “You’re right. Guess I’m all out of waters to give away.”
Grantaire doesn’t want to leave, not till they know if those people down the way are going to be okay, but there’s a news crew down there filming the whole thing—so at least that’s documentation, it’s not nothing—and even if there wasn’t, what the fuck are they going to do?, now that the pain and fear are catching up to the jittery pulsing of Enjolras’s heart, he wants to get Grantaire to safety.
“You’ve been fucking beaten by police, Grantaire,” Enjolras says, “and as a person who is terrified about your well-being, I insist that we go the fuck home, right now.”
The journey is not far and not hard. They take empty side streets, dark and eerily empty under the steady thrum of helicopters overhead and the occasional bang of crowd-control explosives in the plaza. A stream of patrol vans rushes past.
“Really takes me back,” Grantaire says.
*
At home, R carefully peels off his wet jacket, making a face as he wriggles free of its clinging arms.
“Where are you hurt?” Enjolras tosses the jacket and their face-masks into a heap by the door. Grantaire’s eyes are bright like when he’s boxing, awake with pain.
“It’s nothing, just—”
Enjolras uses his good hand to help pull up R’s t-shirt. His ribs are already mottled with purple and red.
“Just bruises, babe. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m getting you some ice packs. And taking pictures.”
“Usually when I get roughed up by the cops, you buy me shots.”
Enjolras is glad he’s in the kitchen wrestling ice packs loose from the freezer drawer, because it means Grantaire can’t see the embarrassing mix of amusement and fury doing battle in his face. “Fuck you all the way to hell.”
“I fucking love you, Enjolras. I really do.” Grantaire shifts uncomfortably on the couch as Enjolras wraps the ice packs in a towel and places them on his battered torso. He sighs and shivers as the cold starts to seep through. “Could you please bring me some whiskey?”
“Oh my god,” Enjolras says in exasperation, but he gets a bottle and two glasses. It’s while he’s handing R a shot that the agony in his own wrist finally really registers. “Fuck.”
“What happened?” Clanking his drink to the table at his side, R shoves up to sitting.
“Lie down,” Enjolras says irritably. “I just sprained it.”
“Those motherfuckers,” Grantaire says, not lying down. “Those fucking asshole bastard—”
“Take a shot with me, and lie down.”
Studying Enjolras, Grantaire reaches for his glass. “We are going to make this shit better,” he says.
“Yeah,” Enjolras agrees, because even if he doesn’t know he can believe the words, he believes the fire in Grantaire’s eyes.
*
The senator’s fury is a hard, still fury.
“The front page: ‘Local police march with protesters.’ Well, I do prefer when they march rather than batter. But I think we’ve seen evidence in this last night that the two are not mutually exclusive, and the former tends to dominate the news cycle.
“Why is their indiscriminate violence allowed to continue?” She levels a look. Even through a video-call, Lamarque knows how to stare you down. “We know why.”
“Even when it’s white people being attacked, like you, it’s under the banner of Black Lives Matter, under the banner of anti-police-brutality, which people can be convinced to read as anti-police. Easy to say you had it coming.”
Enjolras is taking notes on paper this morning; his swollen left hand, expertly bound by Grantaire last night, is too clumsy to type.
“After Kent State, good lord, I remember people were outraged. Not college students! Not white kids, white American kids, being fired on by the US military! It’s only when they come for the privileged that people can see something’s out of whack. Because the system, we think, it’s supposed to protect privilege, right? They’ve always come for the Black and brown folks—and, to some extent, anyone fighting on our side. Levels of surveillance and sophistication notwithstanding, it’s all same old, same old.”
Lamarque is putting on her jewelry as she speaks; she’s already dressed in a solemn gray suit. She’ll be visiting downtown businesses soon before her midday press conference. She reaches to her ear to latch a broad silver hoop earring.
“And yet, something felt different about last night. All those journalists getting hit. Maybe that’s something.” She attaches the other earring. “Citizen documentation, too. Everything’s on film now. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted.”
Grantaire is still sleeping, Enjolras hopes; in addition to the conventional painkillers, he got soporifically stoned right before bed last night, and then made out lazily with Enjolras till they both drifted into slumber. When Enjolras slid out of bed at 7, R had kicked away the bedspread and was only half-covered by a white sheet, above which the purple and blue of his ribs stood out like garish flowers.
Lamarque holds up one silver necklace, then another, considering each in her image in the video chat. “I wouldn’t have gotten here, you know, without my background in law. The police unions backed me—several times, they backed me; so progressive, to endorse this Black woman—and I admit I needed them. I couldn’t have been elected those first times without them.”
Enjolras laughs wryly. “And now you couldn’t—”
“Now they’d be a liability,” Lamarque agrees, settling on the necklace with blue stones and clasping it behind her neck. “In our electorate. Yes.”
Times are changing—and while that change feels, to Enjolras, like a tidal wave overtaking his life, his city, his feeds, it’s a wave that’s been building for hundreds of years, swelling and churning, absorbing the turmoil and distrust and radical hopeful courage of the millions of people who’ve breathed their every breath from inside that wave.
“Enjolras,” she says. “The mayor will be announcing mandatory curfews later today. I’d be lying if I said I’m not scared. What we’re seeing right now, on the streets, it’s looking more and more like the training grounds of a paramilitary coup.
“I’m not joking. But the good news is, most coup attempts fail. Like I said, there’s the journalists. And the kids. This cannot stand, can it? People can’t look at this and say this is acceptable.” She checks her watch.
“You’d better get going,” Enjolras says. “I’ll have a draft to you in an hour.”
“Thank you, Enjolras. Here’s what I need, though, and it’s a tall order: We need to make systemic overhaul sound right and good and possible.” She leans in like she’s about to end the call, then pauses. “We need people to be more scared of the way things are than they are of the specter of change.”
Enjolras nods. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says, and when she hangs up, he rises to make a pot of coffee. This is another day, and it’s going to be hard, so he will start it by doing something kind for himself and the bruised, brave person asleep in his bed.