The deputy's pen clicked once, the honest kind of sound. "Let's make a record," he said. "Hands visible is good. Nobody moves fast."
"Copy," the PIO said, stepping to where both bodycams could see her. The lanyard read PIO in a font that hated attention. She turned her badge so it could be read without a fight. "I'm here for Public Record Statement and to keep the brass stud honest."
The bench team pretended to discover geometry. Two wheels inched back to the public side. Rita's photo caught the retreat without sarcasm and landed in our incident log with a time stamp that behaved.
"Names," the second deputy said, pen already making tiny boxes on a form older than this sidewalk.
"Maya Quinn," I said. "Here for work."
"Evan Hale." His voice stayed even. "Same."
"Boone," Boone said. "Security."
The deputy nodded, not at celebrity, at sufficient nouns. "IDs?" he asked, and we handed wallets the way people who own theirs do. He didn't take a photo; he wrote numbers in boxes and made the boxes feel used, not eaten.
Behind him the hand-mic man adjusted his camera to show more sleeve than air. "They shoved," he told his comments. The red circle agreed to be complicit.
Rita typed commentary into his chat like rain smothering a spark and pinned our window link over it so hard the algorithm squeaked. The square read like a law you could fold in your pocket:
window: Consent on Record is verifiable • 'suspend unless clarify' is misleading without on-face consent • Public Record Statement: index isn't a record • check seal, date, docket • please don't harass clerks.
The first deputy angled his bodycam toward Boone's sleeve and the half second where plastic squeaked. He tapped the screen the way carpenters test beams with a knuckle. "No contact," he said for the audio. "Forearm sleeve touches microphone. Parties remained hands visible on metal. No shove."
The influencer, determined to convert oxygen to drama, drifted closer with a red dot that had ideas about ownership. The PIO stepped one pace into the path and offered her palm at shoulder height, not touching. "Access, not ambush," she said, tone polite in a way that makes people behave. "If you want to speak later, you can email me. No couch, no bench. no unannounced intimacy."
The red dot reconsidered its path, then chose to circle like a bored bee.
Vivian's bubble arrived in Rita's ear with the velocity of a friend who timed the stairs exactly. Hold has six, she wrote. Seventh typed 'process' and then a comma and then nothing, which is my favorite kind of nothing. Exit without bench equals lock.
Agent: Selling 'no action' at lunch. If you can be extremely dull for two minutes, the afternoon will go out for coffee.
Aisha: If anyone prints 'assault', answer commentary and I'll drop notice with the phrase 'allegation under review; bodycams supersede vibes.' Also, morals clause 12.4 reminder has been stapled to Counsel's forehead in my mind.
The deputy looked up from his form. "Ms. Quinn, tell me what happened from your step to the car," he said, voice neutral as a white wall.
I kept it the size of a city report. "We were exiting, hands visible on the roof," I said. "A man with a hand mic stepped into the lane. Our security moved his own arm to prevent unannounced contact. No one touched me. We continued toward the car."
He nodded. "Any contact with your body?"
"No."
He wrote no like a small bridge.
"Mr. Hale?"
Evan stayed in the geometry we had held all morning. "Same," he said. "No contact. We continued forward. We said commentary and 'see window' once each."
The deputy put marks in boxes that liked being filled. "Security?"
Boone's voice made the air steadier. "I set a lane with my own body," he said. "I did not touch the person. Microphone plastic touched my sleeve when he moved toward the car. I announced no unannounced intimacy and hands visible."
"Good," the deputy said, as if good were a noun you could hand out when people deserve it.
He turned to the PIO. "Public Record Statement," he said. The PIO waited for space and then spoke into the scene the way you water a plant you intend to keep. "The department received a complaint of assault in progress at this location," she said. "On arrival, bodycams show no physical contact consistent with assault. incident number will be assigned; reports will be available per statute. Index isn't a record. Please don't harass clerks."
Her words settled into the thread of the hand-mic stream like sand on oil. Some of the comments stopped being teeth; some learned to be eyes.
The supervisor - who loves signs - pointed at the brass stud again and then at the bench wheel that had migrated, as wheels do. "Off means off," he said. The bench obeyed with a sigh that could have been a brake or a conscience.
Nolan tried to evolve a question into a credential. "If governance holds," he called, "do you consider that a victory for -"
"Credential," Boone said. Nolan's mouth discovered discipline for the second time today.
From the doorway up top the host - decent in the way furniture can learn to be when people use it gently - stood with his mic resting and donated six words to the air like a civic tithe. "Seal, date, docket - or no story," he said, to no one and to everyone.
Victor's eyes remained on the drone. The bee considered the awning again; Victor's index finger moved half a degree like weather adjusting. The drone remembered cost-benefit and chose not to get a lesson.
"incident number," the first deputy said into his lapel. A reply came back as a number that had mood only to the extent numbers do. He repeated it for the bodycams. "Two-seven-five-one-eight."
Rita typed it into the incident log with the tenderness of a librarian shelving a book spine-first. Then she dropped it under the window link in three threads, including the one with the red dot that believes in itself.
Vivian: Hold is locked. Chair stopped typing. Brand is threatening 'values recap' in a couch-shaped room; Control says 'later today'. Standards is coughing the word Addendum into their coffee.
Agent: I can keep 'no action' until 3 pm if nobody offers adjectives. If you want a sandwich, now is your god.
The hand-mic man, deprived of collision, tried plot. "So if there's Consent on Record, are you two—"
"commentary," I said. Evan said nothing. We held our palms on the roof and let the bodycams earn their tax dollars.
Aisha's bubble slid across Rita's screen. Board social now circulating a screenshot of a 'certificate index' with your names blurred except not blurred enough. It's a fake or a misread. I am tagging commentary and window; Rita, pin the bus-stop graphic. PIO, please bless me with 'index isn't a record' again because my soul needs it.
The PIO obliged the way kind people oblige each other at potlucks. "Index isn't a record," she said again, so the red dot could learn it twice.
Rita posted the bus-stop version of the window square - the one with text large enough to be read by people who have groceries and a life.
Down the block, a scooter scraped a curb the way decisions scrape when they chafe. The influencer pivoted her red dot to the new noise; when nothing burned, she turned back and tried a softer bite. "Fans just want to know if you're happy," she sang to her lens.
Evan's mouth tilted, gratitude without surrender. "We'll be happier when clerks are," he said, because sometimes you get to throw a good sentence at a bad habit.
The first deputy wrote one last box of no and straightened. "Statements taken," he said. "incident number two-seven-five-one-eight. Preliminary: no assault observed. We'll forward to PIO for public release. We're going to ask everyone to give the car room so these folks can leave without friction."
The bench team considered friction like a seasoning and decided the dish might be better without it. They rolled their wheels an honest foot backward. The hand-mic man found a new angle but not a new noun.
The radio on the deputy's shoulder murmured again. This time the tone had the stiffness of a city that just remembered it can have more than one problem at once.
He tilted his head to listen past the noise of noon. The words formed in his face before they reached his mouth. "Say again," he said, polite to the disembodied voice.
We all felt the shift before the content arrived - the way air changes when a door opens three rooms away.
Rita's phone buzzed in the same breath. Vivian: Records reports a crowd; screenshots of 'certificate index' being shown at the counter; clerks getting yelled at. Security has been asked to put up rope stanchions. Bus stop graphic is working, but we are not there to hold it.
Aisha: I will call their Counsel and say my three favorite words. Meanwhile, please do not let anyone invent nouns in that lobby.
The deputy's radio cleared its throat with official kindness. "All units," it said. "Crowd forming at County Records. Multiple parties showing screenshots. Harassment of clerks. Possible disturbance."
The second deputy looked at the PIO. The PIO looked at the brass stud, then at us, then at the ramp as if it were a paragraph that could be improved with a period.
"Copy," the first deputy said. He looked at us again, made sure our hands visible were still where the cameras could like them, and nodded. "We're rolling," he said. "We'll clear you to leave. Then we head to Records."
Boone had already placed his hand on air in a way that made wheels slow down. "We go with them," he said, tone polite, decision absolute.
Rita's thumb hovered over the window square like a prayer. Victor closed his bag with the sound tools make when they know they'll be needed again in five minutes.
The cruiser's light bar didn't shout; it took a breath and brightened. Somewhere a siren slid up out of itself like a thought finding a voice.
We turned toward the sound and toward the door we hadn't planned to own again today.