The Graybar Hotel

by Curtis Dawkins

  “What are you doing?”

  “Praying.”

  “Looks like you were trying to do a push-up.”

  “Nope.” Arthur glanced up. Don’t stare, though, not at first. But what in the hell was that flicker? Like he’s got a candle in his mouth. No white guy could pull it off; it’s the dark skin that makes it pop, like stars in the night.

  Arthur stood. “Can I see your teeth?” He also really liked the young man’s hair, neatly braided and laid in rows with the ends in short rubber-banded ponytails.

  “You want my teeth? You gone give me the eggs off your breakfast tray?”

  “Deal,” Arthur said, and went over to the young man. The other two men slept soundly. The teeth were crystal clear and the young man clicked them together several times, creating a sound like a wooden cane tapped against the floor. The front two teeth were inlaid with gold, initials CJ.

  “Can I try ’em out?”

  “Where’s your grill?”

  “They took them.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. They’re just plain white, though. I didn’t even know you could get teeth like that. How much did they cost you?”

  “Two,” the young man said.

  “Two hundred?” It was the wrong answer, Arthur knew. He felt very white.

  “Two thousand,” the young man said, and suddenly Arthur was back in Manhattan again. There was a narrow brick building on Orchard Street in Chinatown that manufactured Chinese sausage. Ten-foot strands of red, raw meat twisted into links every six inches hung in the window. Even in the cell Arthur could smell the gin they used. Around noon the laborers lined the counter, picking thick noodles from chicken broth with chopsticks. On the street he could hear the Jews five doors down, talking to passersby, asking them to come into their store and try on a shirt.

  Two thousand sausage links hung in the window. Had to be. But the lady came out and said, “You go now.” And he did, because he didn’t have to count them anymore—he knew. And when the Jewish man with psoriasis on his forehead grabbed his elbow and said, “Come in,” Arthur did. The man measured the width of Arthur’s shoulders and slipped on a dark gray knee-length coat handmade in Italy. The sleeves were too long, but could be tailored, the man said. Still, in the mirror Arthur saw a young man—a child—imagining a place in the world that might fit him perfectly with just a few alterations. He looked at himself and wondered how exactly one might make alterations to an oversize, ill-fitting world.

  Was he taking too long, standing there silently? The young man with the CJ teeth looked uncomfortable with the waiting. But Arthur often had problems with time. There were minutes that stretched on like bridges, while whole days swept by like water underneath.

  At the end of infinite rows of dark wool shoulders, he was positioned in front of the store’s floor-length mirror. He may have been a child but he could become anyone in that coat. “Would you like some coffee, tea?” the Jewish man asked. “Have a seat over there and let’s talk coats.” Arthur sat, and the coffee was canned and stale.

  “I wore a coat once,” Arthur told his cellmate, “that was two thousand dollars and I once counted two thousand sausages in the window of a sausage store. Now I’ve met a man with two-thousand-dollar teeth.”

  “The fuck you saying?”

  Arthur wondered if he’d just lost his chance to try out those teeth. He was about to ask again when the new hippie-looking guy in the top bunk near the door sat up. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “About breakfast,” Arthur said.

  “Well, that’s pretty early. Your talking’s not very considerate, now is it?”

  “You’re gay, aren’t you?” Arthur said. “You have the coolest look—carnival, I think, with your shaggy hair and beard. You look like you just got shot out of a cannon. You should see yourself. I wish I looked like you, but with this guy’s teeth.”

  “Thanks, you fucking weirdo.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Arthur. “Hey, do you want to act like we’re humping next time the guard comes around?”

  “It’s a little too early for fun and games, isn’t it?” The man rubbed the callused tip of his thumb with his index finger. Arthur could smell the remnants of butane and cocaine issue from the friction. “Are you gay too?”

  “I wish,” said Arthur. “You must dream of going to prison someday.”

  “No, I don’t think I dream of prison.”

  “You should,” Arthur said, not knowing exactly why. He could feel his thoughts slowing now, about to give way to those not his own. If he could just last until after breakfast, they’d walk him down the hall and the nurse would be there, the meds would come and the world would spin faster again, so his own voice could outrun the others.

  Four meals came in heavy plastic trays. Arthur gave his eggs to the young man with the expensive teeth. The fourth man slept through the meal, and his food was divided by the two men on the top bunks. They all ate, then lay back down. Arthur lay down with his cape and looked at the underside of the bunk above him. Some of the faded splotches of dried toothpaste still held pictures: glossy school photos of boys and girls, magazine clippings of airbrushed models. There was a pencil sketch of an old wooden cross, a crayon drawing of SpongeBob SquarePants, nude sketches of busty women, a neatly drawn calendar from some July with half its days crossed off.

  Arthur had the little tube of toothpaste given to every inmate, but no teeth. He had nothing to paste to the underside of the bunk either. He closed his eyes and was calculating how much toothpaste it would take to attach his body to the underside when a tall deputy with a goatee opened the door.

  “Hey, Superman, you gotta see the psych,” the deputy said, twirling keys around his finger.

  “I need to wait for the nurse.”

  “Today you see the psych first. Leave the blanket here.”

  * * *

  Arthur sat in a room made of yellow cinder blocks with one wall of yellow iron bars. There was a long table in the center and a green chalkboard on the wall. It was the Bible study room, Arthur could tell from the faint, erased chalk words ghosted on the board: Be patient; establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Arthur closed his eyes. He felt good and warm there with the remnants of those words.

  Doctor Stan, the psychologist, was always in a hurry and Monday was the busiest with all the weekend influx. To make matters worse, his pretty young intern, Jill, was halfway through a pregnancy. Her body was swollen, she wore no makeup, and there was a large, swollen pimple about to burst between her eyes. Doctor Stan seemed her exact opposite—pale and rail-thin, with a patchy beard that made him look sickly, as if he lacked nutrients or something essential.

  “So you know why you’re here?” Doctor Stan said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me why you’re here?”

  “I’d like to order a lobotomy, please.”

  Doctor Stan and Jill exchanged glances.

  “Why do you think you want a lobotomy?”

  “I don’t know,” said Arthur. “I think it’d be nice to have only half a brain. I’d really have an excuse then. I could say something stupid and people would say, ‘Figures,’ or I could just hang a little chalkboard around my neck—I have half a brain. Though it’s probably not half, maybe a tenth they take out. They’d just have to get the right part, the part that’s gone wrong. But you’re the one who’d know about that—you’re the professional.”

  “I don’t know anything about lobotomies, actually.”

  “Well, regardless. I’d like it out. You probably don’t understand the perils of a torturous brain.”

  “Is that an insult?” asked Doctor Stan.

  “Is it?” Arthur asked Jill, who shrugged.

  “Don’t direct your questions to her, and don’t answer my questions with a question of your own. I’m here to look out for your safety. And frankly, your attitude smacks of suicidal tendencies. We can put you on C-Wing, you know. But I’ve heard
you’re a sleeper, so I doubt you’d like that.”

  “Doctor Stan, I’m not going to kill myself. But I am tired. So if we’re done—”

  “Today is different, Arthur. They’re going to come and get you for your video arraignment. I’m here to assess your mental state for the proceedings, so you need to answer my questions. Again, do you know why you’re here?”

  “Because of what I did.”

  “That’s good. That’s pretty much all I need. We’ll talk more later, Arthur. Maybe.”

  Doctor Stan nodded to the deputy, and the deputy then swung the steel door open with a loud squeak from its hinges. Arthur walked out, stood against the wall, and waited as the door shut, locking the two clinicians in.

  * * *

  He was left in a small room with the deputy where a table held a color television set with a miniature camera on top. There was a fax machine on another table behind him. On the TV screen was a live shot of a desk and empty chair, a Michigan and an American flag, another desk with another fax machine, a neat stack of bright white paper.

  Arthur stared at the empty office for so long he was actually surprised when the judge walked in, robed in black. He sat in his leather chair and tapped the microphone. “Can you hear me?” he asked. He wore half-lensed spectacles and his hair was white and short. His assistant entered and sat at the fax machine. “Can you hear me?” he repeated.

  “I can hear you,” Arthur said. “You’re coming in loud and clear. Bravo, X-ray, marshmallow. Romeo Romeo wherefore tango.” There was no end to the words he could hear himself saying—like rabbits from a hat. “Alpha, bravo, calypso, sangria, doctor, doctor, yellow, night-light.”

  The judge’s assistant fed a piece of paper into the fax machine, and the machine behind Arthur began to beep and spit out the same piece of paper at him. The closed-circuit television, the real-time fax relay, the hum of the paper rolling from the machine—it made him feel as if he was being executed by lethal injection. He closed his eyes and imagined the warmth of the serum surging through his body. So calm, so nice, it was hard to care that you were about to die.

  His uncle Jimmy Ray had died that way. In Texas, right? No, Kansas. He had uncles in prison all over the country. It might have been Stateville, Illinois—regardless, he had gone with his mother. She could barely walk, and there were no chairs in the witness room, only the window. His uncle looked tiny in the brightly lit room. His arms were strapped to the sickly green gurney. A microphone hung from the ceiling and a red phone stuck to the wall. Jimmy said, “I’m real sorry for all the pain I caused.” Arthur’s mother cried. Between sobs she kept saying, “He was so good. He was so good.” She may have been talking about Jimmy, or she may have meant her other brother that Jimmy had killed.

  There was a hum and Jimmy’s eyes closed halfway. “It’s working,” he said. His eyes closed after another hum and the man pushing the buttons sent one last hum that made his chest stop rising and falling. A doctor came into the room, placed the metal disk of his stethoscope under Uncle Jimmy’s shirt, and nodded.

  Later, the two of them walked outside in the cool night. His mom smoked Salems. They walked into a gymnasium where, on a table under a basketball hoop, his uncle lay white and still in a long cardboard box. Jimmy wore a white T-shirt and there was a blanket pulled up to his chest. The box was as rigid as plywood and smelled like a new appliance. No one had money to bury Jimmy in a regular cemetery—he’d have an X on the white cross, state shorthand for “executed.”

  The humming motor from the fax machine behind Arthur clicked off. The deputy slid a piece of paper onto the table in front of him. On television, the judge took off his glasses and slipped a curved earpiece into the corner of his mouth. “Do you understand that these are serious charges before you?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you understand that these charges carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison?”

  “I do.”

  Arthur felt like a bride. This was his courthouse wedding, to the state of Michigan, till death do you part. Only then did he truly realize he was on camera—that he was being broadcast to thousands, and that he was the star of this drama unfolding. He signed the list of the charges and the deputy faxed it back to the court, and the paper rolled out of the televised fax machine. It was all happening just as scripted—the beginning and the middle and the end—all of it. It only had to be lived through to be recorded.

  “I’m going to order a competency hearing for the defendant and enter a not guilty plea at this time. That’s all for today.” The judge began to rise.

  “Your Honor?”

  “Yes?”

  “No gavel?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not going to bang your gavel?”

  The judge didn’t answer. Arthur watched him rise and soon he was gone. His assistant entered information on a laptop computer and Arthur imagined the credits rolling over her, the theme song playing. The deputy escorted Arthur out of the room and into the elevator.

  “What time is it?” Arthur asked, exhausted.

  “Ten-thirty.”

  “Feels like forever.”

  “Just another day in the KCJ,” said the deputy. They rode the elevator to the third floor, and the dark hallway was quiet. They arrived at Arthur’s cell.

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure,” the deputy said, unlocking the door.

  The television was on, loud. The shaft of light that earlier lit a corner now illuminated his bottom bunk. Arthur’s picture was on the TV screen above the words BREAKING NEWS. The man with the golden teeth looked at the screen, then at Arthur, then yelled to the next cell over: “Hey, Marcus, we got a celebrity over here! No shit, that whack job we got is on the TV.” Now, all three of the men in the cell looked at Arthur.

  Arthur knew what they wanted: for him to take his blanket and tie the corners in front of his throat. And when the newsbreak was over, and that powerful, heroic music erupted from the tiny television speaker, Arthur would stand, step to the top of the steel picnic table, wrap his cape around him with a dramatic sweep, and wait for the drama to unfold. This is what they expect. This is what they need. And who was he to disappoint?

  THE BOY WHO DREAMED TOO MUCH

  * * *

  It rained the day six of us rode to quarantine from the county jail in Kalamazoo. I remember because I knew I would want to write about the trip someday, and I was sure the rain would sound like a prop—something to foreshadow the darkness of prison. But it isn’t—it just rained. If there was anything that could serve as a prop, it was the windows. The windows of the van were completely fogged over, effectively erasing us—we were there, but we weren’t.

  I was cuffed by my right hand to Ray, my cellmate in County for the past five months. He was in his mid-fifties, a short, stocky man who paid too much attention to his hair and harbored enough hatred for his ex-stepdaughter for me to think there was something seriously wrong with him. After being in the same room with the man for so long, seeing him prance around the cell in nothing but boxers, constantly slicking his hair back with cold water, I had hoped prison would bring some relief from him. Yet there I was, closer than ever.

  In all fairness to Ray, he probably would have liked to be free from me too. We used the hour-long ride to Jackson, Michigan, to dream aloud about the perks of quarantine over jail—what it would be like to go outside every day, to smoke and drink coffee, as that’s all we knew about quarantine, besides that it was the one to two months between County and prison where we would be evaluated extensively (medically and mentally) to determine which of Michigan’s forty-plus prisons (and Level 1, 2, or 4) we would be sent to. We would have a single cell and a little more freedom than we’d previously had, and we all looked forward to Jackson as if it were a tropical island resort.

  Micky was in the van with us, in the backseat talking about his dreams with the guy he was cuffed to. I only heard bits and pieces: “Listen to this one,” or “What do you think a drea
m like that means?” I wanted to tell him something I had heard in a song once: no one wants to hear about another’s dream unless the listener is in it. But I didn’t. I figured he was probably nervous, like all of us, and he dealt with it by talking.

  We couldn’t see out the van’s windows, so we got our first view of prison when we stepped out into the rain and even then all we could see was a half mile of concrete wall with one white metal guard tower at each end. The enormity of the wall was enough to shut us all up. We were a chatty group before, but now each of us stayed quiet, looking down the length of what seemed to be the rest of our lives.

  We stood in the rain as the deputies checked in their weapons and signed paperwork. Everyone just looked around, at the wall, or down at our orange flip-flops. Tommy, a young meth cooker, squinted and grimaced as if he had to take a shit. We had spent an hour together in the County’s holding cell waiting to leave, so I knew he had twenty-five Seroquel stuck up his rectum. He was struggling to keep the drugs in place. Through the handcuff I could feel Ray’s hand shaking, or maybe it was mine.

  “This doesn’t look much better than County,” Ray said.

  Micky overheard and walked up next to him. His cuff partner was a frizzy-headed kid with an ever-present smile. We all called him Sideshow. “Ah, don’t worry too much, old school,” said Micky. “You can’t tell what’s inside from what’s outside.”

  “That’s true,” I said, and the group of us followed the deputies through a fence that slowly rolled back to let us pass. We walked along a wide sidewalk with another pair of high fences on either side, and signs posted every twenty feet that read: VOLTAGE.