"Here's the deal," Ferrol said. "These are public courts. There's a dispute about who's got the court. I'm not going to referee chalk. Mr. Cheever's group is on the court. They've got four people. You've got one, plus the lady. There's three other courts open. I'm asking you to take one of those, or to head on home, and we're all going to have a nice Saturday."
"I had it first," Ruel said.
"Son, I hear you. But I've got a complaint here that you were loitering around a closed city building and refusing to leave a court, and I don't want to have to write that up, and you don't want me to have to write that up. Right now, today, you're on a city property where somebody has said you don't belong and you've been asked to move. You keep refusing, that's trespass. That's how it works. I didn't make it up."
The word sat in the cold air like a stone dropped in a creek.
Trespass. On a public tennis court. In a park he had been coming to since he was eleven. Where his grandmother had taught him to read the rules on the board out loud.
Ruel felt his face go hot and then cold. He felt his hands want to close and he made them stay open. He thought about his grandmother, who was at that moment at the Laundromat on Quarry with two bags of towels, who would get a phone call, who would have to put the towels back in the bag damp and walk the mile home, who would sit in the kitchen with her coat still on. He thought about the first thing deciding the next ten things.
"Okay," he said. His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "Okay. I'll go."
He bent to pick up his bag.
"No," said Perpetua Ancheta. "He won't."
Ferrol turned. For the first time, he looked at her properly. "Ma'am?"
"I said he won't. He's going to stay right here, and you're going to come with me for one minute and look at something, and then you can decide whatever you're going to decide. One minute. I've been a nurse for thirty-four years, officer. I know exactly how long a minute is."
"Ma'am, I'm not going to stand here and—"