When we arrive to the building called central booking, my evening gets even crazier. I am searched, fingerprinted, and then brought into a room with two female officers who don't touch me but ask me to squat and cough while they go through my purse. They don't explain why, but I've watched enough drug documentaries to know what they're looking for. They're checking to see if I'm carrying drugs in my vagina.

It's degrading.

Demoralizing.

And frightening.

They don't even know if I'm guilty of anything yet, and they're treating me like a common criminal, yet there's nothing I can do about it. I'm under their mercy. I have to play by their rules.

It makes me think about all of the people who live on the fringes of society who this happens to on a regular basis. I feel for them. The only solace I find during this entire process is that the two officers conducting the search apologize the entire time while they're doing it. They know that this is way over the line of good policing.

After the search, Detective Ricky approaches me.

"So, Nurse Carter, I see you live near the art museum." He grins in a smarmy way. "Nice neighborhood over there."

His comment is so inappropriate on so many levels. Where's my right to privacy. And is he giving me the googly eyes?

Creepy Cop hands me off to a female officer who places me into a holding cell with the three other women I was chained to and five other women as well. There are several long wooden benches in and around the perimeter of the room, a pay phone on the wall, and a metal toilet in the corner. There's no way I'm peeing in that thing.

I sit on a bench in the middle of the room, and do my best to act as if I'm not frightened out of my mind. I don't think I'm fooling Glitter one bit though as she decides to talk to me about everyone in the cell.

"See that girl over there in the corner. Look at her. She's coming down. You probably see that shit all the time though, huh?"

I wasn't one hundred percent sure about that girl when I first noticed her, but Glitter confirmed it. I can tell by the size of her pupils and how agitated that she is, that she seems to be coming down off of a high. Probably some sort of opioid addiction. It's an epidemic in our city.

"What'd you do to get in here, young girl?" she asks a different young woman with beautiful cocoa skin and short curly hair looking as totally out of place in here as I do.

I can't hear everything the girl is saying to Glitter, because the girl is mumbling through her tears, but I can surmise what was said based upon Glitter's responses.

"Damn, that's fucked up. Your old man ain't shit."

She mumbles something else.

"Listen, young girl, your dude is going to save his self. Trust me when I tell you. So, you better look out for yourself. Say whatever you have to say, so that you don't get sent to Riverside. That ain't no place for a girl like you."

Glitter turns to me and reports back their conversation.

"She said she went to the store with her boyfriend to get a hoagie. Boyfriend held up the cashier while he was in there. Dummy did everything wrong. They both got pinched. She's sitting here all worried about him when she should be worried about herself. I told her that kid is going to roll on her, and she's going to end up at Riverside. I've seen it a million times."

I bet.

"Can I ask you something, Glitter?"

"Sure."

"Why do you do what you do for a living?"

"Why?" she laughs. "Because I could never do what you do. You squares give everything away for free. Your bodies, your hearts, your minds. Especially when it comes to men. When a man wants any part of me, he has to pay for the right."

What a refreshing concept. Charging someone like Bill Rappaport for an hour of my time in the sack. I should have. It was such a waste of my time I should have gotten something out of it.

After about an hour in the holding cell, I finally unclench every muscle in my body. Now that I'm relieved to see that it's highly unlikely that I'm going to be shanked, and that seeing the judge takes a really long time on a Friday night, I should probably call my house and break it to my father where I am.

Things aren't like they are on television where you get to make the one call at a police detective's desk while he types up an arrest report. Thankfully times have changed. There's a pay phone in the cell, which any of us can use to make a call at our discretion. We just have to call collect.

This is a collect call from the Philadelphia Police Department Central Booking. Will you accept the charges?

"Yes. Hello?"

I've never been so happy to hear my father's voice in my life.

"Dad!"

"BABY GIRL!"

My father bursts into a fit of coughing. I can hear that his flu is progressing. He needs fluids, some Motrin, a pot of my chicken soup, and some sleep. I regret that I couldn't talk him out of driving upstate to pick up our new house guest, but there was no changing his mind.

"Dad...I can't hog the phone, so let me explain what's going on. One of the taillights of my car is out. I didn't know. I was pulled over and then arrested, because my license is expired."

"That's ridiculous. I never heard of someone being arrested for a paperwork problem."

"I know, Dad, but there's some sort of new quality of life laws on the books. That's what they're calling them. I have to see the judge before I can get out of here."

"I'm coming down there."

"No, Daddy, please. You sound awful. I don't want you running around in this damp weather with a fever. Plus, there's nothing you can do. Glitter told me that the longest part of this whole ordeal is that they have to run my fingerprints through the system in Harrisburg, and that it's going to take a long time because I don't have a record. But once that's done I'll see the judge and be released."

"Who the heck is Glitter?"

"One of my cell mates."

"Is she a whore?!"

"Shhh...yes, Dad."

*Silence*

"Flu or no flu, I'll be there in under twenty minutes."

* * *