by M. G. Reyes
“I’ll drive you.”
Grace looked gratifyingly amazed. She stared for a second and then laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. We’ll make a weekend of it,” he said.
“Sure, of course, that would be incredible! And I’ll pay for the gas, I absolutely insist.”
“We could swing by San Francisco,” Paolo suggested. “I haven’t been in years.”
Grace nodded, utterly delighted. After a pause, she leaned in for a tentative hug. Paolo was a little surprised at her awkwardness. Girls were usually all too ready to hug him. Grace didn’t strike him as someone who had issues around personal space, either. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, the tiniest hint of suspicion flared into life. But within a second Paolo had dismissed it.
They both went inside. Grace hung out in the kitchen while Paolo dressed and packed an overnight bag. John-Michael was loafing on the couch, staring at the TV, and eating Reese’s Puffs straight from the box. When he heard about their plan he sat up.
“Why don’t you let me drive you both? I’ve got the Benz. It’s a seriously cool ride up the PCH. And you know what—I’ve never been to San Francisco.”
Half an hour later, Paolo found himself in the passenger seat of a convertible, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway with the sun beating down. Grace sunned herself on the backseat while Paolo glanced across at John-Michael and remembered his fateful ride with Darius.
He’d tried not to think about it, to dismiss the memory, to simply move past it, but the sense of powerlessness, of being manipulated, wouldn’t quite go away. In retrospect he’d folded so easily.
Maybe the only thing to do was to put the whole experience in a box marked history. Everything he wanted to do lay in his future, after all. The insistent little digs at his conscience were easier to dismiss when he stopped looking back, only forward.
The housemates decided to take the scenic route along the coast, up the 1. With the sun shining, they stopped briefly, at an In-N-Out just outside the city. John-Michael and Paolo shared the driving—an unexpected bonus.
But as they approached San Quentin just after two in the afternoon, the gravity of the situation seemed to hit Grace. She became even quieter than before. In the visitor parking lot, Paolo turned to her.
“You need us to come in with you?”
Grace smiled a quick, artificial smile. “No. My cousin just texted me—she’s already in the waiting room. Death row, guys. It’s . . . it’s really not very pleasant.”
John-Michael said nothing. He’d made no bones about his reasons for wanting to come along—he wanted the excuse to visit San Francisco. But Paolo hesitated. Having come all this way, he felt that he ought to escort Grace into the prison. All that talk about how he wanted to be a human rights lawyer. If he backed down, he’d look like a wuss. But right now, faced with the grim reality of a lookout tower manned with snipers and the somber reception buildings beyond the high walls and razor wire, Paolo felt a sudden revulsion. He tried not to think about Darius and what they’d done together.
Grace began to climb out of the car. Paolo leapt out of the driver’s seat and opened his door for her. Impulsively, he said, “I’m coming in with you.”
John-Michael looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. He slid over to the driver’s seat and plugged in his earbuds. “I’ll watch the car.”
“It’s a high-security prison, man. You think anyone’s gonna risk stealing a car from here?”
John-Michael didn’t budge. “Watch out in there.”
As Grace signed in, Paolo hung back, watching. The waiting area was pretty full, a mixture of regret-laden, middle-aged women and a few tough-looking adult men; shaved and even tattooed heads seemed to be the norm. For the first time since the encounter with the Spanish tennis pro when he and Darius hustled Jimmy, Paolo was glad of his austere new haircut.
Paolo was careful not to look anyone in the eye. The atmosphere was cold and sterile. He’d imagined it would be like a hospital, but it was much worse. An undercurrent of despair ran through the place. He could barely even look at the few prison guards who wandered in and out. Paolo sank into a molded plastic chair, rifled through the magazines, and picked out Entertainment Weekly.
Grace waved at him from the security gate. She seemed so young and fragile compared to almost every other visitor. Then she was gone.
Paolo waited. When he was done with Entertainment Weekly he flicked through a Smithsonian, and even took a shot at Harvard Law Review. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts for even a minute so he concentrated hard on every article. Finally, when he thought he’d really just about had enough and was thinking of returning to the car, Grace emerged. She looked tearful and drained. At her side was a woman in her late twenties, pale and blond, with a visible family resemblance to Grace but not nearly as pretty.
Paolo stood up. He took her into his arms without a word. This time she didn’t hesitate. For a few minutes he just hugged her. Grace’s cousin Angela stood by, watching discreetly, a weak smile on her face.
Paolo murmured into Grace’s hair, “Was it rough?”
She nodded, brushing away a tear. “I don’t like to let him see me cry. Guess I store it up for after.”
Grace’s cousin stepped forward. “Hi, I’m Angela.” Paolo shook the hand she offered and gave a polite smile as the cousin said her good-byes to Grace and left the prison grounds as quickly as possible.
Paolo watched Angela leave, then turned to Grace. He didn’t know quite how to phrase his next question. He’d avoided asking it during the drive but now it seemed only fair to give her an opportunity to talk.
“Was that the last time?” Paolo asked. “You know . . . that you’ll see him?”
Grace stared in confusion for a moment. Then she shook her head, clearly upset. “No, no. What gave you that idea? No! He’s going through an appeal.”
“Hey, that’s good, that’s great. It must be real important to him to have you show support like this. Does he know how far you came to see him?”
She nodded, glancing at the front doors. “Of course he knows.” But she didn’t seem eager to talk about her pen pal. “Can we go? I don’t like to stay any longer than I absolutely have to.”
“Sure, I totally understand.”
Back in the car, John-Michael had put up the top and was nodding his head along to some music on his phone. He squinted at them through the open windows.
“Hey, buddy,” Paolo called. “We’re ready to leave.”
John-Michael acknowledged them with a couple of nods. “Ready to see San Francisco by night? Get some chocolate at Ghirardelli, hang out on Fisherman’s Wharf?”
“Dude, shouldn’t you be hitting the Haight?”
“Oh sure, walking homosexual cliché that I am, you mean?”
“I’d be happy to go to the Haight,” Paolo said. “Except I’d get more dates than you.”
John-Michael laughed, shaking his head. “No way, King. Although you do give off an I’m-So-Not-Gay vibe that’s so powerful, it’s practically gay.”
Paolo laughed, too, a bit harder than was sincere. Grace was finally smiling a little. He was glad they’d been able to distract her a bit, although she seemed less relieved and more wistful than he’d have expected. If he’d been visiting someone on death row, he guessed he’d be happy to get the “good deed” over with. But obviously, after a while of writing letters, you came to care—maybe too much.
Paolo wondered if it was like that for the prisoners’ lawyers. Could he ever bring himself to defend someone on death row? It had to take a huge amount of courage and resilience. Their visit had made this fact painfully clear.
Paolo held open the car door so Grace could slide in. “I think what you’re doing is seriously, seriously cool, Grace.”
“It’s . . . it’s not all that special,” she said with a sad smile.
“Yeah. It really is.”
John-Michael nodded in fervent agreement.
>
“I’d kind of like to try it myself,” Paolo said. As he said the words, he realized that he sincerely meant them. He wasn’t just saying it to impress his friends. Maybe good deeds were missing from his life. And it couldn’t hurt to start learning the terrain he might one day choose as his professional field.
“You want to write letters to guys on death row?” Grace asked. She seemed more than a little surprised.
“Maybe I’ll start with just one. How do I do it?”
Grace took her seat in the rear of the car. She was still acting a little dazed. “I can get you the details.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.” Paolo nodded firmly. “I’ll reach out to some guy in San Quentin. Then we can do the visits together.”
Grace hesitated. “You might . . . it might be nicer if you wrote to a woman. Most guys prefer to have women write to them.”
“I’ll bet.”
“It’s not necessarily sexual. Just that there’s less sense of competitiveness than with another guy. At some point, they might compare their life to yours and get envious.”
“Okay, a woman then.”
“There aren’t many women on death row. But there are plenty of lonely lifers who need people to write to them.”
Paolo felt the situation slipping from him somewhat. If Grace could handle the emotional roller coaster of a death row pen pal, then he wanted the same challenge.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Maybe I’ll hang in there for one of those tough ladies on death row.”
LUCY
VENICE BEACH, FRIDAY, APRIL 17
I need a favor. Can u call me?
Lucy pressed the button to return John-Michael’s text with a call. The bus was pulling up to her stop in Venice. She gripped the rail as she waited for him to pick up.
“Where are you?” John-Michael’s voice sounded urgent, almost aggressive.
“I had detention.”
“Oh. Bummer.”
“What’s up? I’m on the bus . . . be home in a few minutes.”
“Stay at the bus stop. I’ll come pick you up in the Benz.”
“Dude, I’m in my uniform. Let me come home and change first.”
“I have an appointment, Lucy. I need to go right now.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. I want you to come with. I need you to.” He paused, then added in an anguished tone, “Please, Luce.”
“What kind of appointment?”
“At the health clinic.” Another pause. This time she could sense the anxiety in his voice. “I’m getting some blood tests done. Routine stuff, but . . .”
Lucy dropped her resistance. “Got it. I’m here for you, JM.”
John-Michael drove by a little later and Lucy hopped into the Benz. They just looked at each other for a second.
Impulsively, she leaned over and hugged him. “Try not to worry. It’ll be okay.”
He managed to nod. John-Michael looked paler than she’d ever seen him. His eyes had a haunted look.
Lucy leaned back into the thick leather upholstery. She guessed he was going to some kind of STD clinic. Lucy didn’t like to ask people if they did drugs or had a risky lifestyle, but someone like JM who’d lived on the streets might be at risk from hepatitis or even HIV. In which case, he’d have to get tested every three months. That had to suck. Even though there was a treatment nowadays, HIV was still a dangerous, troubling condition.
She felt honored that John-Michael had asked her to come with him. They’d had a brief period of intense friendship two years ago at rock camp, but since then, their friendship hadn’t gone much beyond the superficial. It was good to know that he still felt some kind of bond.
Lucy missed the thoughtful, intelligent, and surprisingly well-read boy she’d met when they were both fifteen. He was just coming to terms with his sexuality back then and wasn’t openly “out.” He’d come out to her one night as they wrote a song together. It had been an intense love song, what she’d taken to be a girl’s lyric. But when John-Michael had sung it back to her, he hadn’t changed the line, had sung of aching love for a boy. Suddenly, all the pieces of a puzzle had fallen into place. And very gently, she’d asked him if he was gay.
Yet the John-Michael she lived with now seemed, in some ways, completely different. He was still occasionally as sweet as he’d once been, especially when he decided to bake for the housemates. But he could be brusque, even belligerent, when he didn’t get what he wanted. Grace and Maya, who shared a room with him, often commented that he wasn’t as neat and organized as Lucy had led them to expect from her memories of him at camp. His corner of the triple room was as slovenly as Maya’s. Most of all, he wasn’t nearly as chatty as she remembered. He resisted being drawn into long conversations, especially about their childhoods. Now that Lucy thought about it, John-Michael often made an excuse when the conversation got even remotely personal.
He hadn’t been that way at all when she’d first met him. She could remember hearing all about his mother, who’d died when he was nine. About his father, whose girlfriend drove John-Michael crazy. About his school, his friends.
In all the time they’d been living together in Venice, Lucy couldn’t remember John-Michael saying any more than the bare facts about his dad. How they had hated each other, how the old guy had killed himself. How John-Michael didn’t really know why and didn’t really care.
Lucy suspected that despite what John-Michael said, he did care. Something had changed him—she guessed it was his father’s death, together with the experience of spending most of last year living on the streets. There had to be all kinds of stories he could tell about that life. Any of that would have been instant fascination for Lucy and the other housemates. Like a kind of dread fantasy. But he never talked about it. Hardly told them anything, in fact.
Maybe it had all been so awful that he simply preferred to move on?
Lucy was glad to see that at least he took his health seriously enough to get a checkup. She was sure he must have put himself at risk at least once while living on the streets. She never asked, but she’d often peered at his arms looking for track marks. Mikey used heroin. She’d been startled by the evidence it left on his body. Mikey had lived in a squat for three months. He’d told her about some pretty messed-up stuff. It seemed likely that John-Michael had lived that life, too, at least for a while.
She decided to test the waters.
“You ever live in a squat, JM?”
He glanced at her quickly, a little suspicious. “Yeah. Why?”
“I was just thinking about my friend Mikey.”
“The junkie?” John-Michael said, a tad warily.
“Yeah. Mikey gets checked for HIV every three months. Says it doesn’t even scare him now.”
“HIV?” John-Michael was pensive for a few seconds.
“This your first time?”
He shook his head.
“So what, you only get tested after you’ve been exposed, or annually, or what?”
“Something like that,” he answered cagily.
“But you’re still nervous?”
John-Michael seemed to take his time before answering. “I think medical tests are always heavy. I mean . . .” For some reason he seemed reluctant to continue.
“Isn’t it better just to talk about it, JM?”
He continued hesitantly. “It’s just that some of it is, like, irrevocable. You get the diagnosis and that’s it. That’s your label. For the rest of your life. A horrible destiny. Just as well that I don’t plan on having any kids.” He spoke with an air of finality, turning the car into the underground parking garage of the clinic.
Lucy was still pondering that statement as they walked into the clinic and rubbed their hands with squirts of sanitizer gel from a dispenser by the front door. Surely only pregnant women could pass HIV on to their baby? She wondered if John-Michael had his facts straight on the subject.
As John-Michael was led into the consulting room, she decided to pick up a leaflet: HI
V and AIDS—The Facts. After a few minutes, Lucy was no clearer about why John-Michael had said that thing about not having kids. Because it was pretty clear from the leaflet—men rarely passed on the virus “vertically” to their babies. Why was he so worried?
He emerged about ten minutes later, expressionless.
Lucy stood up. “So . . . ?”
“So what?” John-Michael handed his credit card to the secretary.
“So—do you have HIV?”
“Oh. No. I don’t.”
Lucy began to smile. “Aren’t you happy?”
John-Michael gave an impatient sigh. “Sure. I guess.” He took the receipt that the secretary offered to him and turned to leave. Lucy followed him. She was beginning to feel pretty baffled.
“It’s just that . . . on the way here, it seemed like a big deal. And now you don’t seem that happy is all.”
John-Michael beeped open the doors of the Benz. “I’m happy, okay?”
“Sure, John-Michael, if you say so.”
He didn’t respond. Lucy fastened her seat belt. John-Michael seemed even tenser now. There was absolutely no sense of relief. If anything, he looked as though he’d received bad news, not good.
It was odd, and gave Lucy an unsettling vibe she just couldn’t shake.
LUCY
SECOND FLOOR, MONDAY, APRIL 20
It had been three days since John-Michael’s blood test and still the good news didn’t appear to have sunk in.
Lucy had been on the verge of talking to him about it a couple of times since then, but he’d been even more reclusive than usual. He hadn’t even been in the mood to bake. Lucy knew that at least a couple of the housemates were quietly pleased by the recent lack of temptation.
It was beginning to dawn on Lucy that something else had to be wrong with John-Michael. He’d been behaving oddly ever since the police detective had visited. No one knew exactly what the cop had said to him. Candace had been hovering upstairs, but she hadn’t been able to hear properly. All she could confirm was that the cop had told him something about the way his father had died. Whatever it was had come as news to John-Michael.