Thursday, 15 January 2004 | The station

"What crime would you like to report?"

Jessica looked at me and asked, "What should I call it?"

"I don't know...assault?"

He led us to a large wooden desk, one that was full of nicks and scratches that showed its age like wrinkles. She began her story. I stood awkwardly by and looked around the room.

There were too many American flags to count—hanging on the walls, printed on posters, sticking out of pencil holders, sewn in the form of patches on navy shoulders. There was a flag shoved in the mouth of a fish mounted on the wall.

I offered the cop some details that Jessica had filled me in on, and then I took a seat in a stained plastic chair while she filled out paperwork.

The signs around the room were written in cop language. "Regulation navy blue uniform is required for BSTVB for all MOS. CDs issued for noncompliance." (A sad face was drawn in the body of the capital D.) A bulletin board full of lists: Homicide. Burglary. GLA. Assault. Shootings. Terrorism Awareness Bulletin. A handwritten sign on the bathroom warned, "Don't use this bathroom to search prisoners. Use bathroom in cell area." None of the signs were meant for me.

Another cop, whom I suspect was merely curious, started asking me questions about Jessica's case. While I spoke, he stared at me and munched on cookies, making it hard for me to tell what he was thinking. "I'm the Cookie Monster," he'd later say. After I'd finished the story, he wiped his mouth and said bluntly, "I'd beat his ass."

The building was a rectangle made of smaller rectangles—white bricks and windows and door frames; there were no round edges anywhere. It was dirty, old, and cluttered; it had cold white floors, and reminded me of a public school classroom. Overweight men charged around, making jokes and smiling, belts squeezing bellies out over the tops of pants. I think I saw two other women there besides me and Jessica. One was a cop, and the other was in handcuffs and crying.

"I'd just gotten off the bus and was talking on my cell phone to my friend, who was supposed to meet me there," Jessica began. "I saw the guy standing there, and he seemed to be minding his own business."

I could see the holding cell through another door toward the back. It looked more like a cage than a jail cell. I couldn't see much; just bodies standing around, and fingers poking out of the holes. I wanted to walk over there, but only invisibly.

"Then he came up to me, reached under my coat, and grabbed my crotch," she continued.

I could hear a woman's voice on a squawky intercom, reporting a stolen car. Phones ringing. Oddly, an electronic version of the theme to 90210 playing in the background, until someone turned it off. People zig-zagging the floor, going here to there and back. A man saying, "Ah, lookit this," as he poured a tarp full of DVDs and CDs—maybe a hundred of them—onto the floor. A few of the men gathered around and sifted through them, laughing, holding them up and pointing.

"I yelled some profanities at him, but he didn't do anything. He just stood there. I had a bag of apples in my hand—I'd just bought them—and I hit him in the face with the bag of apples, three times. He didn't react at all." Jessica had shown me pictures of the apples, which had broken into pieces.

A gray and white cat coldly threaded its way through the room. It was aloof and confident. I asked the Cookie Monster its name. "Jonesy? I think it's Jonesy. I don't really deal with it. Yeah, I think it's Jonesy."

The cop assigned to Jessica was concerned, friendly, and very distracted. He kept apologizing for interrupting, for taking a call, for answering another cop's question, for inexplicably walking away.

"I saw him again the next day," Jessica told him. "He rides my bus. I could tell he was staring at me the whole time, but I didn't look at him. I didn't get off until after he did, because I didn't want him to see where I was going. He got off in DUMBO."

The cops offered us orange wedges, colorful gelatin rolled in sugar. "Would you like one-a these?" They looked different from Southern cops, somehow.

They told Jessica to come back in a few days to look at pictures to see whether she could spot him. They told her the next time she saw him on the bus, to call 911, describe what he was wearing, get off the bus where he does, and watch where he goes. "That's what you're here for, right? To get 'im."

She's agreed to do it.