“I was Ben Smithy,” Lorraine said. “I read books fast as a goddamn laser copy machine. I knew three different versions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass by heart, and I learned German so I could study everything from Kant to the Frankfurt School in the original texts. I ran a marathon, had the most beautiful boyfriend you could imagine, my parents are rich, and I believed that all that stuff made me a superior kind of person. But even then I never compared myself to anyone else, because I knew that hubris would make me seem like I wasn’t absolutely perfect.”
“Wow,” Alton said.
Lorraine stopped walking and Alton did too.
She balled her fists and wondered why the rage had grown so suddenly in her heart.
“But you know what?” she asked.
“What?”
“I couldn’t write one poem. I didn’t have a single original thought in my head. I was a high-functioning fool who never, not even one time, took a chance on anything I might fail at.”
“Like what?”
“Like asking some boy on a bus stop bench if he wanted to kiss me. Like taking a metal shop class in high school.”
“Why not?”
Lorraine turned and started walking again. Alton had to scurry after her because she had picked up the pace.
“Because I thought that if I stayed perfect in everything that I’d never die or get old.”
“That’s kinda crazy, isn’t it?”
Lorraine stopped again, grabbed Alton’s shirt with both hands, and, using her body as a counterweight, swung him around until he was teetering on the edge of the curb. Cars were careening by just a foot or two away, but the young man didn’t try to get away from the hold. He just stared at the rage in Lorraine’s face.
Lorraine saw in his gaze a thirst for something, maybe knowledge; for the kind of awareness that was physical and real.
She pulled him back on the sidewalk and said, “I live with this guy.”
“At the place we’re going?”
“Yeah.”
“Won’t he mind if you, you bring me there?”
“No.”
“Is he your lover?”
“The way I felt when I did everything perfectly,” Lorraine said instead of answering the question, “was that if I died by mistake, I could actually come up out of the grave and make God give me my life back.”
Fear and wonderment took over the geography of Alton’s face. Lorraine felt like laughing at him but she didn’t.
“Ronnie’s not my lover,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t even like him.”
“So … so why do you live together?”
“Sometimes,” she said, “most of the time there’s no reason for a thing to be. People like me and Ben Smithy like to pretend that there’s a reason behind everything but we can’t write one word from our hearts. All we do, all I ever did was walk down the path laid out in front of me and then brag about how I knew how to put one foot after the other.”
She started walking again; this time slowly, looking inward.
“You’re really deep,” Alton said after they had gone a block or so in silence.
Three minutes later Lorraine said, “I used to be. But now I know that all the books I read were just exercises when I needed something deeper, real … absolute.”
“Like what?”
“Death.”
“How do you mean that?”
“I mean that Death came up and grabbed me by my throat. He choked me until I was either unconscious or dead. And there I was—in a limbo that I had no idea existed—and I knew all of a sudden that I had wasted all the minutes of my life leading up to the last moment.
“Can you understand how that feels?”
Alton, still looking for something, had no words but simply shook his head no.
“I want you to fuck me, Alton.”
“Right here?”
The question and the fear that framed it made Lorraine laugh.
“No,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m not crazy. It’s just that I live by a different set of rules now.”
“I’d like to know what they are,” he said.
“Me too.”
TWENTY-NINE
EARLIER THAT DAY, at 2:27 in the afternoon, Ronnie Bottoms arrived at the third-floor office of Florence Steinmetz—his court-appointed parole officer.
The third floor was only Department of Corrections business. The front desk was tenanted by a burly, florid-faced man dressed in a green corrections department uniform that was a size too small.
“Ronnie Bottoms for Miss Steinmetz,” Ronnie said. “It’s a two thirty appointment.”
The doubtful officer looked down on his daily admittance sheet, tracing it with a cigarette-stained thumb. “I don’t see you.”
“Could you call her office?” Ronnie asked. “She is my PO and I need to know when to come back.”
The big man—his nameplate read TRUMAN—sighed heavily and then picked up his phone. He hit three digits and grunted.
“Yeah,” he said, “Truman here. I got a—What was your name again?”
“Ronnie Bottoms.”
“—a Ronnie Bottoms thinks he’s got a two thirty with Flo.” Truman waited a moment and then said, “Okay. You got it.” He cradled the phone and looked up at Ronnie. “Have a seat, Ronnie. Somebody will be with you in a moment.”
The sentry nodded at a pine chair against the wall next to the door Ronnie was buzzed in through. The would-have-been young killer thought that, even though it was probably locked, he could break that door down if he wanted … and he did want to. There was something in Truman’s tone that told him he was in trouble. It was a timbre he’d often heard in the voices of policemen, schoolteachers, and various criminals, which warned of reprisal for some sin or oversight. It was the same sound Fast Freddie had had in his voice when he sought to dominate Ronnie in the park.
He wanted to run, but instead Ronnie sat in the chair and waited.
In the large room beyond Truman’s chair, people were moving about, and muted voices could be heard. Clicks and buzzes, now and then a recognizable word, and ringing phones sounded at odd moments, and there was a smell of disinfectant in the air. This was another institutional space, like the green room at his old elementary school or his twelve-man cell at Rikers. Rooms like this had been his home for many, many years and though he didn’t like it, he was familiar with the impersonal attitudes and the smell of sterilizing chemicals.
While he was having this minor revelation, a door to Ronnie’s right flung open. Three more uniforms came in at double-step.
“On your feet, Bottoms,” Officer Truman said.
This too, Ronnie thought, was home.
They forced his arms behind his back and handcuffed him even though he offered no resistance.
They flanked him from every side and pushed him into the larger office space, where correction department employees worked at about a dozen desks, keeping the system of parole and reincarceration working.
No one looked up at the prisoner except for a redheaded young woman who seemed surprised. Ronnie gave the woman a wan smile and shrugged.
“Move it!” one of the uniforms said, and Ronnie was shoved through a doorway into an office that he’d been in only one time before.
The woman behind the desk was broad and square from her diaphragm to her shoulders, and she had a blocky face. Her brunet hair was streaked with gray and she wore a jacket that was also brown and gray. Her eyes were an unexpected festive blue. She was fifty or maybe sixty and had not had a good day for some time.
Seeing this woman, another revelation dawned upon Ronnie: Prison guards and administrators spent most of their waking hours in the same spaces that he did. They were all prisoners together.
“Ronnie Bottoms, ma’am,” one of the guards said.
Florence Steinmetz’s face was hard, unforgiving … at first. But as she looked at Ronnie, a question entered through the flesh around her eyes.
“What happened to you?” she
asked.
Before he could process the question, someone from behind yanked up on his arm and said, “Answer the woman.”
“Stop that, Martins,” Steinmetz said. “Release Mr. Bottoms and let him sit.”
“But, ma’am—”
“Do as I say. And when you’ve done that, you can wait outside the door.”
“But we can leave it open, right?”
She nodded. The guards unlocked his chains, and Ronnie was allowed to sit in the PO’s visitor’s chair.
He sat, feeling distant from those environs.
“What happened to you?” Florence Steinmetz asked again.
“I don’t know what you mean, Ms. Steinmetz.”
“You look like you lost fifty pounds, and what’s going on with those eyes?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s kinda hard to explain, but I got, I got sick. It was like I couldn’t move or nuthin’ like that. It went on for a long time, and then, then it just went away. But how come you’re arrestin’ me?”
“You were supposed to report here last week.”
“Oh.” He had lost track of time. Somehow between the Silver Box, Ma Lin, the construction worker, and the Laz, a week had passed. “I didn’t realize that. I thought this was supposed to be my second visit.”
“That’s a pretty lame excuse, wouldn’t you say?”
“More like paralyzed.”
Steinmetz allowed a quick smile to escape her lips, and Ronnie realized that he might not have to go to jail, that maybe he would make his dinner date with Freya Levering.
“You were really sick?”
“I swear I thought I was gonna die.”
“I suppose you haven’t found a job yet?” Steinmetz said.
“No, ma’am.”
“There’s a new barbecue place on Eighth up near Pennsylvania Station,” she said. “Farnham’s Pork House. They said that they’d take one of my guys. Would you like that job?”
“Sure … I mean, yeah.”
“Come over here and let me see that eye.”
Ronnie went around the desk and allowed his PO to spread open his eyelids with her thumb and forefinger.
“It’s not a contact.”
“No, ma’am. It’s been like that since after I got sick.” This was only technically a lie.
“Did you go to a doctor?”
“When I was sick, I couldn’t get up, and when I was better it didn’t seem like I needed to.”
* * *
ON THE WALK up to Lorraine’s condo, Ronnie contemplated his luck.
In the two and a half decades leading up to the Silver Box, his entire lifetime, Ronnie could always rely on his luck—his bad luck. Whatever could go wrong did go wrong. “If he was climbing out the window of an apartment he’d just robbed, there was a cop coming around the corner of the alley below. If he loved somebody, they either died like his mother or betrayed him like most girlfriends he’d had. If he beat somebody in a fight, they had bigger brothers. If he lost a battle, the victor always kicked him when he was down.”
But now his luck had changed.
The Silver Box and Lorraine had not only saved his soul from a murder rap but also given him a smidgen of good luck. He didn’t break down the door to get away from Officer Truman and so left open the possibility that Ms. Steinmetz might show him leniency. He got a job at the barbecue place with just a phone call. Now he was going to meet a woman who had a job, an education, and a rolling gait that made him smile.
He had eight hundred dollars in his pocket and no desire to spend it. He hadn’t been high for many days, and so the urine test at the PO’s office wouldn’t get him into trouble.
Ronnie laughed out loud, and people on the street quickened their steps to avoid his madness.
THIRTY
“WHO IS THIS Lorraine Fell?” Freya asked Ronnie as they rode the elevator up to the twenty-third floor of the fancy condo building. She had been waiting for him outside when he got back from the parole meeting.
The doorman, Travis Jeffers, challenged the couple, saying that Ms. Fell had said that only Ronnie was allowed access to the condo. But when Ronnie asked to speak to the building manager, Jeffers stood down and allowed the two to pass.
“She’s my roommate,” Ronnie said in the elevator.
“Girlfriend?”
“No. You think I’m stupid enough to take another woman to my girlfriend’s apartment?”
Freya looked doubtfully at Ronnie, and he laughed out loud.
* * *
“THIS IS NICE,” Freya said.
They were sitting on a blue sofa and looking out on the evening lights of Manhattan, eating pizza and drinking red wine from Lorraine’s built-in wine cooler.
The teacher’s assistant was surprised that Ronnie had only kissed her a few times. And he’d had only one slice of the plain cheese pie. His reserve was somehow kindling her passions.
“Yeah,” he said.
“How come she let you live here?”
“I found her almost dead and helped her get better. Now she needs me around because she’s scared of her nightmares.” Ronnie had to lie, but he wanted to lay the truth in with fabrication.
“And she not your girlfriend?”
“Not at all.”
“An’ you don’t even sleep with her?”
“I have held her at night after she had bad dreams, but I’m not attracted to her in a sex way.”
“What kinda infection you say you had?” Freya asked.
“Bad.”
“It musta been. There you are cryin’ with Miss Peters and here I am in a room alone with you and you ain’t pullin’ on my clothes. Now you say a woman bring you to her bed an’ you don’t feel in the sex way. Damn.”
Ronnie stood up then and lifted the small rounded woman like she was a doll. He wrapped his arms under her rump and kissed her—long and slow. The weightlessness and unexpected strength frightened her at first, but then the kiss took over her senses.
The minutes passed and Ronnie felt good kissing the teaching assistant’s lips and eyes, cheeks and neck. She actually moaned from the tender osculations. Ronnie was surprised and happy that he could make a woman feel this way with just a kiss.
“Baby,” she said.
“What?” he slurred while pressing the tip of his tongue lightly into her ear.
“Ain’t your arms gettin’ tired?”
“I could hold you and kiss you like this all night long.”
“But don’t you wanna lie down on the couch?”
“Is that you want?”
“Uh-huh.”
He tipped forward slightly, causing her to lean back from him. Staring into her gaze, he was motionless for a moment.
“Please put me down and lie there with me,” she said, almost breathless.
Shifting with no apparent exertion, he laid her down on the wide blue sofa. He kissed her and she groaned impatiently. He smiled at her and touched her face.
The front door came open just then.
“Hi, Ronnie.”
Freya sat up and saw a slender young white woman with a tan and dirty blond hair followed by an even skinnier white youth coming after her like a dog that just can’t get enough of its master.
“Lore,” Ronnie said, his voice deep and husky.
“Who’s this?”
“Freya. She gonna stay here wit’ me tonight.”
“This is Alton Brown. Say hello, Alton.”
“Hey.”
“You’re welcome in my home, Freya,” Lorraine said. “I’m going to turn my study into Ronnie’s bedroom before too long. That way you two can have some privacy.”
“Um … Thank you,” the teacher’s assistant said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Lorraine took Alton by the hand and walked him into her bedroom.
After a minute or two, the young white couple were making enough noise to be heard beyond the door.
But Ronnie and Freya didn’t hear them.
* * *
“RONNI
E!”
Freya was the first to awaken. Sinewy and naked, Lorraine Fell—her eyes unfocused, her hands shaking—was standing over her.
Ronnie grunted and sat up.
Lorraine yelped from some inner fear and Ronnie took her by the hand.
“It’s okay, Lore,” he said. “It’s all right.”
Groaning he stood up, cradled and lifted his landlady, victim, best friend, and fellow conspirator. She fell instantly asleep in his arms.
The big man then lowered next to Freya with the sleeping Lorraine on his other side, her head on his lap.
“What’s wrong with her?” Freya asked. She sat up and wrapped Ronnie’s shirt around her shoulders.
“It’s the nightmares I told you about. She get ’em and I have to be there or she’ll never fall asleep. It’s how she, um, she bonded with me after I saved her.”
“And she always come out naked like that?”
“Uh-huh, mostly.”
“An’ you don’t try an’ take advantage?”
Ronnie stared again at his lover. She was beautiful and vulnerable but still strong. While appreciating her, he could feel Lorraine’s spirit self—the part of her that was cut free for a time after he killed her—floating somewhere in the atmosphere above her. If he had slept with her, they would have begun their nighttime crawl after the spirit spoor of the Laz escapee. But because he was still awake, she just floated like a cloud riding on an updraft from a deep subterranean cavern.
“Ronnie?” It was Freya.
“Yeah?”
“I asked didn’t you ever take advantage of her?”
He smiled again. “Ain’t nobody gonna take advantage’a this girl here. But if you askin’ if I fucked her, the answer is no. I’m her friend and that’s just like a locked door for me.”
“Since when?”
“I’m a changed man, Frey. You could see that, right?”
“I guess.”
“I ain’t runnin’ after shit no mo’. Damn … enough shit done come after me all these years. All I want is to settle down, maybe learn how to read bettah, and make something right here while I got the time.”
Inside a Silver Box Page 14