The deputy puts a clear plastic bag on the counter and tells me to empty my pockets and remove all jewelry. I put my phone and wallet in the bag and somehow being without my phone makes me feel more helpless than the fact that I'm being locked up.
The medical screening is next, in a small room that smells like antiseptic. A nurse takes my blood pressure, then puts a thermometer in my mouth. She shines a light in my eyes and asks me most of the same questions the deputy already asked, which makes me wonder if they're checking for consistency or if the left hand genuinely doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
"Are you withdrawing from any substances?"
"No."
"When was your last alcoholic drink?"
I have to think about this. I haven't drunk since the crash. Not because of any moral revelation but because every time I've looked at a glass of wine I've seen pigs.
"About five weeks ago," I say.
Then the deputy with the clipboard is back and we're walking again — another corridor, another set of locked doors, another series of turns that I'm already losing track of — and we end up in a room that has nothing in it except a bench and a bin.
"Strip," she says.
I stare at her.
"All of it. Clothes in the bin."
I've undressed in front of other people before. Fitting rooms, gym changing areas, that charity fashion show I did where the backstage area was essentially a tent and everyone could see everyone. But those situations involve choice.
I strip until I'm completely naked in a concrete room while a stranger checks places no stranger should check. I leave my body for the duration. I go somewhere else — a beach in the Maldives— and when I come back she's handing me a pile of gray fabric to put on.
Another corridor, another locked door, and then a large open room. Bunk beds along both walls — maybe sixteen. A metal table with benches bolted to the floor. A television mounted high on the wall, playing a talk show with the sound barely on. A payphone. And at the far end, two toilets behind half-walls that come up to chest height. No doors. Just walls that stop where a door should start, as if they ran out of budget mid-construction.
There are about a dozen women here. Some lying on bunks, some sitting at the table, one on the payphone. A couple of them glance over when I walk in and my stomach clenches. These are not women I would encounter in my normal life and I have no idea how to read them — who's safe, who isn't, what the rules are. I make sure to avoid eye contact.
The deputy points to a bottom bunk near the middle. "That's yours."
There's a thin mattress with a folded sheet and a blanket stacked on top. No pillow. She turns and leaves without another word.
I sit on the bunk. The mattress crinkles — it's covered in some kind of vinyl under the sheet that makes a noise every time I move.
"No way."
The voice comes from the bunk diagonally across from mine. A thin woman is sitting cross-legged on her mattress, holding a magazine — one of those celebrity gossip ones. She's looking at the magazine, then at me, then at the magazine again. Her eyes go wide.
"No fucking way. Holy fuck!" she says, holding up the magazine. There's a glamour shot of me on the page next to the security camera still. The headline: PRINCESS PIGPEN: HEIRESS SLOANE ARCHER'S DUI DISASTER. "It's you."
I say nothing. Maybe if I say nothing she'll lose interest.
"Ladies!" she yells. She grins, showing a few teeth that are mostly suggestions. "Ladies, look. It's Princess Pigpen!"
Heads turn. The woman on the bunk next to mine puts down her book. Someone at the table looks up from a card game.
"Let me see that," says the woman next to me. She jumps off her bunk, takes the magazine and studies the photo. "Yep. That's her. You look different without the makeup though."
"What'd they give you?" the thin woman asks. She can't keep still — her knee is bouncing, her fingers are picking at the skin around her nails, and her eyes keep darting around the room like she's tracking something no one else can see. When I don't answer, she raises her voice. "Hey! Don't be rude. I asked you a question."
My instinct is to ignore her. But there's no escaping her and she's looking at me in a way that makes it clear this is not optional.
"Ninety-six hours and two months community service at the place I crashed into."
This gets a reaction. Raised eyebrows. A low whistle from someone.
"The pig farm?" the thin woman says.
