Running the Books

by Avi Steinberg

  I approached him in the back storage room, after the other inmates had left. I told him, with evident anxiety, that I’d got him a little something for his birthday. I took out the cupcake and handed it to him quickly. I was officially giving contraband to an inmate—contraband that could be sold in prison at three times the amount I’d paid for it. Immediately I felt nervous. Then I felt guilty for feeling nervous. Then I felt stupid for making such a dramatic show of anxiety over a pastry.

  He looked me in the eyes and thanked me, in that painfully sincere manner of taciturn people. Then he sat down, laid a napkin on the table, and began to eat. I stood by. This was a lonely man’s birthday party, after all, the least I could do was keep him company. I also had a more self-interested motive: I didn’t want him to take it out of the library and incriminate me. Though, of course, standing next to him while he ate was arguably more damning.

  The way he feasted on this treat was oddly intimate, almost sensual. For a deprived inmate, a chocolate cupcake from the outside is more than just a chocolate cupcake. He was satisfying his hunger.

  Actually, that wasn’t quite accurate: I was satisfying his hunger. And now, like a voyeur, I watched. It occurred to me that there could be another, murkier motivation for a prison worker to become a feeder: to thrill themselves with exactly this dynamic, to enact a carnal powerplay with a prisoner. There could be something almost kinky in gratifying a helpless inmate’s creaturely appetite. In prison, where power inequalities are extreme and absolute, where inmates have virtually no privacy, there exists a very real danger of relationships taking on an S&M quality. It really was hard to be simply kind.

  S&M fantasies are an architectural feature of prison. In a kite I once read, a woman inmate narrated this fantasy to a male inmate: that he would show up in her cell wearing a prison guard’s uniform—she fixated on the boots—and issue her a stern warning to get on her knees. At first, she’d be defiant and wouldn’t comply. He would get a bit more forceful with her, etc.

  In real life, prison affairs took on a whole new meaning when the risk of getting caught involved inmates and prison guards and security cameras. One staffer indeed did get caught, which turned out to be significantly less sexy than the proverbial workplace fantasy. The woman, a civilian worker who was married with children, was caught screwing a young male inmate in a maintenance closet. Another woman, an officer, was fired for becoming too friendly with the male inmates. And these were only the people who were busted.

  I’d tiptoed into something here in the backroom with Elia. My real offense hadn’t been giving him the contraband food but not giving him the space to enjoy it on his own.

  Halfway through his treat, I wished Elia a happy birthday and told him I hoped this year would be better than last. Then I walked out, slid the glass door shut, and gave him some approximation of privacy.

  In the Free World

  It had been a long, late shift and it was almost 10 p.m. when I finally emerged in the free world. As I walked down Mass Ave., on my way to the bus, I heard, then saw, a man banging on the plate-glass window from inside a Dunkin’ Donuts, trying to get my attention. I drew a blank. But when he lifted his sunglasses, I recognized the eyes, small and sleepy, almost swollen shut—they belonged to an old library visitor, a pimp named Anthony, or Ant. He liked to read Spanish royal history and Car & Driver magazine.

  It was difficult to recognize a former inmate on the street. While I looked exactly as I did in prison, an ex-con looked like a completely different person in his street clothes and jewelry, under new lights, in a new setting. Often he’d possess a different affect, a different attitude. Sometimes he’d be drunk and/or high (not that I didn’t encounter inebriated inmates). The free person would bear an only abstract resemblance to the inmate you knew. As if he were the brother of that person. In most cases, the evil twin.

  Especially when he was elaborately arrayed, covered, as Ant was, head to toe in the brightest of whites: a rakish pink-trimmed sweatband with matching belt, a giant fake diamond stud earring, thick-rimmed DKNY women’s sunglasses, a button-down Lacoste short-sleeve shirt, with the top two buttons generously unlatched, matching knee-length dress shorts, and spotless white penny loafers (with a quarter, not a penny in the lip). No socks. On Ant’s hands, bright red and yellow baseball batters’ gloves; a Bulgari watch, or a quality knockoff, loosely fastened. A cheap, unlit Phillies Blunt, stuffed into a cigarette holder, dangled expertly from the side of his mouth, under a wisp of a degenerate’s mustache.

  In short, he was a model of the ghetto/prep school look favored by the contemporary American pimp, which Too Sweet chalked up to the pimp’s tendency toward all things classic.

  These run-ins had been happening more often. I could almost measure my time working in prison by the number of inmates—former inmates—I encountered on the streets. Before I worked in prison, there were none. After a few months, I would occasionally run into an ex-con. After a year it was a steady flow. There were days it seemed I couldn’t take a step without seeing one. This sometimes amazed my friends. I’d be at a movie downtown, or on the subway, and a rough-looking thug would come up to me with a big smile and we’d catch up like old pals.

  Holding one glove folded in his palm, like an equestrian, Ant gestured for me to join him in Dunkin’ Donuts. This would break an unstated rule of prison work—my boss, Patti, had told me that she’d worked out an entire spiel for politely saying hello to an ex-con and moving on. She would never have sat down with this man. But I figured, What the hell, I could use a doughnut. I’m not breaking any laws.

  “What’s good?” Ant said, giving me an earnest thug hug. I gave a quick look around to make sure there weren’t any prison colleagues around. Always a bad sign when you’re on the lookout for snitches. The other few people in the Dunkin’ Donuts shot us leery looks.

  “What’s up, pimpin’?” I replied. I couldn’t help myself. He was wearing designer women’s sunglasses in the middle of the night—a man’s fashion decisions should be honored.

  “Just keeping my P poppin’, y’ know whadImean?” he said, the cigarette holder dancing between his lips. We sat down at his table. He took out a napkin, wiped away some crumbs. I noticed two large cups of coffee. Long night ahead, I supposed.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said, confident in my pimp training, courtesy of C.C. Too Sweet. “Poppin’, never stoppin’.”

  “That’s what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ ’bout, book man,” he said, leaning across the table and giving me some dap. Again, I couldn’t help myself. It had been a long day and pimp banter was really the only perk of my job. I never indulged myself during work—but I have a general rule: in Dunkin’ Donuts, all bets are off.

  Just then, I discovered who’d been drinking the second cup of coffee. Exiting the bathroom was a slim, heavily made-up young woman tottering toward us on stilettos. She wore a complex updo, and a cross-cut polyester royal purple minidress. Through some concealed hardware, her small breasts were given a mighty boost.

  “Avi?” she said, stopping short, almost toppling over.

  Oh crap, I thought. Who is this?

  This was a whole new kind of awkward. I tried to play it cool, to study her face without looking like I was studying her face. This likely amounted to a dumb grin.

  “Do you remember me?” she said, giving Ant a quick look. Through a fake smile, he dug his teeth into the cigarette holder.

  “Of course I remember you,” I said. And, at just that moment, I did. “From the library.”

  I could picture her in the library, not quite twenty years old, undersized in her uniform. She was fond of art books. Deep in the stacks of the library she’d retreat with one of these volumes. She’d been an eager participant in the Frida Kahlo fad that had gripped the library months earlier. When I’d asked which Kahlo painting was her favorite, she’d immediately flipped to What the Water Gave Me, a bather’s-eye perspective of a full tub—framed by two nail-polished feet—in which assorted t
oy-sized images hovered over the bathwater: two women floating on a sponge, the Empire State Building erupting from a volcano, a tightrope, various flora and fauna.

  What did she like about it?

  “No idea,” she’d said. “But I love it.”

  This was one of perhaps two short conversations we’d had in the library.

  “Oh shit, Avi,” she was saying now at Dunkin’ Donuts, collapsing into her seat, sinking her face into her palm. “You’re not supposed to be here. What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t talk to the man that way,” Ant said, quietly.

  I gave him a dirty look.

  “I’m trying, I swear I’m trying,” she said to me, “I was in a program, I’m gonna do the right thing.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. But Ant did.

  “Bitch, shut the fuck up.”

  He said this in a near whisper, with such muted affect, that the meaning of his words almost slid right past me. A pimp knows how to be abusive in public without causing a scene, without creating even a ripple. It’s part of his professional expertise.

  “Hey, easy there,” I said.

  It took some restraint not to give him a piece of my mind. Or to tell her that she could still make things right, that there was help, that she was still a kid and shouldn’t give up on school, that there were people who believed in her. Et cetera. In short, all the things she needed to hear from someone she trusted.

  But I decided it would be counterproductive to speak. She would be blamed for his loss of face and later would bear the brunt of his anger. Anything I wanted to say to either of them would only further provoke and undermine Ant and endanger her—and possibly me. This wasn’t prison. It was real life. Ant was her pimp and I was just some bony guy in khakis. Out here there wasn’t much I could do. Getting involved would be, at best, pointless; at worst, dangerous.

  Ant played it cool and ordered his bitch to buy me a doughnut, which she did, before I could object. He inquired after certain other inmates. Fine, I answered to almost every question. This whole situation was depressing me in a major way. What did he want from me? Why had he invited me in?

  The answer depressed me even more: Why wouldn’t he invite me in? I’d played along with his act, respected him with that title, Pimpin’, and generally honored his street persona. And now I was suddenly angry with him? Was I upset simply because I knew the girl? And if I hadn’t, would it be okay?

  I knew men and women like this. I’d heard their stories. But it wasn’t until I actually witnessed them together, dressed in their street clothes, and until I myself was implicated in the situation, that I got it. The pimp talk, like the nicknames, identified me with the wrong side. In this case, with the abuse and exploitation of a young drug-addicted woman. If I indulged it, I was, in some way, complicit.

  And if I had any doubt about this, I needed only recall her words. I’m trying, she’d said, almost in tears. Her desperate excuses to me that she’d been in a program, that she was trying to “do the right thing.” Why had she been so defensive around me? She and I had never remotely spoken of a program or of her doing the right thing, or any of that. At least not that I could remember; many inmates asked me to help them find programs, to write application letters. Too many to remember.

  But it didn’t matter whether I remembered—she did. In my role at the prison, this woman had clearly identified me as a person involved in her rehab process, whatever that entailed. Now here I was kicking it with her pimp. Had she seen me call him Pimpin’? Had she heard me banter with him?

  Even after working in prison, I hadn’t shaken American culture’s casual use of pimp and ho. But there was no ironic detachment with the real version of it, no dabbling.

  You’re not supposed to be here, she’d said when she saw me. She was right.

  Too Too

  My encounter at Dunkin’ Donuts left me with some serious second thoughts about C.C. Too Sweet. Had I been turning a blind eye to this troubling character? In theory, I knew what he was about; he had told me. But did I really comprehend it?

  Too Sweet’s argument about pimping, that it was an art form—indeed the great male art form, the art form to which all others aspired—had been borne out by his writing talent. His verbal enticements, his ability to self-reflect and verbalize, proved his point: he was a good seducer and could shape the world through words.

  He had no use for guns—these were for people who didn’t know how to use words. Or, to quote him, “I don’t need no Smith and Wesson, man, I got Merriam and Webster.” It hadn’t been obvious how to take such comments. But the truth was I hadn’t given it much thought. They were amusing. That was all.

  When he wasn’t talking to me, though, I saw him overdoing it, boasting. I witnessed him indulge in the very “slick dialogue,” the trappings of hustlerdom, that he himself had identified in his memoir as the telltale sign of a fraud. His wit, when it was working too hard, mostly betrayed his intentions.

  “A real pimp always keeps it low down and down low,” I once heard him say. And it was precisely in the act of enunciating this principle that he was in violation of it.

  I was getting a sinking feeling about all of this. Was I being taken in by C.C.’s words, willingly hypnotized into buying his story and, by extension, him?

  When I didn’t return a revision in a timely manner—I did, after all, have a job—he let his rage show. He pounded his fist on the library’s front counter and started pacing, restraining himself, it seemed, from putting his fist through a wall, or a person. My reaction to his anger startled me: I felt vaguely guilty, as though I had let him down, even though I was helping him free of charge and stretching, possibly violating, my work duties for him. For a fleeting moment, I could relate to those prostitutes sitting in the backseat, how they had felt bad for not bringing back enough money to satisfy him. This thought jarred me. I had to ask the unfortunate question: Was C.C. treating me like a ho?

  I saw him in the library counseling young pimps, encouraging them, guiding them, teaching them the tricks of the mind control game—just as old heads had done for him when he was a young upstart.

  I wondered about that musical name of his. C.C. Too Sweet. His friends often shortened it to just “Sweet” or “Sweets,” which was apt; there was an undeniable charm about him. But lingering in the middle, that small but suggestive word: Too. Perhaps in its connotations of overly and excessive, that word revealed more than intended.

  Until I met C.C. Too Sweet and the library regulars, I hadn’t spent any time with pimps. My association with pimps was limited to what I saw in movies. Or to the zoot suited, fedora- and long-feather-wearing persona I’d encountered at collegiate pimp and ho parties, those get-togethers that gave elite kids permission to dress tough and, it was hoped, get drunk enough to get laid. But C.C. Too Sweet’s life was far from a party.

  As I considered this question—whether I had allowed myself to be blinded by C.C.’s enticements—I decided to Google the man. I didn’t have any policy about Googling inmates; typically, I only did it if there was a specific reason. When, for example, hiring a particular inmate, I might want to Google him to make sure he didn’t have a record of cannibalizing prison librarians. But the fact that I hadn’t searched C.C. earlier, after I’d spent so much time working with him, may have indicated that I didn’t really want to know. The morning after my encounter at Dunkin’ Donuts, I did a quick search.

  The Boston Globe reported: “Three Boston men were charged with kidnapping yesterday after they allegedly abducted two young women in Worcester and tried to force them to work as prostitutes in Boston’s Combat Zone and turn over their proceeds.”

  Another, more recent, newspaper report: “Charles Jarvis, 35, of Roxbury, was arrested in a Super 8 motel in Quincy, Mass., with a girl, aged 14. She had run away from home the day before. He stood accused of three counts of rape, kidnapping, and attempting to sell the girl’s body for sex.”

  Kidnapping, raping, and pimping a minor! A
ninth grader! I almost fell off my seat. The image of him with this girl in a motel sickened me. This was so much worse than what I’d encountered the night before at Dunkin’ Donuts. This was among the worst kinds of crime, the kind that even hardened criminals find reprehensible.

  Perhaps more nauseating was how easily, how readily, I’d embraced him. For months he’d told me he was a pimp, had boasted of it. And now I was going to get angry and accuse him of … being a pimp? What had I taken that to mean? I had to own up to my willful ignorance of what being a pimp actually entailed.

  Still, he had glossed over certain crucial details. There were chapters of his book he’d conveniently neglected to show me. He told me they weren’t ready. Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps he didn’t want me to know the whole story. But of course, the responsibility was mine. I had allowed myself to get taken in.

  My bosses would not be pleased with me, nor would they want to stand by me if I were placed under scrutiny. They certainly weren’t going to risk their jobs on it and would advise me to do likewise.

  I was a paid public servant, after all, part of a governmental agency that was under constant media scrutiny. The story of a naïve Harvard grad and former Boston Globe reporter, using public time and taxpayer money to help a career felon/pimp sex offender publish a tell-all book—which would be how a muckraking reporter would characterize C.C.’s work—this was certainly the kind of story the tabloid Boston Herald would relish. More importantly, though, perhaps they’d be right: why should a public servant help this guy? Maybe he should just rot in his cell.

  I was also vaguely worried that C.C. could compromise me by spinning my bosses—or the paper—a salacious version of what was going on. In our editorial collaboration I was compromising myself and giving him leverage over me. He had little to lose at this point (except, of course, his manuscript). I, on the other hand, had my job, my reputation, my pride. If he felt pinched in some way, he might decide to humiliate me or to blackmail me with this. I kept imagining the tabloid headline, Outraged Parents: Our Tax Dollars Helped Our Teenaged Daughter’s Rapist Write His Tell-All! The article would be accompanied by my prison ID photo, with my crew cut and my bewildered grin, bearing the caption “I thought it was a good read.” These paranoid scenarios kept me up at night.